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President Yoon Suk-yeol casts his vote at an early polling site in Busan on April 4, 2024, the start of early voting for Korea’s National Assembly elections. (Yonhap)

The day after the opposition’s landslide victory in Korea’s parliamentary elections on Wednesday, the international media focused on the likelihood of President Yoon Suk-yeol becoming a lame duck for the rest of his presidency.

“South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's ruling party suffered a drubbing in legislative elections held on Wednesday, with the main opposition party increasing its majority in the National Assembly and casting a cloud over the remainder of his term in office,” the Nikkei Asia reported on Thursday.

“Yoon took office nearly two years ago and has been hamstrung by the opposition-controlled legislature. He is now likely [to] become the first president in South Korea's democratic history to serve his entire five-year term without ever holding a majority in the body,” the article went on.

Will all the ballots counted, the Democratic Party won 161 electoral districts and the PPP took 90 districts, out of 254 altogether. The Reform Party, New Future Party (Saemirae) and Progressive Party each claimed one district apiece.

“The election is widely seen as a midterm referendum on President Yoon Suk-yeol’s administration, who still has three years left in office,” the BBC reported, noting that Yoon will remain at a disadvantage throughout his three remaining years as president of Korea, which limits presidents to a single term in office.

The BBC also predicted that the election outcome might motivate Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, who narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election, to make another bid for the country’s highest office.

“Just last month, Mr. Yoon drew flak for a visit to a Seoul grocery store where he commented that a bundle of green onions priced at 875 won ($0.65) was ‘reasonable,’” the BBC reported, noting that the president has “been criticised for appearing to be out of touch with voters' inflation woes.”

“His wife Kim Keon-hee has been embroiled in a controversy for allegedly accepting a luxury bag gift, while separate corruption and abuse of power allegations have been levelled at senior members of his party,” the BBC added.

In an article titled “Opposition win in South Korea election to deepen policy stalemate for Yoon,” Reuters reported that “the bitterly fought race was seen by some analysts as a referendum on Yoon, whose popularity has suffered amid a cost-of-living crisis and a spate of political scandals.”

“‘Judgement’ was a common theme running through comments by opposition victors, many of whom had campaigned on what they said was Yoon's mismanagement of the economy and his refusal to acknowledge his wife acted improperly when she accepted a Dior bag as [a] gift,” Reuters said.

“But nearing the end of the first two years of his five-year single term allowed by the constitution, Yoon was likely to slip into a lame duck status, some analysts said,” Reuters reported.

“Given his likely lame duck status, the temptation for Yoon will be to focus on foreign policy,” said Mason Richey, a professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, in an interview with Reuters.

By Hong Seock-jae, staff reporter

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