People Power Party lawmaker Yoo Ui-dong [Yonhap]
People Power Party lawmaker Yoo Ui-dong [Yonhap]

People Power Party lawmaker Yoo Ui-dong said Friday that bringing together the party's fractured support groups was essential to securing a general election victory.

Speaking on YTN Radio, Yoo responded to Ahn Cheol-soo's recent public opposition to allowing independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon to rejoin the party, saying, "I think it would be better to refrain from such remarks and expressions."

"Winning the general election is how we fulfill our mission and deliver what the public wants," Yoo said. "It is within that spirit that Rep. Ahn came to join our party."

Yoo was more skeptical, however, about talk of an Ahn–Jang Dong-hyeok alliance premised on next year's Seoul mayoral by-election. "Rep. Ahn is currently a lawmaker representing a constituency in Gyeonggi Province — I think imagining him as Seoul mayor is a bit of a stretch," he said.

On the party leadership's push for a "member-centered" reform agenda, Yoo said it was "highly meaningful" for party members to have an active say in determining the party's direction and course.

Regarding former lawmaker Yoo Seung-min's recent moves to broaden his contacts within the PPP, Yoo said, "Our party is in a difficult situation in many respects," adding that Yoo Seung-min's outreach appeared to reflect "the will and voice of a political senior and elder statesman who wants to play a role in conservative unity and rebuilding."

Asked about the possibility of a meeting between former President Park Geun-hye — seen as a symbol of the party's core conservative base — and Yoo Seung-min, who is viewed as a figure capable of broadening the party's centrist appeal, Yoo said such a meeting "would be a welcome development."

"Rather than bringing in even one more person for the sake of electoral victory, a culture of cold-shouldering and pushing others away has come to be seen as normal," Yoo said. "The reason the PPP has failed to reinvent itself as an alternative force against the Lee Jae-myung government's misrule is that, instead of joining forces, people are trying to use others' mistakes as a political weapon — and that needs to change."

Yoo, who chairs the National Assembly's Land and Infrastructure Committee, also weighed in on the government's real estate supply measures announced Thursday. While welcoming the government's recognition that a shortage of supply — not just demand-side controls such as lending restrictions and tax policy — was a key source of market instability, he was critical of the overall approach. "The process feels like pressing the brake and the accelerator at the same time," he said. "They have raised the subject of supply out of urgency, but the underlying philosophy does not seem to have changed, so I doubt the market will stabilize easily."


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