'Faces of Jeong Won-o, Kim Boo-kyum and Kim Kyung-su come to mind… leadership bears responsibility for losing a winnable election'

Democratic Party of Korea Supreme Council member Hwang Myung-sun. [Yonhap]
Democratic Party of Korea Supreme Council member Hwang Myung-sun. [Yonhap]

Democratic Party of Korea Supreme Council member Hwang Myung-sun declared Wednesday that he would not run in the party leadership election scheduled for August, taking responsibility for the outcome of the June 3 local elections.

Speaking at a Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly, Hwang said the faces of Jeong Won-o in Seoul, Kim Boo-kyum in Daegu and Kim Kyung-su in South Gyeongsang Province came to mind. "When preliminary candidate registration opened, these were races we were winning by around 20 percentage points, yet the Democratic Party failed to win the June 3 local elections," he said, bowing his head.

He said the party had also fallen short of its goals of rooting out the insurrection legacy, restoring people's livelihoods and laying the groundwork for the success of the Lee Jae Myung administration. "I reflect deeply on this devastating result, which our own complacency and negligence brought about," he added.

Hwang said he had decided to take personal responsibility first and would not enter the August party convention. "As one member of a leadership that failed to deliver victory in local elections we should have won decisively, I believe stepping aside is my duty to the party membership," he said. He went on to say he would devote himself over the remaining two-plus months to laying the foundation for the Democratic Party to re-establish itself as a capable ruling party.

He also cited President Lee's remarks at his first-anniversary press conference. "As the president said, we lost where we should have won, and we must accept this result as a warning from the people — a question of whether we truly gave everything we had," Hwang said. "The people wanted to hear a vision for the country and for their lives under the Lee Jae Myung administration, and we failed to read their hearts."

He said nomination disputes and friction during the campaign had alienated centrist voters, young people and the electorate in the Yeongnam region, and that the party had also mismanaged its relationship with friendly opposition parties. He called on the party to heed the public's warning — particularly the choices of voters in their 20s and 30s — against settling into the ways of an entrenched ruling party, and said the party needed to change from the ground up.

"Now, as the people sound a wake-up call, is the last chance for renewal," he said, adding that the party must reinvent itself as a capable governing force and lead both the success of the Lee Jae Myung administration and a great leap forward for South Korea.


sunpine@heraldcorp.com