Without the people, there can be no power
Park Jung-won
South Korea’s ruling People Power Party (PPP) is at a loss for direction after a major defeat in the general elections. The PPP only secured victories in 19 of the 122 constituencies in the Seoul metropolitan area, which is considered a barometer of national public sentiment. Despite seemingly garnering all possible conservative votes, the PPP’s crushing defeat highlights the limitations of its competitiveness.
The overwhelming victory of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) in this election was not solely the result of the party’s performance. There were unusual aspects to the election that made ascribing the massive support for the DPK to the sacred democratic principle of the will of the people too simplistic. Even if one understands the people’s vote as a judgment against the various problems of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration, it raises questions as to how to interpret the fact that the public instead cast their votes for opposition parties represented by Lee Jae-myung and Cho Kuk, who are both undergoing trials for serious criminal charges. Although there were other opposition parties to vote for, the majority of voters still chose to support the parties led by Lee and Cho.
The public, pre-emptively assuming that an electoral loss would result in investigations into President Yoon and his wife, effectively voted for parties led by Lee and Cho as a way of signaling their desire for Yoon’s removal. Is this a question of equality under the law or presumptive illegality? Politically driven retribution is not the same as justice. This vividly illustrates just how abnormal the current state of South Korean politics is.
That said, such abnormal behavior by voters does not absolve the PPP from responsibility for its crushing defeat. The loss implies that the PPP was also unable to garner sufficient support from reasonable, centrist voters. Although the PPP has championed sound policies, such as firm deterrence of North Korea and a solid South Korea-U.S. alliance, it failed to win the hearts of the majority in this election. Is it the end of the road for conservative parties in South Korea?
Upon reflection, the conservative party in South Korea did not come into being to “conserve” a political tradition; it was an abnormal creation that sprang up overnight due to the uncontrollable circumstances of the post-World War II era, namely the division of the Korean Peninsula between North and South and the Cold War. The conservative forces in South Korea did not adopt capitalism and liberal democracy as explicit state ideologies to provide meaning and purpose to life, as seen in countries like Britain that invented conservatism. Instead, capitalism and liberal democracy were embraced as means for the state’s very survival.
Therefore, the conservative party in South Korea has embodied a form that is incomprehensible from the perspective of classical conservatism found in political science textbooks. For instance, the ruling party during Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship, which used absolute state power to plan and shape the market for economic growth, was essentially anti-conservative. Yet, in the language of South Korea’s real domestic politics, it was characterized as conservative. During the developmental dictatorship period, when the vast majority of South Koreans struggled with poverty, this type of “anti-conservative conservative” politics may have had certain beneficial effects. However, today, with a middle class established through economic growth and an entrenched procedural democratization, the situation is different, especially as this middle class now faces decline.
Since the 2008 global economic crisis, economic polarization has spread worldwide, and the resulting frustration among ordinary people has led to political and social instability manifested in extreme political populism. It is becoming increasingly apparent that as the majority becomes relatively poorer, economic growth stalls, unemployment and underemployment persist and opportunities for social mobility dwindle. People will not choose a conservative party that focuses on boldly facing the threats to liberal democracy and from North Korea simply out of loyalty. The conservative party in South Korea has failed to lay a solid foundation of support among ordinary people by not evolving and adapting to economic and social changes with policy agility and a continuous reinterpretation of conservative values, as has been seen in Western conservative politics.
The Yoon administration and the PPP have consistently touted the greatness of the free-market economy and the positive effects of competition, but in reality, they are still perceived as a government and ruling party that represent the interests of a few large corporations and the elite establishment, rather than earning the broad support of the common people. In fact, the basic direction of Yoon’s economic policy has been characterized by the deregulation of major corporations, various tax reductions, and real estate development policies that disproportionately benefit the privileged. Yoon himself has indicated, in various interviews, that his mindset is dominated by a neoliberal economic understanding of the world in the vein of Milton Friedman.
In this election, the PPP was overwhelmingly defeated by the DPK in most regions across the country except for the Gangnam area in Seoul, where property prices are relatively very high, and the Yeongnam region, which is traditionally a conservative stronghold due to regional sentiments.
In essence, the majority of voters, who are ordinary people, recognize that although the Yoon administration and the PPP talk about liberal democracy and the market economy, in reality, they are merely a party that represents and protects the interests of a wealthy minority.
In other words, the sense of fairness and justice that was associated with Yoon has dissipated since he became president. The prevailing feeling is that Yoon’s policies ultimately only benefit a small group of people — the rich — and that this election was an expression of frustration with that perception. If the PPP does not make efforts to win the hearts of the majority through bold socio-economic policies, they may face defeat in all future elections.
Park Jung-won (park_jungwon@hotmail.com), who holds a doctorate in law from the London School of Economics, is a professor of international law at Dankook University.