Having described the problems faced by the Democrats and Conservatives, let us move on to the issue of a “third force”. The demand for a centrist party has been felt in Korea for quite some time, but the existing system tends to either “squeeze out” or “absorb” such figures. In the present author’s opinion, there are several reasons for this. Firstly, even right back at the beginning, when the Republic of Korea was founded, the centrists were unable to emerge as a significant force, largely due to the dominant trend toward division of the country. Secondly, the so-called democratization movement consolidated the principle “whoever is not with us is against us” in Korea’s politics. And thirdly, centrist ideologies do not resort to populism, something to which public opinion is accustomed, and they impose certain expected behavior patterns on politicians.
Given the factionalism prevalent in Korea’s politics, it is clear that there are several groups claiming to represent the “third force”, and we will look at these in the order of their level of influence.
In the first place, there is Lee Nak-yon and his supporters, who split off from the Democratic Party. Seventy-two-year-old Lee Nak-yon was the second-in-command in the Moon Jae-in administration, and showed himself to be a competent prime minister and party leader. A former journalist, Lee entered politics in 2000 after repeated recommendations from former President Kim Dae-jung, and was the spokesman for the Democratic Party and former President Roh Moo-hyun’s campaign team. He was elected to parliament five times and served as governor of South Jeolla Province from 2014 to 2018. He has a regional support base in Jeolla, his “home province” and is trying to brand his future party as “true democrats” who have not been tainted by Lee Jae-myung’s party leadership. The name of the party is New Future.
In the second place is thirty-eight-year-old Lee Jun-seok and his team, who in turn split off from the Conservatives. He previously worked as the head of an educational nonprofit group, and was hired by Park Geun-hye in late 2011 to serve on the then-ruling party’s “emergency committee”. Four years later, he “betrayed” his employer and become one of Park’s strongest critics in the wake of a corruption scandal involving Choi Soon-sil.
When Lee Nak-yon was prime minister, Lee Jun-seok was the youngest leader in the history of the Conservative Party. On January 20, 2024, Lee Jun-seok announced the establishment of a new political structure called the New Reform Party, or simply the Reform Party.
Lee himself is a rather charismatic figure who at one stage was seen as bringing young blood into the nation’s political system, but due to a number of lapses of judgement his reputation has somewhat diminished. Nevertheless, while he lacks a regional power base like Lee Nak-yon, he still has his own support group. Lee Jun-seok is counting on the support of young conservatives, but it is already evident that this cannot necessarily be counted on. Among young conservative politicians, Lee has some supporters, but also a number of tough opponents.
In the third place is New Choice, a party that has brought together several charismatic politicians, including Geum Tae-seop, who split off from the Democrats and Ryu Ho-jeong from the Justice Party.
Then there are three National Assembly members, Cho Eung-cheon, Kim Jong-min and Lee Won-wook, who left the Democratic Party because of disagreements with Lee Jae-myung and were barred from running as candidates. On January 12, 2024 they announced that they planned to form a new party to run in the parliamentary elections. They call themselves the Grand Future Coalition or Great Future Alliance but while they were still members of the Democratic Party, their faction was known as “Principles and Common Sense.”
Special mention should be made of Yang Hyang-ja, who resigned from the Democratic Party and as long ago as on June 26 last year presided over a formal ceremony to nominate the organizing committee of her Hope of Korea Party. A former Samsung Electronics executive with a background in semiconductors, she left the Democratic Party back in 2021 amid allegations that one of her aides had sexually harassed a colleague.
Finally, there is an assorted group of deputies, the main thing about whom is that they left one of the two leading parties. In doing so, they weakened their factions, but they have not all made a definitive choice yet.
At this point, an obvious question is- “What about the Justice Party? In 2024, all the young people from the party (Ryu Ho-jeong and others) defected to New Choice, and in its first 24 hours alone … Lee Jun-seok’s party gained more supporters than the Justice Party had attracted in years.
