Category: Politics-Korea

How do you not print enough ballots for an election? Screwing up something as basic like this is what causes people to question the legitimacy of elections. If something like this would have happened during the Park Geun-hye administration what would the Korean left have done in response?:

Protests over ballot shortages entered their second day Saturday, with thousands encircling a vote-counting facility in eastern Seoul and demanding a new election.

By 12:35 p.m., approximately 2,000 people had gathered around SK Olympic Handball Gymnasium in Songpa Ward, according to police, claiming Wednesday’s local elections were fraudulent.

Protesters blocked entrances, trapping an estimated 20-30 officials inside. About 400 police officers were deployed to the scene. No clashes have been reported.

The unrest stemmed from the shortage of ballot paper at more than a dozen polling stations across Seoul on Wednesday, including in Songpa and Gangnam, forcing temporary voting suspensions. Some voters are believed to have left without casting their ballots.

Authorities managed to move the ballot boxes to the gymnasium Friday morning. Since then, protestors have surrounded the facility, preventing officials from removing the boxes or leaving the site.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Early predictions had Mayor Oh losing the race, but now with almost all the votes counted he has been declared the winner now:

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon of the main opposition People Power Party thanks supporters on June 4, 2026, after being declared winner in the Seoul mayoral race as part of local elections held the previous day. (Yonhap)

The ruling Democratic Party (DP) clinched a resounding victory in the local elections and parliamentary by-elections, winning the key mayoralty in the traditional conservative stronghold of Busan, while the main opposition party retained the Seoul mayoral seat. 

The DP won 12 out of the 16 key mayoral and gubernatorial seats up for grabs, including in Busan where Jeon Jae-soo was elected mayor, while the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) took four seats, including Seoul, where incumbent Mayor Oh Se-hoon was elected to a fifth term, according to the final vote count.

Of the total 14 seats contested in the parliamentary by-elections, which were held concurrently with the local elections, the DP clinched nine, followed by the PPP with four seats, while the remaining seat was won by an independent.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is kind of surprising that South Korea had a female President before ever having a female governor:

Choo Mi-ae, a ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) candidate who has repeatedly shattered gender barriers throughout her career, broke new ground again, as she was projected to secure the governorship in Gyeonggi Province in the local elections, Wednesday.

If her victory is confirmed, she will be the first woman to lead a provincial or metropolitan government. 

Choo garnered 60.4 percent of votes against the main opposition People Power Party’s (PPP) Yang Hyang-ja at 34.1 percent in a joint exit poll conducted by broadcasters KBS, MBC and SBS.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Have conservatives in South Korea ever been this weak politically before? The stain of the Yoon presidency continues to impact conservative candidates to the benefit of the Democratic Party who will likely win 13 of 16 major races to include ousting the PPP mayor of Seoul:

This composite photo, taken June 3, 2026, shows lawmakers and officials of the ruling Democratic Party (top) and the main opposition People Power Party watching exit poll results for the local elections in Seoul. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)

The ruling Democratic Party (DP) was poised for a sweeping victory in the local elections in a crushing defeat for the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), interim vote counting showed Thursday, a result expected to give President Lee Jae Myung a stronger mandate in his second year in office.

The DP was projected to win as many as 13 of the 16 metropolitan mayoral and gubernatorial posts at stake, while the PPP was headed to secure two key races, according to early ballot counts by the National Election Commission (NEC).

Eleven out of the 16 key races were called or close to being called as of 3 a.m., with the ruling party winning 10 of the 11 races. The DP was also ahead in three of the rest of the five races where it was still too close to call.

Wednesday’s elections were held exactly one year after the Lee administration took office on June 4. 

A clear victory for the ruling party would likely solidify the government’s mandate to push forward with its reform measures, while dealing a blow to the embattled PPP as it struggles to rebuild conservative support following former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s ouster.

It would also mark a sharp turnaround in voter sentiment from four years earlier, when the then ruling PPP had claimed 12 out of 17 major gubernatorial and mayoral positions in the last local elections. The 2022 local elections were held a month after Yoon took office.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Let me get this straight, President Lee gets to choose who the special counsel will be that will have the power to acquit him of all the corruption charges he previously faced before becoming President? Could you imagine if Trump did something like this, the left in the U.S. would be going crazy. However, in Korea you will hear nothing from the left there:

Hong Ihk-pyo, senior presidential secretary for political affairs, speaks at a press briefing at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on May 4, 2026. (Yonhap)

 President Lee Jae Myung has stressed the need for public input and careful deliberation, a presidential official said Monday, as the ruling Democratic Party (DP) pushes for a special probe into allegations that he was indicted in multiple cases based on fabricated evidence during the previous administration.

