South Korea's world-class response to the global coronavirus pandemic has helped President Moon Jae-in's left-leaning allies to retain control of its government with a historic majority in Parliament, The New York Times reported.

Moon's Democratic Party won 163 of the 300 seats in the National Assembly, while a satellite party won another 17, giving the groups a combined three-fifths of the seats, the largest majority in about 30 years, according to the report.

Voter turnout was high at 66.2 in what amounted to a midterm referendum on Moon's five-year term that began in 2017, the Times reported.

This is the first left-leaning majority in South Korea in 16 years, which is a credit to South Korea's mitigation of the deadly coronavirus. There have been just 10,613 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country, with just 229 related deaths reported, according to Worldometers.

Moon's regime had faced criticism for downplaying the threat, per the Times, but the mitigation there has limited the infections and deaths to that of a mid-level U.S. state.

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