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.
Let us begin with the opposition. On August 18, the national congress of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) held an election for the position of party chairman. As expected, Lee Jae-myung was reelected for another two-year term. During the voting in 17 rounds of intra-party elections he won a record 85.4%, beating his 2022 margin of 77.7% and becoming the first DPK leader since Kim Dae-jung to be reelected. Moreover, this result represented the highest level of support for the party leader in the DPK’s history. In second place, by a wide margin (with just 12.12% of the votes) came former Minister for Government Administration and Home Affairs and former governor of South Gyeongsang Province, Kim Doo-gwan, who opposed the election of a “party chief who behaves like an emperor”.
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........