![Park Ji-hyun, former emergency committee chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Korea. [Photo by Lee Sang-sub/babtong@]](https://wimg.heraldcorp.com/news/cms/2026/06/04/9/ams.V01.photo.HDN.P.20220718.202207181537014580776307_P1.jpg)
Park Ji-hyun, former emergency committee chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Korea, called Thursday for Democratic Party leader Jung Chung-rae to take responsibility for the June 3 local election results and step down.
In a Facebook post Thursday, Park said the elections were not a Democratic Party victory but a missed opportunity for a landslide. "We could have won in Daegu, Seoul and South Gyeongsang Province, but we lost," she said. She added that the party had actually lost National Assembly seats and failed to capitalize on the president's high approval rating. "If it weren't for the fabricated indictment special prosecutor issue, the results would have been different," she said.
Park criticized the Jung Chung-rae leadership for squandering what should have been a forward-looking election marking the first year of the Lee Jae Myung administration. "The Jung Chung-rae leadership went in the opposite direction and showed no interest in the future," she said. "They turned their backs on people's lives and the future, relying instead on the incompetence of the People Power Party's Jang Dong-hyeok leadership."
"Public sentiment is always right," she added. "It is politics that fails to read public sentiment that is at fault."
Park urged the party to overhaul itself, saying the Democratic Party must heed what she called the public's stern mandate to move forward. She called on the party to reform Honam-region politics, nurture young talent, focus on people's livelihoods and support the president.
She then directly targeted Jung, asking whether he would look for a scapegoat, blame minor parties that did not consolidate, or fault a rightward shift among voters in their 20s and 30s. "No," she said. "The problem is Democratic Party leader Jung Chung-rae, who clung to an outdated politics fixated only on power."
Park demanded that Jung and his leadership accept the public verdict, resign and abandon any plans to run in the next party leadership election. "These local election results must mark the beginning of change for the Democratic Party," she said. "The day the Democratic Party moves toward the future can no longer be delayed."
According to the National Election Commission's election statistics system, the Democratic Party won 12 of the metropolitan and provincial governorships contested Wednesday, while the People Power Party won four. The People Power Party held Seoul, Daegu, North Gyeongsang Province and South Gyeongsang Province.
The Democratic Party also lost the closely watched Seoul mayoral race, the National Assembly by-election in Busan's Buk-gu Gap constituency and the National Assembly re-election in Gyeonggi Province's Pyeongtaek B district. It was defeated in the Daegu mayoral race, where it had hoped to elect the city's first Democratic mayor, and narrowly won the Ulsan and Busan mayoral contests.
In the basic local government head elections, the Democratic Party won 116 seats and the People Power Party won 94. Ten independents and two candidates from the Rebuilding Korea Party were elected.
In the metropolitan council elections, the Democratic Party won 409 seats and the People Power Party 246, followed by the Progressive Party with six and independents with five. In the basic council elections, the Democratic Party won 1,184 seats, the People Power Party 947, independents 107, the Progressive Party 31, the Rebuilding Korea Party 18, the Justice Party five and the Green Party one.
In proportional representation metropolitan council seats, the Democratic Party won 62, the People Power Party 49, the Rebuilding Korea Party four and the Progressive Party one. In proportional representation basic council seats, the Democratic Party secured 193, the People Power Party 167 and the Rebuilding Korea Party 14.
jshan@heraldcorp.com
