The Koreas | Politics | East Asia

South Korea’s Ruling Democratic Party Is Tumbling in the Polls

Its in-house gaffes and disputes are largely to blame for the DP’s plummeting approval ratings.

On October 19, Gyeonggi, South Korea’s most populous province, held a post-funeral ceremony ahead of a firefighter’s internment. More than 2,700 people filled the indoor stadium. Choo Mi-ae, the provincial governor, stood on the green sports surfacing, tears streaming down her face. File after file of uniformed firefighters weaved around her amid dirgeful tributes.

Of course, the firefighter’s burial signified the loss and sacrifice of a serviceman who braved a conflagration to save lives. Yet, it also rang the death knell for the ruling Democratic Party’s approval ratings. 

The same day, Realmeter, an authoritative pollster, released a poll. The DP’s approval rating, at 36.2 percent, was lower than the opposition People Power Party’s 40.9 percent. It was the first time since the June local elections that the PPP had outpolled than the DP. 

The alienation of DP supporters happened fast. Less than five months ago, the June local elections handed the DP a resounding victory. Since then, the DP has registered a double-digit plunge in approval ratings.

The party’s fall was particularly steep in Seoul, with the DP polling at 26.7 percent as opposed to the PPP’s 45.7 percent. One-fifth of South Koreans live in Seoul; track records in the capital thus tend to reflect where the swing voters stand. Oh Se-hoon, its current mayor, may lose the post should the Supreme Court uphold the special counsel’s charge that Oh allegedly paid a pollster to rig polls in his favor. (On October 23, the appellate court overturned his guilty verdict. The Supreme Court will rule on the case early next year.) The DP hopes to retake Seoul in a potential by-election, but with these poll numbers success is far from assured. 

The DP’s popularity may still crater further. Given the touchy nature of the reform agenda still ahead for the Lee Jae-myung administration, the rest of this year and next year may not really be a rosy picture for the party. And then it will already be time for the 2028 general elections.

The party’s poor polling performance is of its own making, though. Choo, the governor of Gyeonggi-do, dealt the most immediate damage in a controversy that preceded the firefighter’s funeral

On October 13, during a parliamentary audit, Choo said that “firefighting is like a financial straw, causing the biggest headache.” She then elaborated on how much firefighters are setting back the province’s coffers. Firefighters’ unions went up in arms, wondering how the sacrifice of constantly putting their lives in jeopardy could be reduced to a budgetary complaint. 

Choo ignored their calls for an apology. The province explained that her remark was in reference to the ballooning budgetary burden on the local government due to decreasing financial contributions from the central government – even though the firefighters are directly employed by the central government. Despite her true intention, Choo’s phrasing was no doubt inappropriate and hurtful. She was already facing steep criticism. Then October 16 changed everything. 

A fire erupted in a metal printing factory in a town in Gyeonggi. Flames engulfed firefighter Kim Jin-seok, who passed away in the line of duty. The nation became even more infuriated with Choo’s callous analogy earlier. 

The next day, Choo attended Kim’s funeral, where she finally apologized: “Since you want an apology, I wholeheartedly apologize.” You have to want to apologize for an apology to feel sincere. But she made it clear she was forced. Her apology duly backfired, to the point where she might have been better off not apologizing at all. 

Making matters worse, when Kim Min-seok, the DP’s leader, arrived at the funeral his car parked in a spot reserved for emergency patients. It was a collective PR disaster for the party.

Choo has also been stirring the pot within the DP. She openly clashed with President Lee Jae-myung on the latter’s choice for head of the Serious Crime Investigation Agency (SCIA). It’s a new institution born out of abolishing the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor’s office used to wield unchecked political powers through its dual authority to investigate and indict. Lee’s criminal justice reform and the DP’s legislation kiboshed this practice by distributing investigatory powers to the police and the SCIA, and indictment authority to the Prosecution Service, also a new body. 

In........

© The Diplomat