hankyoreh

A voter slips their ballot into the ballot box at a polling station in Seoul on June 1, the date of South Korea’s eighth local elections. (Shin So-young/The Hankyoreh)

Voters overwhelmingly cast their ballot for the ruling People Power Party (PPP) in the local elections, held only 84 days after the presidential election, empowering the new administration to conduct state affairs with confidence and stability.

According to the National Election Commission’s vote count as of 7 am on Thursday, out of the 17 major local elections in metropolises and provinces nationwide, the PPP won 12 while the Democratic Party won five.

After its shattering defeat in the local elections in 2018, when it lost in all regions except Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province, the PPP redeemed itself in this year’s local elections, at the same time securing a foundation for stable government administration and a stepping-stone toward gaining an upper hand in the 2024 general election.

Especially of note, the PPP made incredible strides in the Seoul metropolitan area, the fiercest battleground for this year’s local elections. In 2018, the Democratic Party had won the mayoral and gubernatorial elections in Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi Province in a landslide, winning them by almost 20 percentage points. But this year, after four years, the PPP flipped seats in at least two out of the three elections.

Even compared to the results of the presidential election in March, the PPP made remarkable progress.

Three months ago, then-presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol won against then-Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung by 4.83 percentage points in Seoul. But in the Seoul mayoral election, the PPP’s Oh Se-hoon secured 58.56% of the votes while Democratic Party candidate Song Young-gil received 39.75% of the votes, securing an uncontested victory for Oh with a margin of 18.81 percentage points.

Even in Incheon, where Lee won against Yoon by 1.86 percentage points during the presidential election, PPP mayoral candidate Yoo Jeong-bok (51.47%) won against Democratic Party incumbent Park Nam-chun (44.68%) by 7.06 percentage points.

In Gyeonggi Province, considered Lee’s stronghold, Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Kim Dong-yeon won out in the end against PPP gubernatorial candidate Kim Eun-hye by a razor-thin margin of less than a percentage point.

Those within political circles and beyond say Yoon’s emphasis on national unity, demonstrated by his role in making key PPP officials attend the May 18 Gwangju Democratic Uprising commemoration ceremony, as well as his attempt to showcase his leadership through the recent South Korea-US summit, were key factors that helped his party secure victories in Wednesday’s elections.

Chosun University professor Jhee Byong-kuen commented, “Yoon actively courted [moderates] by visiting Gwangju and launched himself as a full-fledged national leader through the South Korea-US summit, which had a positive impact [on the PPP’s success in the local elections].”

He added, “When it comes to local governments, there’s a big interest in financial support from the central government, so [elections] tend to be favorable to the ruling party.”

This is why the PPP passed a revised supplementary budget at the tail end of the campaign period and promised “explosive government spending.”

Yoon has run into some trouble in his first round of Cabinet appointments, with Kim In-chul, nominee for deputy prime minister and minister of education, and Chung Ho-young, nominee for minister of health and welfare, both withdrawing their nominations following allegations that they had exploited their positions to provide favorable opportunities for their children. Even so, Yoon seems to have managed to offset that by briskly nominating women to Cabinet positions shortly before the local elections.

Yoon’s influence was tangible in the strong showing of candidates who ran in the local elections riding on Yoon’s victory.

As recently as early April, Kim Eun-hye had only been polling in the 10%-19% range. But after besting Yoon’s political rival Yoo Seong-min in the party primary, Kim galvanized support and stayed close to Democratic Party candidate Kim Dong-yeon until the very end of the race, though she ultimately lost by a little over 8,000 votes.

In the election for governor of North Chungcheong Province, Kim Young-hwan (59.42%), who had been a special advisor to Yoon, had an 18.85-point lead over Democratic Party candidate Noh Young-min (40.57%), with 57.7% of votes tallied.

These results in the local elections strongly appear to be a second warning from the public to the Democratic Party, which has been torn by internal squabbles without demonstrating any meaningful remorse even after its defeat in the presidential election. After resorting to cheap tricks to ram through legislation stripping the prosecution service of its investigative authority, Democratic Party lawmakers came across as bungling obstructionists, rather than sharp-eyed questioners, in the appointment hearings, an impression that undermined their election appeal for counterbalancing the Yoon administration.

Sexual misconduct allegations against lawmaker Park Wan-ju and the dispute between Yun Ho-jung and Park Ji-hyun, co-chairs of the Democratic Party’s emergency leadership committee, were final factors leading to the party’s trouncing at the polls.

“The absence of leadership in the Democratic Party appears to be the cause of its defeat. The party’s inability to pull off a reset despite holding another election just three months after the presidential election was a failure of strategy,” said Park Won-ho, a professor of political science at Seoul National University.

“This was the result of voters’ disappointment in the Democratic Party, which suffered from a lack of focus because of strife between the leaders,” said Lee Jun-han, a professor at Incheon National University.

By Song Chae Kyung-hwa, staff reporter

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