The Democratic Party of Korea will reinstate a dedicated youth supreme council member position at its Aug. 17 national convention — the first time the role has existed in eight years.
The party's National Convention Preparatory Committee reached the decision at a meeting at the National Assembly on Tuesday, committee secretary Rep. Lee Yeon-hee announced at a briefing. The youth supreme council member system was abolished in 2018 and will now be restored after an eight-year absence.
The party formally scrapped the position ahead of its national convention that year. Since then, the party leader has occasionally appointed a youth representative as a designated — rather than elected — supreme council member, without any formal rule governing the practice.
Lee said the committee discussed several options for filling the role — whether to elect the youth supreme council member in the same manner as the women's supreme council member, to set a separate quota, or to reserve the appointed supreme council member seat for a youth candidate — but had not yet reached a final decision. She said a specific proposal would be put to a vote at the next meeting, on Thursday.
Lee added that while the party's current constitution defines youth as those aged 45 or under, some members had called for lowering the threshold to 39. That question, she said, would also be decided at the next meeting.
The party also decided to adopt a preferential voting system for the party leader election, allowing members to rank multiple candidates in order of preference.
Lee said the committee weighed two options — preferential voting and a runoff system — before settling on preferential voting. "Voters will list their first, second and third choices," she said. "Because eliminating lower-ranked candidates quickly produces a majority, the result will be determined on the day of the election."
Six regions were identified as strategic areas where the party is weak, including five metropolitan cities and provinces in the Yeongnam region and Gangwon Province. Lee said the committee agreed to apply a uniform bonus weighting to votes from those underrepresented regions, with the principle that the multiplier would not exceed double and would be kept to the minimum needed to prevent vote totals from being overturned at the metropolitan level.
Lee also said the party decided to hold a series of regional primary elections rather than a single-day vote. Primaries will be held on Saturdays and Sundays, with results announced on the Sunday of each regional round, she added.
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