Hong Ihk-pyo, senior presidential secretary for political affairs, made the remarks at a press briefing, citing the president, after the DP proposed a bill last week to mandate a special counsel probe.

The bill calls for an independent investigation into suspicions that the prosecution under the previous Yoon Suk Yeol administration indicted Lee, then head of the main opposition party, in multiple cases, including a real estate development scandal, based on fabricated probes and evidence.

Lee was standing trials on various charges before proceedings were suspended or indefinitely postponed after he took office in June last year.

The bill allows a special counsel to take over Lee’s cases from the prosecution and decide whether to proceed with them, while giving the president the authority to appoint the counsel from among three recommended candidates. 

Opposition lawmakers have argued that the proposed bill would give the special counsel grounds to drop charges against Lee, calling it a move to acquit him in the cases.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but wouldn’t it be funny that if another Korean conservative takes power that they choose a special counsel to investigate the special counsel that dropped charges against Lee in order to reinstate them? We all know these charges will be dropped because otherwise President Lee would not be doing this.

This is an example of why I believe the only way Yoon will ever get out of prison is if a conservative President takes power again to pardon him. The Korean left is just going to keep finding ways to bury him with prison sentences to where he will likely never get out. For whatever reason it seems like they hate him more than former President Park Geun-hye:

An appeals court on Wednesday increased the sentence for former President Yoon Suk Yeol from five years to seven years in prison on obstruction of justice and other charges stemming from his failed martial law bid.

The Seoul High Court handed down the heavier punishment in a live-televised ruling, finding the ousted former president guilty of obstructing investigators from detaining him last year over his short-lived imposition of martial law in late 2024.

Special counsel Cho Eun-suk’s team had sought a 10-year prison term for Yoon.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I don’t think Yoon will ever get out of jail as long as the Korean left is in power. It will take a future conservative leader to pardon him to ever get him out because the left intends to bury him with as many charges as they can find:

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol (Pool photo) (Yonhap)

 A special counsel team on Monday demanded a 10-year prison term for former President Yoon Suk Yeol during the appeals trial of his obstruction of justice case stemming from his 2024 imposition of martial law.

Special counsel Cho Eun-suk’s team sought the sentence at the final hearing at the Seoul High Court, double the five-year term handed down by a lower court in January.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is just one of 8 trials Yoon is involved in.

The impeachment of former President Yoon continues to drag down the PPP’s favorability in Korea:

One year after former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s ouster over his botched martial law crisis, the People Power Party (PPP), to which he belonged, is facing its worst slump in years. A new poll shows the main opposition party trailing the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) by 30 percentage points — the widest gap between the two parties since 2018. (…..)

The nationwide survey by Gallup Korea released Friday and conducted on 1,001 adults from March 31 to April 2 shows the DPK’s approval rating at 48 percent while the PPP’s was at 18 percent.

The 30-percentage-point gap is the largest since November 2018 by-elections, when the Liberty Korea Party, the predecessor to the PPP at the time, lost four seats in the National Assembly in the aftermath of the 2017 impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye, also a member of the conservative bloc. It is also the PPP’s lowest Gallup Korea result since November 2020.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

President Lee has faced multiple trials for being a crook, but there is no way he is this big of a crook. This sounds like fake news to me:

President Lee Jae Myung on Thursday lambasted a conservative YouTube channel for airing slush fund accusations against him, calling it “pathetic” and “malicious.”

The reaction came after the YouTube channel run by Jeon Han-gil, a former Korean history instructor and now a vocal supporter of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, aired an interview with a man making the allegations. 

He argued that Lee is preparing to flee to China and recently transferred 160 trillion won (US$106.5 billion) and military secrets to Chinese authorities in Singapore.

“Secret slush funds and leaking national military information? This is truly pathetic and malicious matador. It must be severely punished,” Lee wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Lee made the remarks by citing a post by Rep. Han Jun-ho of the ruling Democratic Party, who criticized Jeon’s video and urged investigative authorities to step in immediately.

In the YouTube interview, the man claimed that U.S. intelligence operatives have figured everything out, but offered no concrete evidence to support the statement.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.