The Koreas | Politics | East Asia

Rhyu Si-min, Once Lee Jae-myung’s Champion, Turns on the President He Helped Elect

The liberal commentator’s escalating attacks on President Lee have opened a rare split inside South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party.

Rhyu Si-min, a former minister of health and welfare, has spent the past few decades building a reputation as one of South Korea’s most influential liberal commentators. Over the past several weeks, however, he shockingly has aimed that influence at President Lee Jae-myung – the leader his commentary once helped elect.

In a series of YouTube appearances since late June, Rhyu has argued that Lee is not merely tolerating the ruling Democratic Party’s drift toward the center but directing it. He compared the shift to the “reconstruction” of a building that displaced longtime residents without their consent and predicted that Lee would come out damaged and the party would descend into disarray.

Rhyu pressed further on July 21, saying that the informal bloc of Lee loyalists known as “New Lee Jae-myung” answers not to junior lawmakers but to the president himself. He argued that the disorder inside the party over the past year most likely traces back to a plan Lee set in motion from his first days in office. Rhyu also compared the presidential Blue House to a fish market that would start to smell of rot without outside scrutiny. 

While accusing Lee of betraying his loyal supporters in the DP, Rhyu’s most detailed accusation concerns prosecutorial reform. He has argued that a stalled bill to fully separate police investigative power from prosecutorial indictment power remains unfinished because Lee himself wants prosecutors to keep some investigative authority, and that Lee has let allies absorb the criticism rather than explain the shift in his own voice. The presidential Blue House pushed back immediately, saying its commitment to full separation of investigation and indictment powers has never wavered.

The remarks have unsettled South Korea’s ruling party, which is already bracing for a leadership election on August 17. A group of pro-Lee lawmakers dismissed Rhyu as a false prophet. Two of the three contenders for the DP chair election – Kim Min-seok, Song Young-gil, and Jung Cheong-rae – have weighed in as well. Kim, a former prime minister for Lee and fourth-time lawmaker, pushed back by saying that Rhyu’s account of the president’s motives was not accurate. Song, a veteran lawmaker and former mayor of Incheon, also said Rhyu’s language crossed into curses and invective. However, Jung, the former leader of the DP, did not make any comments on Rhyu’s controversial remarks, showing his stance on this recent series of events. 

To no one’s surprise, Rhyu has not backed down.

Rhyu, 66, first entered politics as a student activist at Seoul National University in the 1980s as part of the democratic movements against the military dictatorship. He later served two terms in the National Assembly and led the Ministry of Health and Welfare under President Roh Moo-hyun from 2006 to 2007. 

After losing a series of races in the years that followed, he declared his retirement from electoral politics in 2013 and returned to writing, his first job. He is currently one of the best-selling authors in the country. Rhyu has also built a large following as a television debate panelist and one of the country’s most-watched YouTube commentators. He went on to chair the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation, a role that cemented his standing as a leading voice on Roh in the liberal bloc.

Using his role as a liberal thought leader, Rhyu was an active figure in the rise of Lee Jae-myung. Rhyu was a fixture on debate programs and YouTube broadcasts that helped consolidate liberal support behind Lee’s candidacy – and Rhyu has said so himself.

Why he has now turned that platform against the man he helped install? His own remarks – and the reactions they have provoked inside the........

© The Diplomat