Time running out for S. Korea’s ruling party to finalise its candidate for presidential polls

SEOUL - As the clock ticks down to May 11 when candidates will have to register for South Korea’s snap presidential election, the ruling People Power Party (PPP) is still mired in infighting over who would be its final nominee.

Despite

emerging the victorious PPP candidate

on May 3 after three rounds of party primaries, former labour minister Kim Moon-soo, 74, finds himself locked in dispute with the party leadership that is pressurising him to pursue a “unified candidacy” instead with former prime minister Han Duck-soo, who resigned to declare his presidential bid on May 1.

In asking for a unified candidacy, the PPP is in effect asking Mr Kim to make way for Mr Han as the party’s presidential candidate.

Mr Han, 76, who is ahead of Mr Kim in the opinion polls, is not a member of any political party but was appointed prime minister by then President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is from the PPP.

He has served in senior positions in both conservative and liberal governments throughout his career.

The PPP is desperate for a credible contender to block the opposition’s candidate Lee Jae-myung, who has been maintaining a large lead over other potential candidates in the opinion polls since

the snap election was called on April 4

. 

South Koreans are set to head to the polls on June 3 to elect a new leader after former president Yoon’s impeachment was confirmed by the country’s Constitutional Court on April 4, for his botched martial law declaration on Dec 3, 2024.  

Mr Han, who had stepped up as acting president after Yoon’s impeachment, has been racing up the opinion polls since he

threw his hat into the ring

.

The latest results of a poll commissioned by the National Barometer Survey, released on May 8, showed Mr Han registering 23 per cent of support, up 10 percentage points from a week before, while Mr Kim registered 12 per cent. 

The PPP leaders are therefore hoping to ride on Mr Han’s growing popularity to win over voters from election favourite Mr Lee, from the Democratic Party (DP), who garnered 43 per cent of support in the same poll.

Mr Lee, who lost to Yoon very narrowly in the 2022 Presidential Election, is positioned on a clear path to victory, after the Seoul High Court decided to

delay the retrial of a criminal election law violation case

against him to June 18, two weeks after the election. It was at first slated for May 15, which would have thrown his candidacy into uncertainty.

Left choking in the dust of Mr Lee’s wide lead are Mr Kim, a well-weathered labour activist-turned-politician, and Mr Han, a well-tested bureaucrat and Harvard PhD graduate in economics who has served in various key government positions since 1970.

They are the only potential candidates still fighting for the PPP ticket.

Mr Han, who switches between speaking in English and Korean with ease, said at a press briefing on May 7 that he had decided to run for office “out of a sense of crisis”, adding that South Korean politics “is now closer to violence than politics”.

He was referring to the serial impeachment moves against 31 key government officials, including himself when he was prime minister, over the past three years.

He said that he felt it his duty to run for the presidency, because “if South Korean politics do not undergo a fundamental reform, then all our hard-earned developments will collapse”.

Mr Han pledged to reform the country’s Constitution once elected, and that he would step down as soon as his task was complete. He has also repeatedly emphasised his economist credentials and extensive experience in government as key to resolving the country’s trade issues, especially in the face of tariffs imposed by the US under President Donald Trump that Seoul is seeking to negotiate down.

But without the backing of a party, Mr Han’s running as an independent candidate would be near impossible because of the high costs involved.

Seoul’s Sogang University Graduate School of International Studies’ Associate Professor Hannah Kim told The Straits Times that an election campaign usually requires “a massive amount of money” that could easily exceed 50 billion won (S$46.4 million) to 60 billion won.  

Mr Han thus needs the backing of the PPP, and has been urging Mr Kim for “an immediate decision on unification”.

He maintains that he would respect the PPP’s decision and would not register his name as a candidate on May 11 if no agreement is reached by then. 

After holding a closed-door talk on May 7 and a meeting on May 8 that was broadcast live, the two rivals and former Cabinet ministerial colleagues still failed to see eye to eye.  

The straight-talking Mr Kim has stuck to his guns that he is the legitimate candidate selected through the party process and mocked Mr Han for wanting to be parachuted into the party “like a hero” to be the party candidate.  

“How can we even talk about unification between an official candidate and someone who refuses to register or join the party?” said Mr Kim at a briefing for retired and senior journalists in Seoul on May 8.

Mr Kim’s stance is distressing PPP leaders, who have accused him of being “pathetic” in trying to keep his candidacy. Some of them started a hunger strike on May 7 to pressure Mr Kim into acquiescing. 

In retaliation, Mr Kim submitted a court injunction on May 8 to block the PPP from endorsing a non-party member as a candidate.

Such infighting can only hurt PPP’s chances at the polls, said Prof Kim.

“PPP is showing further fragmentation, while the DP is demonstrating increasing unity. This stark contrast is weakening the conservatives’ electoral prospects, especially since the PPP nominee is still somewhat undecided and the election will take place in less than a month,” she said.

Kyonggi University’s professor of political science and law Hahm Sung-deuk believes that, contrary to the opinion polls, Mr Kim may stand a better chance than Mr Han, when it is time to vote.

“Mr Han is a very successful bureaucrat, but he cannot compete with Mr Kim as a politician in any way. Mr Kim was thrice elected as a lawmaker, and twice as the Gyeonggi Province governor. Mr Han has only been appointed, never elected,” he said.

He added that the key difference was that, as a bureaucrat, Mr Han would be more focused on effectiveness and efficiency, but a seasoned politician like Mr Kim would be more attuned to political responsibility and responding to the people’s needs.

“These traits are what is needed of a South Korean president right now, to understand the people, and to identify the urgent national tasks at hand. The polls are just numbers now. Voter sentiments will change when the race begins.”