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President Yoon Suk-yeol (left) and Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung. (Yonhap)

On the afternoon of April 19, just over a week after the general elections, President Yoon Suk-yeol called Lee Jae-myung, the leader of Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party, to propose that they meet for talks.
 
In an announcement that day, Yoon’s senior presidential secretary for public relations, Lee Do-woon, stated, “The president called Lee at 3:30 pm today. Before anything else, the president congratulated Lee on his win in the election and applauded various other Democratic Party candidates for winning seats in the National Assembly. President Yoon also suggested that if Lee’s schedule permits, the two should meet in Yongsan.”
 
“The president said that the two should meet and kickstart communication. He also suggested that they should meet regularly to partake in tea and meals, as well as engage in phone calls to discuss national affairs. Lee thanked the president for the invitation and commented on the president’s generosity. Lee also commented that he and his party should help the president in his endeavors,” the secretary added.
 
Something about this struck me as odd. The claim that Lee commented on the president’s generosity and also stated that he and his party should help the president in his endeavors raised an eyebrow. I asked the Democratic Party to clarify. “While we are displeased that Lee’s comments made out of courtesy were made public as such, we can’t disrupt the events currently taking place, so we haven’t made an issue of it,” they said.
 
Hong Chul-ho, the senior presidential secretary for political affairs, and Cheon Jun-ho, Lee’s chief of staff, held two working-level meetings on Tuesday and Thursday but were unable to finalize the agenda or the specific time and date for an inter-party summit. Reactions from the two sides were mixed after the second round of working-level meetings took place.
 
“The presidential office doesn’t have their heart in it,” an official from the Democratic Party stated. “They want us to go over and talk, while they just sit back and listen. They won’t even accept any of our propositions, they’re only going to listen.”
 
Hong commented, “The president has already made it clear that he is open to hearing anything and everything out. Lee has also expressed similar sentiments by stating that he will relay the will of the public as expressed through the general election to the president. This is very much in line with what the public wants, which is to see the two leaders engage in dialogue, no matter what the format and without restrictions, that broadly covers diverse topics concerning national affairs.”
 
We’ve reached a point in which the inter-party summit is at risk of falling apart. It seems that Yoon and Lee both had different ideas in mind when approaching the meeting.
 
Approval ratings at 23% bringing up talks of a summit

Yoon called Lee on April 19, the anniversary of the student revolution of 1960. At 8 am, Yoon accompanied Kang Jeong-ai, the minister of patriots and veterans affairs, presidential aides, and representatives of the bereaved families to the April 19th National Cemetery to pay his respects. He did not attend the memorial ceremony which took place at 10 am. He did not meet with Lee or with Cho Kuk, the leader of the Rebuilding Korea Party.
 
At 10 am that day, Gallup Korea released the results of a regular poll on the president’s approval rating. The survey showed that Yoon’s approval rating had fallen to 23%, the lowest level since he took office in May 2022. This directly shows the upshot of Yoon’s insincere apology, which was delivered by then-chief of staff Lee Kwan-sup shortly after the general election, as well as Yoon’s remarks at the April 16 Cabinet meeting in which he boldly claimed that he was still leading the country in the right direction, despite his party being defeated at the polls. 

Yoon decided to phone Lee that very afternoon. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that he suggested an inter-party summit after seeing the results of the Gallup poll. It’s also within reason to interpret the suggestion itself as an attempt to prevent his approval rating from plummeting even further. 

If that is the case, that means that for Yoon, the song and dance of holding an inter-party summit itself is more important than whatever discussions actually take place during the meeting. It’s entirely possible that all he wants to get out of the inter-party summit is a photograph of him meeting Lee, shaking hands, and engaging in dialogue.
 
On the other hand, Lee finds himself facing a completely different set of circumstances. The general election earlier this month ended with the Yoon administration’s crushing defeat while the Democratic Party welcomed a landslide victory.
 
Lee and the Democratic Party have risen to the center of South Korea’s political scene, with the public having their eyes fixed on Lee’s every move. As such, the pressure is on for Lee to win some sort of tangible outcome from his meeting with Yoon. A meeting in which the president and the opposition party leader merely sit down and say their respective pieces is, in his eyes, worthless.
 
However, Yoon has opted for a more shameless route by stubbornly calling for a meeting, even if it means that the two will have to engage in meaningless chit-chat. Lee had no choice but to concede, saying, “I will put everything aside to meet with the president.”
 
Meanwhile, some in the Democratic Party believe that the outcome of the elections earlier this month was a call for the party to forgo cooperation with the administration and instead take responsibility to steer the country in a better direction.
 
Min Hyung-bae, who has been newly appointed as the chair of the Democratic Party’s strategy and planning committee, said, “We should forget about ‘cooperation.’ Adopting cooperation as the main principle in our relationship with the ruling camp is an act of betrayal. It goes directly against the public’s wishes, which was what handed us the overwhelming win in the general election.”
 
In other words, Min believes that there should be no Lee-Yoon summit in the first place. 

Kim Dae-jung: “No room for ‘going it alone’ with a parliamentary minority”

But the Democratic Party is not in a position where it can keep battling the president even after the election. It needs to take part in administration-opposition summits.

Cooperation on state affairs is the right thing to do. Livelihoods are important, and it’s a way of serving the public. Inter-party summits are more or less the only way for political leaders on both sides to respond to the outpouring of powerful public sentiments and stabilize the political situation.