On January 24, 2024 Lee Jun-seok absorbed Yang Hyang-ja’s faction. “We share the same vision and values… and here today we announce the merger of our parties,” Yang said during a joint press conference with Lee at the National Assembly. In addition, both parties use the same party color, orange.
On January 28, the media reported that Lee Nak-yon and the Grand Future Coalition were merging to form the Future Reform Party. Its founding meeting was scheduled for February 4.
On February 3, 2024, deputy Yang Seo-yeon left the Democratic Party. In a press conference held in the National Assembly, she claimed that anyone who disagrees with Lee Jae-myung’s course is being ostracized by the party, and announced that she is joining the Future Reform Party.
Meanwhile, the Justice Party has absorbed the Green Party and re-branded itself as the Green Justice Party. As the blogger KoreaLight notes, they bought the right to call themselves the Greens so that Green activists would be able to take seats in the National Assembly if they won.
Thus, Lee Nak-yon’s goal was to choose former Democratic Party colleagues to work with him, while Lee Jun-seok could absorb the less reputable leaders.
Meanwhile, according to the media and expert observers discussions between Lee Nak-yon and Lee Jun-seok now appear to have reached a stalemate due to the significant political differences between the two leaders. As Lee Jun-seok told reporters in late January, “We are very cautious about any potential merger or alliance, given the unfavorable results that have occurred in the past when parties merged without reasonable grounds for an alliance.” Yang Hyang-ja also expressed doubts that an alliance would be viable. On the other hand, Huh Eun-ah, a member of the Democratic Supreme Council, said that in her personal opinion, the possibility of a merger is “higher than 90 percent. There are some slight delays for unimportant reasons, because we need to convince the public why we should act together.”
Professor of Political Sciences Shin Yul believes that the real obstacle to the merger was the odious proposals of Lee Jun-seok, who has inserted many controversial promises into his program, including the abolition of free subway travel for people over a certain age and a proposal to impose compulsory military service for women applying for certain civil service posts. “Lee Nak-yon, who wants to appeal to voters of all age groups and genders, Lee Jun-seok’s promises, which are likely to result in a generational and gender divide, are unacceptable, and Lee Nak-yon is reluctant to merge with his party.” Moreover, the proposal to abolish free travel for the elderly has already sparked a fierce reaction from the Korea Senior Citizens Association, which criticized Lee for spreading malicious lies against the elderly and called on him to quit politics.
Kim Hyung-joon, a Professor at Pai Chai University and former president of the Korean Association of Electoral Studies, points out that Lee Jun-seok’s actions are very reminiscent of his conduct in the run-up to the 2022 presidential election, when, as the then head of the Conservatives, he made a campaign promise to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family Affairs and was generally a vocal critic of feminist groups, accusing them of having no interest in men’s rights. This stance has helped the Conservative Party win the support of men in their 20s and 30s who were once staunch supporters of liberal blocs, but in doing so, the party has lost the support of a significant portion of young female voters. According to Professor Kim, “targeting only young male voters while explicitly excluding young women and older adults appears to be an ill-advised strategy, particularly when considering the voter demographic and the relatively high voter turnout among women.”
Meanwhile, former Justice Minister Cho Kuk, whose corruption triggered the standoff between Yoon Suk-yeol and Moon Jae-in, called on the entire opposition to unite around the Democratic Party in order to win 200 seats in the National Assembly and impeach the President. Lee Jung-seok politely declined the offer, saying he did not need such allies.
On February 4, the merger of the ex-democrats took place, happened, but two out of the three Grand Future Coalition deputies did not join Lee Nak-yong. At the last minute, Cho Eung-cheon and Lee Won-wook said they had decided not to join the new party, expressing their disagreement with what they called “merger by takeover.” In the present author’s opinion, this was due to the fact that the name of the party – New Future – remained unchanged, even though Kim Jong-min became co-chairman along with Lee Nak-yong.
