DP, PPP trade barbs in 1st Assembly policy address

South Korea’s rival parties clashed on Wednesday as leaders of both main parties criticized each other in their first policy addresses to the regular National Assembly session, which opened last week.

Rep. Song Eon-seog, floor leader of the main opposition People Power Party, accused the ruling Democratic Party of Korea of seeking to build “a one-party dictatorship bent on destroying the opposition and dismantling the conservative bloc,” delivering his speech at the National Assembly in Seoul on Wednesday morning.

Song also said, "They must put down the hammers in their hands," urging the ruling bloc to stop "pretending to pursue bipartisan cooperation.”

Song's one-hour address came a day after Rep. Jung Chung-rae, chair of the Democratic Party, gave a policy speech reaffirming the ruling bloc’s intent to “eradicate remnants of insurrection forces” — referring to former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched martial law declaration on Dec. 3, 2024, when the People Power Party was in power.

During his own address, Jung demanded an apology from the People Power Party for its alleged ties to the incident, warning that “a failure to break ties with insurrectionists could render the party subject to dissolution for violating the Constitution.”

However, Song pushed back on the accusation, saying, “Martial law and insurrection are not the same thing,” and accused the ruling party of distorting the issue for political gain.

Song went on to criticize the new administration's performance so far, with Wednesday's parliamentary session coming a day before President Lee Jae Myung’s 100th day in office.

“Only a foolish and incompetent monarch would plunge the nation into chaos,” Song said.

He claimed the government had prioritized “political suppression and retaliation” through special counsel investigations instead of focusing on substantive policymaking.

He denounced the ongoing investigations into Yoon, his wife Kim Keon Hee, and the 2023 death of a Marine during flood rescue operations as “political violence more commonly seen in dictatorships.”

Song continued his criticism of judicial reform, arguing that the Democratic Party’s push to restructure the prosecution was being carried out at excessive speed without sufficient deliberation.

Instead, he called for the formation of a special parliamentary committee to ensure what he described as “reasonable judicial reforms.”

Song also called the recent South Korea-US summit “fruitless,” citing the US federal raid on a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Georgia that led to the temporary detention of hundreds of South Korean workers.

Yet Song expressed the People Power Party’s willingness to cooperate, saying, “The People Power Party is ready to cooperate. What matters now is the ruling party’s choice.”

On Monday, the People Power Party and the Democratic Party agreed to establish a provisional consultative body on livelihood and economic issues, following a meeting between the president and the leaders of both parties earlier in the day.

In response, the Democratic Party expressed regret over Song’s speech, calling it “a public threat disguised as a call for cooperation.”

In a press conference at the National Assembly, the party’s chief spokesperson, Rep. Park Soo-hyun, said, “Without even offering an apology for its ties to insurrectionists, the opposition remains obsessed with criticizing the ruling bloc — framing our reform efforts as a ‘national collapse’ and our livelihood budget as a 'mountain of debt.'”