With the next presidential election in South Korea about six months away, whoever wants a change of power from the left to the right must find his or her confidence thinning day by day.

Opinion surveys reveal that more than half of the population does not approve of what the present administration has done during its five-year tenure. But pollsters and analysts warn that 50-plus percentage figures in favor of a change of power do not necessarily mean that an opposition victory is assured next spring. A sense of ambivalence spreads among the Korean electorate as they see no reliable alternative force represented by a qualified leader.

Nearly a dozen agencies are busy posting the results of their biweekly surveys of the popularity rates for each of the many candidates from the ruling and opposition parties as well as the fluctuating approval rate for President Moon Jae-in. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea has made a cutoff to six candidates who are awaiting final nomination in September while the opposition field is crowded with some 15 names as of last week.

Endorsement of President Moon has mysteriously been hovering around 40 percent, which is quite high compared to the 10-20 percent figures his predecessors usually recorded in the final stage of their fixed five-year term. Some analysts tend to attribute Moon’s relatively comfortable support rate to the existence of rock-hard loyalists who respond positively to pollster queries while others point to the absence of a major scandal around the Blue House.

Many South Koreans even doubt the accuracy of those surveys as they have accumulated a great deal of complaints for the incumbent government’s incompetence in the areas of economy and national security and, additionally, the behavioral impropriety of its core members. Plausible explanation is that the president and his party are picking up from the people’s disappointment with the opposition force.

The People Power Party is the name of the present main opposition party of South Korea with several decades of history. It’s the seventh or eighth title the conservative group of politicians has adopted for themselves, enough proof of repeated regrouping in hard power contests with the leftists since the nation departed from military dictatorship (though the leftists have similarly had frequent name changes).

What we are seeing now under the beautiful title is a leaderless party, which could not produce viable candidates for the March 2022 election from its own ranks and had to depend on outsiders to prevent the ruling party’s extension of power. It is beyond irony that the two leading recruits into the PPP had high offices in the Moon administration, former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl and Choi Jae-hyung, chairman of the Board of Audit and Inspection.

Besides Yoon and Choi, who both earned fame with their open defiance against Moon’s authority while in office, a dozen other people are seeking nomination with little likelihood of success. As the list grew longer during the past months, people’s trust in the main opposition party dwindled. The insiders showed little organizational discipline but were anxious to disclose personal deficiency of candidates especially those from the outside.

The overall picture of Korean preelection politics shows us a regrettable trend: that both the ruling and opposition camps draw their respective confidence of winning from the perceived weakness of the adversary; in other words, they try to exploit from the disunity of the others instead of seeking to increase their collective strength.

The PPP’s landslide victory in the mayoral by-elections in the two largest metropolises, Seoul and Busan, in April was a windfall from the sex scandals involving their mayors from the ruling party rather than from their own merit. The PPP took a step forward to a renewal of the right-wing party, electing a 36-year-old Harvard-educated junior leader to party chairman. But it did not take much time for the conservative party bigwigs to turn their backs on the young party chief Lee Jun-seok.

Lee, in turn, engaged Yoon and other presidential hopefuls in trivial disputes only to drive the onlookers into deeper disappointments. People are questioning whether they should support this divisive PPP as they look at a party that has failed to take a unified stand on what to do about the two former presidents, Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak from their own party, who are serving long prison terms on corruption charges but, essentially, are the victims of political vendetta.

The ouster of Park through impeachment in 2017 accelerated a process to change the mainstream of Korean politics from the conservative to the liberal-progressive groups. If the present ruling Democratic Party manages to remain in power next year, that transit would somehow be accomplished. The conservative right will then fear a perpetuation of the leftist rule beyond a second presidential term.

The concept of political opposition first emerged in this country following the 1950-53 Korean War when the Syngman Rhee government oppressed the budding pro-democracy movement. While authoritarian rule continued through the military-backed Park Chung-hee presidency of 18 years, opposition politics meant anti-government resistance by the middle- and upper-class intellectuals.

Democratic reforms from the late 1980s pushed Korean society and political structure into a clearer left-right contest but the conservatives still held fast their vested interests. Challenges from the left, joined by educated activists grew stronger over the last decades until the turmoil of 2016-17. Eventually, the long-complacent right-wingers conceded power and Korea at present has the weakest, most divisive main opposition party ever.

Now, what allows a chance of survival for the opposition party is the misrule of the leftist government of Moon Jae-in, which inadvertently produced powerful contenders Yoon Seok-youl and Choi Jae-hyung. Nomination contest within the ruling party is turning into a cheap mudslinging between Gyeonggi Province Gov. Lee Jae-myung and former Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon.

The PPP must be helped by the many failures of the ruling force but it needs something of its own creation -- in social, economic and security policies -- to convince the electorate that they are capable of running Korea far better than what the others had done since 2017.

To know that so many people want a change of power encourages the opposition force, but again they should remember that voters in a presidential election make a decision not from thinking who they dislike but with whom they can build a brighter future.


Kim Myong-sik
Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. He can be reached at kmyongsik@hanmail.net -- Ed.