Politics without a sense of pain is a tragedy. People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok, who led the party to a crushing defeat in the June 3 local elections, appears to be heading down exactly that road. Rather than reflecting on the public's rebuke, he has dug in. An unprecedented ballot shortage at the National Election Commission handed him a lifeline. When citizens whose voting rights were compromised called for a re-election, he pushed to abolish early voting altogether — all while fringe election-fraud theorists are poisoning what began as a genuine grievance among voters in their 20s and 30s. A conservative party worthy of the name should channel street anger through law and principle. Instead, Jang has leaned on his hard-line base and lost his way back.
"Rebuilding the People Power Party" — that was the first declaration from Rep. Jeong Jeom-sik after he was elected the party's new floor leader. Jeong, who is close to Jang and aligned with the party's ruling faction, acknowledged that the party has hit a wall. Yet he also claimed that pro-Yoon and pro-Han factions do not exist within the party, and said he would not be swayed by any particular group. The remarks read as a warning shot at Han Dong-hoon, the lawmaker expelled from the People Power Party who won a seat in Busan as an independent and has been making moves toward a conservative revival of his own.
Assuming that rebuilding the People Power Party is synonymous with rebuilding conservatism, the first order of business is resolving Jang's future. His room to maneuver was always limited — he had moved to block the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who declared illegal martial law. The more cornered he became, the more the measured language expected of a conservative leader gave way to raw belligerence. Beyond rallying far-right YouTubers around attacks on Lee Jae Myung, it is hard to find much else on his record. Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, who just won a fifth term, said of Jang: "He is no longer a leader, psychologically speaking."
Timing is everything in a rebuilding effort, yet the new floor leader's position on Jang's future amounts to little more than waiting to gather members' opinions. Warning lights are flashing, but there is no timetable for a personnel overhaul. This is where the party stands even though it would have fared far worse in the election had some voters not sent a warning signal — through their ballots — against the Democratic Party's push for a special prosecutor targeting what the PPP calls a fabricated indictment. The Democratic Party, which won but is nursing its wounds as if it lost, is reviewing the results. The government, meanwhile, is rolling out a stream of national growth projects in partnership with large conglomerates. The People Power Party is doing neither.
Once the leadership question is sorted out, the party must also prove why conservatism deserves to exist. An image as an elite club driven by self-interest cannot resonate with society at large. Conservatives must show that the values they champion extend beyond free-market economics to human dignity and a sustainable community. One concrete way to do that would be to offer credible alternatives to the K-shaped economic divide — the widening class gap that threatens social cohesion amid extreme polarization. That requires urgently overhauling the Yeouido Institute, the party's think tank, which has been hollowed out by factional and personal-loyalty appointments. If former President Kim Young-sam — who launched the institute 30 years ago insisting that Korean political parties needed to compete on policy — were alive today, he would be demanding they shape up.
Cultivating talent is also foundational to any revival. Stumbling into power with hastily assembled figures and failing spectacularly is a mistake the party cannot afford to repeat. Rather than chasing impressive résumés, the smarter approach is to identify people who are not inclined to dig up others' faults to cover their own, and to present them to voters. Politics fixated on rivals' weaknesses is an admission of one's own incompetence. Rising to high office without substance is as damaging as politics without a sense of pain. What conservatism needs right now is the motto of Augustus, the first emperor of Rome: "Make haste slowly."
By Hong Seong-won, editor
hongi@heraldcorp.com
