ED DPK's majority push

A group of main opposition People Power Party representatives including Rep. Na Kyung-won, second from left, blast the ruling Democratic Party of Korea's plan to take all 17 standing committee chairs in the second half of the National Assembly and demand the return of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee chair to her party. Yonhap

With some two months left until the June 3 local elections, the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) continues to dwell in chaos, with friction over nominations. In contrast, the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has been moving speedily to bring about drastic changes in less than a year. Controversial laws to revamp the prosecution and the judiciary have passed through the National Assembly. Notably, the passage of an act separating the duties of indictment from investigation will effectively replace what Korea used to know as the prosecution in October, while the so-called "law distortion" bill calls for more accountability for prosecutors and judges. Such swift approval of reform-oriented bills is possible because the DPK holds a majority in the National Assembly, with 161 seats against the PPP's 107.

The DPK seeks to press that advantage even further, and have its legislators take the helm at all 17 parliamentary standing committees in the second half of the National Assembly, which begins May 30. Currently, 10 of the 17 are held by the DPK and seven by the PPP. Rep. Jung Chung-rae, the DPK chief, has stated the reason behind it: The existing PPP committee leaders are not performing well. The DPK leader also referred to a similar practice in the U.S., where the majority party in general holds leadership of standing committees.

There is no shame in learning from other governance models. But Korea has a credible democracy with institutional rules. The political realm has largely upheld a format where large ruling and main opposition parties both pursue their partisan agendas and contest ideas and policies. The practice since 2000 has been that the ruling and the main opposition parties would divide the roles of speaker of the National Assembly and stewardship of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee.

We cannot help but ask whether such an overwhelming majority by one party is really what the voters want. The Korean electoral system already is winner-take-all by design, tending to lend weight to a majority. Koreans may be known to move en masse toward a good thing, but in politics, a certain measure of checks against the majority has always been healthy and even necessary.

However, the PPP continues to implode in the wake of the December 2024 martial law crisis and subsequent impeachment of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, undermining those checks and balances. The DPK is largely left on its own to enact self-checks and self-discipline — a tall order in the early days of a new administration. The ruling party and the administration, however, should remind themselves that constituents look to their legislators to produce the best laws and policies through bipartisan governance, not majority-buttressed power.

If the voices of opposing parties are largely absent, the DPK can look to past administrations' playbooks and see which ones did well by respecting the system of checks and balances. If the ruling party won't heed external criticism, there are certainly other voices from within Korea's liberal camp. Veteran liberal politician Chung Dae-chul, head of the Parliamentarian's Society, strongly criticized the ruling party for passing the judiciary reform bills and planning to take over the standing committees as amounting to "a runaway train," saying the party may as well be "heading toward an authoritarian dictatorship."