However, on February 9, all four factions (Lee Jun-seok’s New Reform Party, Lee Nak-yon’s New Future, Keum Tae-seop’s New Choice, and Cho Eung-cheon and Lee Won-wook’s Principles and Common Sense) agreed to merge into one new party. The tentative name is the Reform Party, and it will be jointly led by deputies Lee Nak-yon and Lee Jun-seok (although Lee Nak-yon will head the election preparation committee). According to Lee Nak-yon, this move is aimed at reforming the current system of two incompetent and corrupt parties, and he took the name from the younger Lee’s faction “to keep up the momentum of political reform”.
As the present author sees it, this was an unexpected move, as it is important to take into account the ambitions of Lee Jun-seok, who will not merge with a more serious faction without bargaining for special terms. Otherwise, he would just be swallowed up by a more experienced and influential politician.
As a result, so far, the Reform Party looks like a coalition created purely for the electoral campaign “in favor of everything good and against everything bad,” given that the co-chairmen’s positions differ greatly on a number of key issues. Therefore, as the Korea Times writes, “doubts remain over their ability to work together and find a common identity as a single political entity.” Their supporters remain sharply divided along party lines, with a fairly large portion of Lee Jun-seok’s supporters already complaining that the merger was too sudden and “opaque”, and that the merging parties lacked a common agenda.
In another article, the Korea Times notes that the internal divisions within the Reform Party are too high and “its leaders are also grappling with how to reconcile the competing interests of their existing supporters, balancing between conservatives and liberals.”
So far, Lee Jun-seok believes, everything is going okay. He is aware of the criticisms about the imbalance between conservatives and liberals, but “the Supreme Council has no disagreement because of their former party affiliation, and I can assure you that the [post-merger] Reform Party has established a structure for reasonable decision-making.”
It appears that the process of getting the Conservatives and Democrats to rub shoulders with each other is not as smoothly as hoped. Nevertheless, the general view is that the politicians are trying to smooth out their points of disagreement and reach a consensus.
Assuming it does not fall apart before the elections, what are the prospects for this alliance? In theory, it is in a position to impinge on the two major parties’ territory and “bite off” a portion of their votes. It is highly likely that the party will recommend its conservative members like Lee Jun-seok as candidates for conservative regions and liberal figures like Lee Nak-yong as candidates for its Democrat electoral base. Both Lees are determined to gain a minimum of 30 seats in the National Assembly, which would be enough to deprive both Democrats and Conservatives of a qualified majority and thus enable them act a powerful political force in a position to actually influence lawmaking.
But so far, the new party is trailing behind its rivals in terms of ratings. According to the latest opinion poll, 35% of respondents support the Democrats, 34% support the Conservatives and just 3% support the new parties. In another poll from February 2024, 37% said they supported the People Power Party, 38% named the Democratic Party (Toburo), 4% named Lee Joon-seok’s New Reform Party and 3% named Lee Nak-yong’s New Future. 15% of respondents do not fully support any of the parties.
Perhaps the new parties’ level of support will jump after the merger, but perhaps not. The fact that more than 30% of voters do not support either the Democrats or the Conservatives is interpreted by election analysts as a sign of voters’ willingness to support a third party or independent candidates. “But that is not a precise figure.”
In any event, the unification of the four factions is not the end of the story for the third force in Korean politics. There have been plenty of last-minute alliances and divorces in the Republic of Korea’s electoral history. Nevertheless, the emergence of the Reform Party suggests that the election will not be a two-way race between the Conservatives and Democrats after all. As yet, the conditions are not yet in place for a third force to win the election, but politicians from this group already have a good chance of taking part in the upcoming reshaping of the political parties and of Korean society as a whole.
Moreover, the foundation of the Reform Party has NOT been the last work in the process of party formation in Korea – but that will the subject of our next article.
Konstantin Asmolov, Candidate of Historical Sciences and Leading Research Fellow at the Center for Korean Studies at the Institute of China and Modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”