Rules for a ruling party

The rules to the party — or rather parties — have, like so much else, been in flux over the past few months of impeachment turmoil.

The Korea Herald has typically followed Korean convention in distinguishing the political parties with modifiers denoting the ruling party — the party of the president — and opposition parties, which could also include main and minor, along with other more exacting descriptors.

Hence, for most of the last three years since the presidential election in March 2022, we’ve written about the ruling People Power Party and the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, sometimes spending print on the minor opposition New Reform Party and its peers. (Put aside for the moment the spinoff satellite parties that emerge to game the proportional representation system in legislative elections.)

How is it then that the “ruling” party has been essentially sidelined in the Assembly, vastly outnumbered by the main opposition Democratic Party’s 170 seats against its own 108 seats in the 300-member parliamentary body?

Not every country puts such emphasis on the ruling-versus-opposition dichotomy. In the United States, priority is placed on the balance of the legislative body, regardless of which controls the executive branch. At the moment, Republicans enjoy a unified government with control of the presidency and majorities in both houses of its bicameral legislative system. In particular, House Republicans have a slim majority, while Democrats are in the minority.

South Korea, on the other hand, these last few years had a minority ruling party and a solid majority main opposition party. The Democratic Party here can unilaterally pass bills through the Assembly without negotiation with the ruling party, though “solid” falls short of an “overwhelming” majority of 200 seats needed to supersede a presidential veto.

So when Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached and suspended from his presidential powers on Dec. 14, 2024, it raised a complication. Presidential powers passed to the prime minister, who in the Korean system is chosen by the president, but for legalistic reasons is not officially a member of any party. With the president’s impeachment not having yet faced the judgment of the Constitutional Court, however, the People Power Party technically held on to its ruling status.

That status changed on April 8, when the Constitutional Court delivered its unanimous verdict to confirm Yoon’s impeachment and formally remove him from office.

In the last month or so, the upheaval finally reached the language we use to describe the parties. Though acting President Lee Ju-ho — who works overtime as substitute prime minister, deputy prime minister for social affairs and education minister, and hopefully cashes paychecks for all four — was part of Yoon’s administration, the no-longer-ruling party does not hold the presidency.

With no ruling party, there can likewise be no opposition. And so for the moment, until what we can only hope to be not too late on the night of June 3, no party rules in South Korea, leaving us mostly to simple partisan descriptors “liberal” and “conservative.” We hope you won’t be opposed.