DP’s dangerous turn to extremism

if you look into their nominations of candidates, the situation won’t get any better.

Kang Won-taekThe author is a professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Seoul National University. The April 10 parliamentary elections are less than a month away. Political circles focus their attention on who will win the upcoming elections, as the two major parties — the People Power Party (PPP) and the Democratic Party (DP) — will face grave consequences depending on the outcome. But voters are more interested in whether our politics will really be better in the next National Assembly. The 21st Assembly left the people sick and tired of the two parties’ extreme confrontations.

But if you look into their nominations of candidates for the election, you see the situation won’t get any better. The PPP unfortunately nominated most of its incumbent lawmakers for re-election, but more worrisome is the DP’s lopsided nominations. As an aide to DP leader Lee Jae-myung said, the nominations “confirmed who owns the party.” The majority party morphed into Lee’s own party. I was startled at the aide mentioning “party ownership.” But the DP does not stop there.

The DP has turned into an unfamiliar party. In the past, it had the colors of Kim Dae-jung’s “tolerance and integration” and Roh Moo-hyun’s “reform.” The DP’s transformation could be attributed to Kim loyalists’ migration to another party led by former prime minister Lee Nak-yon and to the purge of Roh followers. But clearly, the current DP is not the party we used to know. What color does Lee Jae-myung — the “owner” of the liberal party — really have?

What stands out in the DP’s nomination process is the generational change of former student activists. Han Dong-hoon — former justice minister and PPP interim leader — has promised to end the student activists-led politics during campaigns. On the surface, DP leader Lee seems to have eliminated lawmakers loyal to former President Moon Jae-in from nominations. But in reality, the second generation of former student activists, called the “‘97 group,” entered the political stage and replaced their predecessors known as the “‘86 group.”

Their entry into politics sounds alarms, as they are more ideology-oriented than the ‘86 group. Different from the 1980s, when Korea was under the military dictatorship, the 1990s was an era of democratization at home and post-Cold War abroad. After democratization in 1987 and the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc in the 1990s, communism ended in failure as an alternative political system. Despite the drastic changes in political environments at home and abroad, the “97 group” still worshiped the leftist ideology and followed pro-North Korea line. That implies they are either fundamentalists or one-track minded.

With their entry, the DP moved farther to the left than in the past. Moreover, Lee’s DP has forged electoral alliances with hardline leftist groups such as the Progressive Party and opened a back door for them to enter the legislature.

As a result, the DP’s image as “a party for the ordinary people and middle class,” ardently championed by the late president Kim Dae-jung, is no longer to be found. At the current rate, the DP will likely have a closed-door meeting to nominate left-wing politicians who can hardly appeal to voters as their proportional representatives. If such nominations are made, the DP’s ideological bias will be even more augmented.

The current situation of the DP seems like a familiar story.

Flanked by two former prime ministers on Tuesday, when the Democratic Party (DP) opened its campaign headquarters for the April 10 parliamentary elections, DP leader Lee Jae-myung, center, holds a picket criticizing the Yoon Suk Yeol administration for its failed economic policies. [JEON MIN-GYU]

There was a political party that had lost its power after a narrow defeat. That defeat represented the voters’ judgment of the governing party that failed to address economic turmoil and social conflicts. After becoming the opposition, the party shifted to a hardline stance, and some members left the party due to internal power struggles. Those who left the party joined forces with other political groups and formed an electoral alliance. This looks like the case of the DP, but it is actually the case of the British Labor Party.

Following the “Winter of Discontent” in 1979, Margaret Thatcher, the leader of then-opposition Conservative Party, filed a motion of no confidence in the Labor government. The Labor Party lost the vote by one, 311 to 310. In the subsequent election, the Labor Party lost power. Following the defeat, the party elected Michael Foot, a hardline leftist. The Labor Party then rapidly shifted to the left and internal conflicts grew worse. Eventually, moderate members such as Roy Jenkins abandoned the party and formed an alliance with the Liberal Party ahead of the parliamentary election. In the 1983 election, the Labor Party suffered a crushing defeat. It received 10 percent fewer votes and secured its fewest number of seats since 1945. The party only regained power 14 years later after Tony Blair shifted the party to the center with the slogan “New Labor.”

This happened in Britain decades ago. Now, it is up to voters to decide what kind of outcomes the latest changes in the DP will bring about. But if ideological polarization is added to the emotional polarization based on the political factionalism embedded in our politics, the next National Assembly will likely be even worse than the current one, which is called the worst ever.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.