Why did South Korea's ruling party lose the parliamentary elections?
#73: Ji Yeon Hong, Justine Guichard and Ellen Kim
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On April 10th, the opposititon won a landslide victory in South Korea’s partliamentary elections. With the ruling People Power Party taking just 108 seats out of 300, the vote put president Yoon Suk Yeol in a challenging position for the remainder of his term. How did it happen?
The ruling party lost the recent election primarily due to President Yoon's self-contradicting decisions and controversial policies, which eroded public trust. However, a more fundamental reason lies in the conservative party's struggle to rebuild its identity beyond being seen as an authoritarian-successor, elite-oriented party. This struggle has persisted since Park Geun-hye's impeachment in 2017. Voters still cannot see what the conservative party offers for ordinary citizens' welfare and future. This explains the catastrophic results in the Greater Seoul area, where the party won 19 out of 122 seats.
Both the 2020 and 2024 South Korean parliamentary elections resulted in a crushing defeat of the conservative party while a president from the same camp, Yoon Suk-yeol, came to power in 2022. The party’s inability to gain more than barely a third of National Assembly seats as its status shifted from opposition to ruling testifies to the unpopularity of the current administration only two years out of five in office. The continuous scandals in which Yoon has been marred ultimately prevented the party from politically recovering after the collapse prompted by the 2017 impeachment of Park Geun-hye, another conservative.
This election was a referendum against President Yoon, who has had consistently low approval ratings throughout his time in office, and the ruling party. Since elections usually allow the public to show a vote of confidence in the sitting president and ruling party, the PPP’s loss was not a big surprise in that respect. The other reason is South Korea’s economic situation. High inflation, and the rising prices of essential vegetables, for instance, had a significant impact on the voters. Lastly, President Yoon was widely seen as stubborn and unwilling to listen to others, which seemed to impact Korean voters.
Further reading:
South Korea’s 2024 Legislative Election Primer, Stimson Center, Kaitlyn King and Natalia Slavney
South Korea’s 2024 General Election: Results and Implications, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Victor Cha, Jinwan Park, and Andy Lim
Will South Korea change course following Yoon’s election loss? Brookings Institution, Andrew Yeo
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