Democratic Party of Korea leadership candidates Song Young-gil (from left), Jung Chung-rae and Kim Min-seok greet delegates at the party's third regular national convention held at the Daejeon Convention Center on Monday. [Joint press corps]
Democratic Party of Korea leadership candidates Song Young-gil (from left), Jung Chung-rae and Kim Min-seok greet delegates at the party's third regular national convention held at the Daejeon Convention Center on Monday. [Joint press corps]

The three candidates vying to lead the Democratic Party of Korea — Song Young-gil, Jung Chung-rae and Kim Min-seok, listed in ballot order — made their final appeals to party members Monday ahead of the close of delegate voting. Kim said he would give "fake party members a chance to quietly exit," while Jung fired back, asking whether the Lee Jae Myung government could succeed with Kim alone at the helm. Song pressed the outgoing leadership on its responsibility for the June 3 local election defeat, saying "new wine must be put in new wineskins."

Speaking at the party's third regular national convention at the Daejeon Convention Center in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Kim said, "Has there ever been a time when we changed our support for the Democratic Party and the presidents it produced?" He called those present "the core of the Democratic Party."

Kim said that if the party performs well now, "we can open a golden era for South Korea lasting 20 to 30 years, all the way to the 100th anniversary of liberation and the Democratic Party's centennial." He added that the party felt a sense of urgency. "We are desperate because the Democratic Party — the central vehicle for all of this — is wavering, the government is wavering, the party-government relationship is wavering, and we fear President Lee Jae Myung may waver as well," he said. He also asked whether everyone understood that "the fate of our party, our government and our nation hangs on this convention."

Kim said that issues of dual party membership, ghost members and involuntary enrollments that had surfaced would be addressed in due course. "For the sake of true member sovereignty, I will root out the manipulation of primary elections by fake members," he said. Invoking a well-known Korean poem, he added: "As the poet said, let the husks depart. I will give fake members a chance to quietly exit."

Jung, who is seeking a second consecutive term as party leader, urged delegates not to undermine "the achievements of the reforms we have accomplished over the past year." He said those gains would not have been possible without the party, government and presidential office working in step, and asked that the reform record not be disparaged.

Jung also pushed back against what he described as efforts to exclude certain figures from the party's coalition. "Why say 'you can't because you're anti-Lee, you can't because you're a divisionist, you can't because of your religious ties'?" he said. "How do you expect to win the general election after stripping away piece by piece like that? What does any of this have to do with the success of the Lee Jae Myung government?"

Jung went on to say, "This convention claims to be a Democratic Party for everyone, yet it excludes Jung Chung-rae, Choi Min-hee, Lee Sung-yoon and Han Min-su." He asked, "Will the Lee Jae Myung government succeed if only Kim Min-seok wins?" Jung also called for unity, saying that supporters of presidents Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun, Moon Jae-in and Lee Jae Myung "share one root" and must "unite in the spirit of that common origin."

Song said he had been urged to "join the cabinet quickly and help the Lee Jae Myung government" rather than run for party leader, but had refused because "the party matters." Referring to Jung, he said the outgoing leader had achievements to his name but had "fundamentally failed in the local and by-elections," and questioned whether the party should treat the Yoon Suk Yeol camp as a political equal.

Song said the party could not win the Seoul mayoral by-election or the next general election "by handing leadership back to people who claim they won a landslide victory." He warned that re-electing an ineffective leadership would be like keeping failed executives in charge of a company — "the share price would collapse and the future could not be guaranteed." The prospect of a Seoul mayoral by-election as early as April next year has been raised after Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon received a first-instance ruling that would strip him of his post on charges of illegally paying for opinion polls on his behalf.

The Democratic Party will select its new leader by combining results from a regional primary election among rights-holding members and delegate votes, which together account for 70 percent of the total, with a public opinion poll conducted Aug. 14 and Aug. 15, which accounts for the remaining 30 percent. Under a preferential voting system applied for the first time, if no candidate wins a majority, the second-choice votes cast for the third-place candidate will be redistributed to the top two.

After three weeks of regional primaries among rights-holding members that concluded Sunday, Kim leads with a cumulative 49.91 percent of the vote. Jung has 41.41 percent and Song 8.58 percent. Those figures do not yet reflect a 5 percent weighting applied to strategic regions including South Gyeongsang Province and Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province.


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