After South Korea’s parliamentary elections, held six months ago, both the Democrats and the Conservatives “strengthened their ranks” and, still led by their former leaders, began a new round of parliamentary confrontation.
Lee will now lead the DPK until 2026 and is likely to be the leading DPK presidential candidate in the next presidential election, to be held in 2027. Voter turnout among eligible party members was only 26.47%. This reveals the antipathy of many members of the DPK to the order that Lee had established.
The path to a second term
On April 25 Lee Jae-myung and Cho Kuk agreed to participate in a continuous and open dialog.
Then there is the issue of the de facto leader of the DPK faction in the National Assembly, Park Chang-dae, who served as Lee’s main campaign spokesperson during the 2021 presidential primaries. In those primaries Park was the only candidate.
Upon taking office, Park Chang-dae immediately announced his intention to take a tough stance on pushing through opposition-initiated bills, including those vetoed by the country’s president.
But the DPK miscalculated when it came to the election of the Speaker of the National Assembly. Lee wanted the post to go to the unpopular Choo Mi-ae, a former DPK chairman and former Minister of Justice. Her main rival, Woo Won-shik,supports further expanding the powers of the National Assembly and amending the Constitutionto replace the five-year term with two four-year terms, a move which the Democrats see as an opportunity to remove Yoon Suk-yeol from power without impeachment.
Against Lee’s expectations, Woo Won-shik won with a majority of votes from the 169 participating legislators (the Conservatives abstained from the vote). As political commentator Park Chan-hwan notes, the pressure put by Park Chan-dae on the other candidates to withdraw from the race forced the delegates to vote for Woo. And although Woo also positioned himself as a supporter of Lee Jae Myung, a group of deputies from Lee’s “fan club”, has opposed the results of the vote, demanding that those who voted against the party line be named, and threatening to leave the DPK.
On May 8, Yoon Suk-yeol called Lee Jae-myung to wish him good health before he went on a week-long vacation for medical treatment in connection with injuries resulting from an assassination attempt. Also on May 8, Park Chan-dae urged president Yoon Suk-yeol to accept the DPK’s proposal to hand out cash payments to the entire population and called for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that Yoon’s office and the Defense Ministry had improperly intervened in a military investigation into the death last year of Marine Cpl. Chae Su-geun.
On May 23, a memorial service was held at Bongha, a town near Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province, to mark the 15th anniversary of the death of former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. The event brought together representatives from across the country’s political spectrum, including former President Moon Jae-in, National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo, Prime Minister Han Dok-soo, and party leaders. Speaking to reporters, Cho Kuk said that Moon Jae-in had suggested that he and Lee Jae-myung join forces. But the merger did not work out – the mutual dislike between the two is at least as strong as their hatred for Yoon Suk-yeol.
On June 24, 2024, in preparation for running for a second term as party leader at the Democrat national congress, Lee Jae-myung submitted his resignation as Chairman of the DPK. Park Chan-dae is the acting party leader.
Conservative media outlets immediately expressed concerns “about Lee trying to protect himself from a plethora of his own judicial risks by establishing a unipolar system in the party.”. Public opinion on this issue is split roughly in half. However, among DPK members, 80.3% were in favor of his re-election.
On July 10, Lee Jae-myung announced his candidacy for party leader. He also dismissed the growing calls for him to put an end to his “fandom-based approach to politics.”
None of the really prominent politicians in the party, including members of former President Moon Jae-in’s inner circle, were able to stand as serious rivals to Lee (Kim Du-kwan and Kim Ji-soo are not of the same caliber), and to judge by the results of a July 14-15 Ace poll conducted by Ace Research the outcome of the vote for the next chairman of the Democratic Party was almost a foregone conclusion. Among DPK members, Lee Jae-myung garnered 85.6 percent, Kim Doo-kwan 8%, and Kim Ji-soo 2.8%.
However, it should be noted that Lee Jae-myung’s triumph did not have much effect on the DPK’s ratings: 100 days after winning the April 10 election, its approval rating stood at 33.2%, compared to 42.1% for the ruling party.
Comparison reveals the truth
However, Lee Jae-myung’s lead was still a long way from that of Cho Kuk. On July 20, 2024, the leader of the Rebuilding Korea Party won a second term with 99.9% approval of party members, as the founder and sole candidate. Moreover, it is his 12 seats in the National Assembly that make it possible to talk about the victory of the democratic camp.
In his speech following his re-election, Cho Kuk stated his intention to “reveal every single atrocious act by the Yoon government and clearly show what the end of the prosecution dictatorship would be like.”
In general, the ex-minister’s situation is not straightforward. On the one hand, on February 8, the Court of Appeals upheld a two-year prison sentence for academic fraud involving his children and unlawful interference with a government inspection.
Following the decision of the appellate court, Cho Kuk appealed to the Supreme Court. And if his appeal is rejected there, it is possible that he may have to say goodbye to his career as a politician and serve time behind bars.
However, on April 26 the Supreme Court approved a ruling requiring the state to pay Cho 10 million won (US$7,269) in compensation for previous conservative administrations’ use of the state intelligence agency to illegally collect information. Readers will recall that in 2021 Cho filed a claim for 200 million won damages against the state, alleging that the National Intelligence Service had illegally put him under surveillance in 2011 and 2016, during the administrations of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye. The district court ordered the state to pay Cho 50 million won, combining the two cases into one, but the appeals court reduced the award to 10 million won, finding that the statute of limitations on the case had expired in 2011. And on August 14, a court in Seoul ordered The Chosun Ilbo newspaper and one of its reporters to pay Cho and his daughter 17 million won (US$12,490) in compensation for the use of their photograph in an unrelated news article on robbery and prostitution.
To renew the fight against the regime, but first, privatization
In his acceptance speech at the convention Lee offered to hold talks with President Yoon Suk-yeol to “stabilize people’s livelihoods.” After all, according to the Democrats, the country is experiencing an economic catastrophe far worse than the 1997 default, and only Lee’s proposed “universal basic income” can save the nation.
With his position strengthened, Chairman Lee has offered to hold separate bilateral talks with ruling party leader Han Dong-hoon to discuss “pressing issues.” The ruling People Power Party agreed, and although the rendezvous was postponed because Lee had tested positive for COVID-19, on September 1 Lee and Han talked to each other. However, their meeting resulted in a new scandal when Lee Jae-myung alleged that in order to destroy him the criminal government was planning a coup d’état and was “about to impose martial law”.
What lies behind such statements, and to what extent it is even possible, will be discussed in the next article.
Konstantin Asmolov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies, part of the China and Modern Asia Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