History bears this lesson out. In May 1975, as the Yushin dictatorship was deepening, then-President Park Chung-hee had an inter-party summit with Kim Young-sam, who was then leader of the New Democratic Party.

In response to Kim’s demands for democracy, Park replied, “I am not a greedy person. My wife was shot dead by the communists, and I do not plan to stay long in this temple. I will practice democracy. Please just give me a little time.”

Park accepted some of Kim Young-sam’s demands, including the release of jailed opposition lawmakers and the normalization of advertising in the Dong-A Ilbo. His promise to “practice democracy” ultimately went unkept, but the inter-party summit did its job in helping move past a difficult phase.

On June 24, 1987, another inter-party summit took place between Kim Young-sam — now leader of the Reunification Democratic Party — and then-President Chun Doo-hwan amid that month’s historic democratization struggle.

Kim Young-sam’s demands included abolishing the constitutional measures imposed the preceding April 13 and the acceptance of a direct presidential election system. Chun only said that he would reopen discussions on amending the Constitution.

Kim announced that the inter-party summit had broken down. Five days later on June 29 came a declaration by Democratic Justice Party leader Roh Tae-woo. Chun had accepted Kim’s demands after all.

As president in December 1996, Kim faced the threat of a collapse of his administration over the unilateral passage of controversial labor laws. The following June 21, an inter-party summit was held at the Blue House among Kim Young-sam, New Korea Party leader Lee Hong-koo, National Congress for New Politics leader Kim Dae-jung, and United Liberal Democrats leader Kim Jong-pil.

The ruling and opposition parties subsequently reamended labor laws in line with opposition demands at an extraordinary session of the National Assembly the following February and March. The inter-party summit had averted a disaster.

As these examples show, inter-party summits have been very effective ways of fixing things when the administration has been clashing with the public or the ruling party with the opposition.

In some cases, ongoing channels for dialogue between the president and opposition party leaders have been established.

In 1988, the administration of then-President Roh Tae-woo was facing a parliamentary minority in the wake of the 13th general election. He and the leaders of the ruling and opposition parties held five-party talks to address all the major issues faced at the time.

Kim Dae-jung, who was leading the Party for Democracy and Peace at the time, would later recall the situation in his autobiography.

“With the opposition majority, compromise was the best policy,” he wrote. “Compromise ultimately meant negotiating and making concessions, so there was no room for dogmatism or going it alone.”

He also wrote, “The mere fact that the opposition has a parliamentary majority does not mean it is ‘having its way.’ The opposition has had to always reckon with the public’s will. They have to share responsibility for statecraft.” It is as though Kim entered a time machine to travel to the present with a message for Yoon Suk-yeol and Lee Jae-myung.

After taking office as president, Kim Dae-jung himself had to perform his duties while facing a parliamentary minority for his own party. He had seven inter-party summits with Grand National Party leader Lee Hoi-chang. He even referred to these as “party leader summits.”

An agreement was reached at one point to have one summit every two months, but the one held in January 2001 ended up being the last. Roh’s five-party talks and Kim Dae-jung’s seven inter-party summits could be described as model cases of collaborative politics by an administration faced with an opposition-dominated National Assembly.
 
Can Yoon still “blame the opposition” after facing voters’ judgment?

Moon Jae-in was also very proactive about communication and dialogue with the opposition during his presidency.

Shortly after taking office, he began inviting ruling and opposition party leaders and parliamentary representatives to the Blue House to discuss policies and explain about the administration’s diplomatic achievements. He would meet with these leaders and representatives each time there was a major development, including the inter-Korean summits, Japan’s imposition of export controls, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

He also managed to establish a permanent framework for discussions on state affairs between his administration and five ruling and opposition party representatives, although it never ended up meeting due to objections from the Liberty Korea Party.

As this shows, South Korean presidents without exception have held frequent inter-party summits and meetings with opposition party representatives. They have treated those representatives as partners in statecraft. In not having any meetings with the opposition party leader since taking office, Yoon had been the outlier. 

For Yoon Suk-yeol, the political environment in the wake of the 22nd general election on April 10 is completely different from the one before. Previously, he was able to blame the opposition for his administration’s incompetent handling of state affairs and the resulting chaos.

Now that the elections are over, he can no longer simply blame the opposition. It is the administration that voters passed judgment on, not the opposition.

In the wake of this inter-party summit, Yoon has three choices available to him.

First, he can keep going for the rest of his term as a president incapable of achieving anything. Whatever damage is caused by the paralysis of the government will end up being visited upon the public.

Second, he could face impeachment by the National Assembly and eventually the Constitutional Court. That would be an unfortunate scenario for Yoon and the public alike.

Third, he can acknowledge the opposition parties as partners in state affairs and institutionalize collaboration with them. He can call this a “grand coalition,” a “cohabitation government,” a “national government,” or whatever he likes. This is the best possible scenario for both Yoon and the South Korean people.

If he were to go a step further by spearheading an amendment to the Constitution that reduces the president’s term by a year to institute a four-year system (with the possibility of reelection) and redistributes some of the president’s powers, he would go down in history as the president who ushered in South Korea’s seventh republic.

What, readers, do you think?

By Seong Han-yong, senior politics writer

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