hankyoreh

Lee Nak-yeon and Lee Hae-chan, chairs of the Democratic Party’s election measures committee, and Lee In-young, the party’s floor leader, bow in gratitude to the South Korean public at the National Assembly in Seoul on Apr. 16. (Yonhap News)

The ruling Democratic Party and its proportional affiliate, the Together Citizens’ Party, won a landslide victory in South Korea’s parliamentary elections on Apr. 15, winning a total of 180 seats. This is the first time since South Korea’s democratization in 1987 that a single party has taken three-fifths of the seats in the National Assembly. That shows just how strongly citizens are determined to support the ruling party’s handling of the government.

But it’s worth remembering that such a victory is a double-edged sword. That’s probably why Yang Jeong-cheol, director of the Institute for Democracy, described the election outcome on Apr. 16 as “scary and frightening.” We hope that the ruling party will humbly respect the barometer of public sentiment and dedicate all its energy to overcoming the economic crisis that we face, while also paying heed to the opinions of the United Future Party (UFP), the main opposition party.

Winning 180 seats in the National Assembly carries no small significance. That gives the ruling party the ability to leapfrog the limitations of the National Assembly Advancement Act and fast-track any desired legislation on its own. That margin gives the Democratic Party a majority in most of the standing committees, allowing the party to push ahead with debate and votes on a range of bills and budgets.

Even more importantly, that means that President Moon Jae-in can advance his key policy objectives without worrying about becoming a lame duck during his last two years in office. The election results also suggest that the public wants the government to speed up its work on prosecutorial reform, including the establishment of a dedicated office to investigate corruption by senior officials.

Giving the Democratic Party control of 180 seats also functions as something of a rebuke from Korean voters, who want the National Assembly to start working for the public again. Prior to this election, the ruling party could complain that the opposition party was obstructing constitutional reform, and the administration could gripe that its work was hobbled by the National Assembly.

But such excuses don’t hold water anymore. The ruling party will now have to take on all responsibility for getting results that meet citizens’ expectations. That gives it all the more reason to engage in dialogue with the opposition party with the goal of collaborating in governance.

This is a particularly important time to marshal all the resources of the nation to bear on the global crisis of the coronavirus pandemic. The ruling party needs to view the opposition UFP as its partner in overcoming the crisis together. And the UFP, for its part, needs to learn a lesson from its catastrophic defeat in the election and actively cooperate in that campaign.

The most pressing task is passing the second supplementary budget, which amounts to 7.6 trillion (US$6.24 billion) won, in order to pay basic disaster allowances. The supplementary budget reflects the government’s original plan of paying up to 1 million won (for a family of four) to the bottom 70% of households in terms of income, using health insurance premiums as the main yardstick.

But leading up to the parliamentary election, both the ruling party and the opposition party proposed a universal plan, in which the aid would be paid to everyone in the country. The bill needs to be quickly revised through debate in the National Assembly.

There’s also an urgent need for measures to be taken to shore up employment. The COVID-19 pandemic is already causing jobs to disappear, and unemployment has begun to soar. At such a time, companies need to be doing their best to save jobs, and organized labor must spare no pains in helping them do so. Since this crisis is too great for anyone to endure on their own, we hope that the two major parties will take the lead in forging a social consensus.

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]