Kim Min-seok: '15 seats realistic, acceptable — progressive parties combined would qualify'

Rebuilding Korea Party: '20-seat rule is a Yushin relic; 10 seats is common sense'

Democratic Party of Korea leader Kim Min-seok speaks at the party's supreme council meeting and budget policy conference held at Daejeon City Hall on Wednesday. [Yonhap]
Democratic Party of Korea leader Kim Min-seok speaks at the party's supreme council meeting and budget policy conference held at Daejeon City Hall on Wednesday. [Yonhap]

Democratic Party of Korea leader Kim Min-seok on Wednesday put forward a political reform agenda that includes lowering the threshold for forming a negotiating bloc in the National Assembly from 20 seats to 15. The Rebuilding Korea Party pushed back, saying its official party position calls for a 10-seat threshold.

Speaking at the party's supreme council meeting in Daejeon, Kim said he would "move in earnest toward a grand progressive coalition," adding that the party had already raised various proposals with progressive parties centered on easing the negotiating-bloc requirement, introducing a runoff voting system, adjusting the electoral system on rational grounds and consolidating competitiveness.

Kim then told Rep. Park Bum-gye, who heads the party's grand coalition task force, that he should "begin making contact in earnest with each of the three progressive parties and the Rebuilding Korea Party starting today." Kim added that the party would work to stabilize its own ranks while strengthening solidarity with progressive forces and deepening dialogue with centrist and conservative groups.

Before the supreme council meeting, Kim appeared on the Democratic Party's YouTube channel "Minti07" and said he believed both the Rebuilding Korea Party and other progressive parties considered 15 seats "realistic and acceptable as a starting point" for easing the threshold. He added that the combined seat count of all progressive parties outside the Democratic Party would be sufficient to meet that bar.

Kim also said the party needed to discuss how best to reform the current semi-proportional representation system under single-member districts, and argued that a runoff system should apply at minimum to presidential elections — noting that some have called for extending it to certain regional government head races as well.

In the 22nd National Assembly, the Rebuilding Korea Party holds 12 seats, the Progressive Party holds four, and the Basic Income Party and Social Democratic Party hold one seat each. Lowering the threshold to 15 seats would prevent the Rebuilding Korea Party from forming its own negotiating bloc independently. The Democratic Party had earlier declared at a roundtable with progressive parties in April last year that it would pursue easing the negotiating-bloc requirement and introducing a runoff system in the period immediately following the presidential election.

The Rebuilding Korea Party rebuffed Kim's remarks, saying it had "not had any official or unofficial contact with the Democratic Party leadership regarding political reform, solidarity or integration," and that "the Democratic Party has not made any such proposal." On the proposed 15-seat threshold, the party said the current 20-seat requirement was "a remnant of the Yushin era, created under the Park Chung-hee regime to raise the bar for forming negotiating blocs," and that "returning to the pre-Yushin standard of 10 seats is common sense and the natural course."

The party urged the Democratic Party to ensure that "solidarity must be institutionalized and promises must be kept," calling on it to present a concrete roadmap and take action — including implementing the previously agreed roundtable declaration, forming a political reform consultative body and holding a third roundtable meeting.


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