Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
Infighting imperils opposition party's April election prospects
Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) Chairman Lee Jae-myung leaves a meeting room at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, Friday, after talking to DPK Rep. Noh Woong-rae who has been staging a sit-in protest in the room after being excluded from the party's candidate nomination for the April 10 general elections. Yonhap
By Nam Hyun-woo
Lawmakers who fail to win nomination choose to leave party
Concerns are mounting within the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) that it could potentially lose its majority in the National Assembly or face a significant defeat at the hands of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) in the upcoming April 10 general elections. This apprehension stems from the escalating factional infighting within the DPK over candidate nominations.
Until just a few months ago, the DPK exuded confidence in its prospects for victory in the general elections. This confidence was bolstered by President Yoon Suk Yeol's faltering job approval ratings and the internal conflicts plaguing the PPP. However, as the ruling party forged ahead with candidate nominations, the DPK found itself embroiled in a bitter factional feud over the nomination process. This rift, notably between factions aligned with Chairman Lee Jae-myung and those who are not, has thrown the party's electoral strategy into disarray.
DPK members who are not aligned with the chairman, which includes quite a number of incumbent lawmakers and high-profile figures under the former Moon Jae-in administration, are protesting the nomination process, which they claim was biased and in favor of Lee. Some of them are even preparing to leave the party.
National Assembly Deputy Speaker Rep. Kim Young-joo was the first to announce her departure from the DPK, saying she felt "humiliated" by the DPK's performance assessment, which said she ranked at the bottom 20 percent among the party's lawmakers.
"I'm neither pro-Lee nor anti-Lee, but the party branded me as an anti-Lee faction member and created the assessment to cut me off from the candidacy," the four-term lawmaker said, Feb. 19.
Rep. Sul Hoon, a five-term lawmaker and a critic of Lee, said Friday he would make a decision soon on whether to remain in the party, after being told that he ranked in the bottom 10 percent. He said he was “placed at the bottom because I tried to protect the DPK, not the chairman.”
Another lawmaker who was sidelined from the DPK’s candidate nomination, Rep. Lee Soo-jin, left the party on Thursday. “There are indications that close aides to the chairman are manipulating (the candidate nomination process) through an unidentified survey,” she wrote on her Facebook, adding she is suffering from critical text messages from extreme fans of the chairman.
Rep. Noh Woong-rae, a four-term lawmaker who was eliminated from the candidate selection process due to an ongoing trial over bribery allegations, has been staging a sit-in protest at the Assembly since Thursday. He wrote on Facebook Sunday that “the DPK is losing its commitment to democratic processes.”
Democratic Party of Korea floor leader Rep. Hong Ihk-pyo, center, listens to a counterpart during a plenary session of the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, Friday. Yonhap
The DPK leadership has excluded some anti-Lee lawmakers from the preferred candidate list based on the survey cited by Rep. Lee Soo-jin. That survey was conducted by Research DNA, a company that conducted polls when the current DPK chairman was the mayor of Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, in 2013. Due to this reason, anti-Lee lawmakers are voicing suspicions about the transparency of the party’s candidate nomination process, claiming the survey results were manipulated.
The controversy prompted DPK floor leader Rep. Hong Ihk-pyo to insist that the chairman remove the pollster from the candidate nomination process. Subsequently, the DPK made the decision to remove the pollster from the process on Sunday.
Another conflict involves close aides to the former president, who are also said to be part of an anti-Lee faction. Of them, Moon's former chief of staff Lim Jong-seok is now at loggerheads with the DPK leadership, as he insists on running in Seoul’s Jung-Sungdong A constituency despite opposition from the party’s candidate recommendation committee.
Lim is a two-term lawmaker from the constituency, but the committee reportedly is considering former Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission Chairperson Jeon Hyun-hee for the constituency. Despite Jeon's assertion of being close to both Lee and Moon, Lim and other members of the pro-Moon faction perceive Lim's exclusion as an unjust suppression of their faction.
“The DPK’s support rating is dropping, and the primary responsibility goes to the current party leadership,” DPK Rep. Jeon Hae-cheol said during a radio interview with broadcaster SBS, Friday. “So the leadership should come up with an appropriate course of action.”
DPK Rep. Song Kap-seok wrote on Facebook, "The belief that it will be tough for the DPK to lose in the (upcoming) 22nd general elections is now weakening."
Song mentioned the 2012 general elections, when the DPK’s predecessor, the Democratic United Party, took 127 out of 300 seats in the Assembly, allowing the PPP’s predecessor, the Saenuri Party, to secure 152 seats. Back then, then-President Lee Myung-bak’s job approval ratings were below 30 percent, but the Democratic United Party conceded the majority following internal conflicts over candidate nominations.
According to the lawmaker, the current situation is similar to 2012 — Yoon's approval ratings remain under 40 percent, but the DPK's support rate is not inching up. In a poll by Gallup Korea, released on Friday, the DPK even conceded its lead, as 37 percent of respondents supported the PPP, while 35 percent favored the DPK. The poll surveyed 1,003 voters from Feb. 20 to 22 and further details are available on the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission’s website.