Ruling party losing 'fresh' luster: poll
Ruling Democratic Party of Korea Chairman Rep. Song Young-gil, second from the left, speaks during a Supreme Council meeting of the party, Wednesday, held during the party leadership's visit to Samsung Biologics in Incheon, which signed a deal last Saturday to manufacture Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine. Yonhap
By Jung Da-min
In contemporary Korean politics, the liberal political party has usually been associated with a younger, more vibrant and egalitarian image than the conservative camp. This image is attributed to the progressive lawmakers of the liberal party, who used to be student activists during the pro-democracy movement of the 1980s. However, that fresh luster seems to have dulled in recent years, as the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has increasingly reflected characteristics typical of the conservative camp ― such as unilateral decision-making ― while dozens of ruling bloc figures have been mired in corruption scandals and sexual harassment allegations.
According to a DPK internal report, based on an opinion poll and a focus group interview, a ruling party official now appears to be viewed as “a person in his 40s or 50s who is high-handed and incompetent, while possessing double standards to justify his own wrongdoings and criticize others for similar behavior.”
The poll was conducted of 2,000 adults, aged 19 to 54, from April 22 to 26. The focus group interview took place from April 12 to 15.
In the focus group interview, 10 percent of the respondents said that they associate the DPK with the party's symbolic color of blue, but 8.5 percent said they associate the party with the word, “naeronambul,” a Korean word used to describe hypocrisy, which roughly translates to, "If I do it, it is romance, and if you do it, it is adultery."
Some other keywords in the top 10 included “incompetence,” “lie” and “sexual harassment.” The last keyword may have come from sexual harassment allegations raised against former Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and Busan Mayor Oh Keo-don. Park killed himself and Oh resigned, resulting in the April 7 mayoral by-elections.
In particular, 71.1 percent of the respondents said that their image of the ruling party has turned negative after last year's April 15 general election, in which the DPK won by a landslide against the conservative main opposition People Power Party (PPP), becoming a supermajority with two thirds of the seats in the National Assembly.
The respondents said they felt betrayed and disappointed by the ruling party's moral hazard-based practices and real estate policy failures.
Despite the sexual harassment scandals of Park and Oh, the DPK fielded candidates in the by-elections after revising its internal regulations. The ruling party had stipulated earlier that it would not field a candidate for a by-election that was triggered by one of its members resigning over their wrongdoing.
While the Moon Jae-in government's policies to tame soaring real estate prices have not been effective, land speculation scandals involving employees of the state-run Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH), as well as allegations of improper real estate deals involving some ruling bloc figures, have emerged. These scandals are viewed as one of the biggest factors that led to the DPK's defeat by the PPP in this year's by-elections, where the PPP won both in Seoul and Busan.
What tainted the younger image of the DPK was a remark by former Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun, a presidential hopeful of the party.
Talking about Lee Jun-seok, a 36-year-old rookie politician of the PPP who is running to be the party's chairperson and leads in public opinion polls, Chung said it would be difficult for the young lawmaker to become the PPP's next head, because there is a culture of “elders first” in Korean society.
Critics said that Chung's remarks sounded outdated.
The image of the PPP shown in the report was also negative, with the respondents saying the party's image is associated with a person in his late 50s to 70s who values money and power. But the report noted that the PPP has improved in some areas, due to this year's by-elections, with people associating the party with keywords like “rebuilding” or “bulldozer.”
Political watchers said Lee's rising popularity in opinion polls, as well as increased media attention on him, could reflect the people's desire for change within the conservative party.