Korean Democratic Party Leaders Offer to Resign After Crushing Election Defeat
This is another sign that Korea’s conservative People Power Party continues to be on the rise in the wake of the election of Yoon Suk-yeol:
Leaders of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) on Thursday offered to quit the interim leadership committee en masse following the party’s crushing defeat in this week’s local elections.
Rep. Yoon Ho-jung and Park Ji-hyun, the DP’s co-interim chiefs, announced that all eight members of the party’s emergency leadership committee will step down to take responsibility for the defeat in Wednesday’s local elections.
The PPP won 12 out of 17 key races for big city mayors and provincial governors, including Seoul, while the DP won only five key races — three in its stronghold of the Jeolla provinces, as well as Gyeonggi and Jeju governorships.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but of note in this election is that Lee Jae-myung who ran against President Yoon was elected to a National Assembly seat out of Incheon and former Presidential Candidate who sided with Yoon was elected to a National Assembly seat in Bundang.
During the Clinton campaign(the husband not the wife), the main motto was ‘It’s the economy. stupid.’
For the recent presidential and local elections here the motto may be ‘It’s the real estate, stupid.’
You see here in Korea, real estate is the main interest and the center of attention for pretty much most Koreans.
What the DPK did was pretty much screw the real estate market with high taxes and unnecessary regulations.
The PPP on the other hand gave clear campaign messages that they intend to do away with the taxes and regulations, and since the DPK couldn’t find a clear countermeasure to PPP’s message, it’s obvious that voters that have real estate on their minds would vote for the PPP.
Of course, it’s a double edged sword.
Because if the PPP don’t keep their campaign promises on real estate, you can be sure that a lot of people will get angry and if the DPK can get their real estate message together, people will then vote DPK in the next elections.
Strange yes.
But that’s how election dynamics work here in Korea. With the exception of those in the minority who vote according to their ideals, most Koreans vote based on the simple concept of ‘What have you done for me lately?’ and ‘What will you do for me?’
I find this all hard to believe.
I can’t believe killing small business, hassling people for drinking outside after 10pm, not letting people buy food if they are unvaccinated¹, pushing an experimental medical treatment on kids or no education, etc., didn’t resonate with voters.
People should have elected more of this so they can get more of that.
¹ The pushback on this hints that the percentage of vaccinated Koreans is not as high as is officially claimed.