Why the rush to defect to another party?
Chang Duk-jin
The author is a professor of sociology at Seoul National University and a steering committee member of the JoongAng Ilbo’s Reset Korea Campaign.
Preliminary registration of candidates for the next parliamentary election begins Tuesday. The countdown for the nationwide election on April 10 has started. During every election season in Korea, politicians talk about creating a third party, but this time they are going over the top. First of all, more than just a few lawmakers are underscoring the need to leave their own party or build a new one, and even political heavyweights, including former party leaders and former prime ministers, are joining the chorus.
Rep. Lee Sang-min, a five-term lawmaker of the Democratic Party (DP), has already left the majority party. Other DP legislators not loyal to their party leader Lee Jae-myung — such as Reps. Lee Won-wook, Cho Eung-cheon and Yoon Young-chan — will likely join the move after vehemently complaining about the tyranny of the party leader. If the five-term DP lawmaker Lee extends his term in the April election after defecting to another party, he will likely become the speaker of the house.
That’s not all. Former prime minister and ex-DP leader Lee Nak-yon strongly hinted at the possibility of exiting the DP and launching a new party for similar reasons. Former justice minister Cho Kuk is reportedly preparing to establish a new party despite his ongoing trial on several charges, followed by former DP leader Song Young-gil who is on a crusade to create a new party to “expel President Yoon Suk Yeol from office.”
In the governing People Power Party (PPP), the thirtysomething former leader Lee Jun-seok continues to make remarks — even after being pardoned for his over-the-top criticism of President Yoon — hinting at the possibility of establishing a new party for his reform drive. Former lawmaker Geum Tae-sup, who once helped then-presidential candidate Yoon Suk Yeol, declared the establishment of a new party together with a faction of the Justice Party in an effort to “merge rational conservatism with reformative liberalism.”
While Kim Chong-in — an octogenarian with unparalleled expertise in helping presidential candidates, conservative or liberal, win elections — is likely mediating between Lee Jun-seok and Geum Tae-sup for another political adventure, former prime minister Lee Nak-yon may forge an alliance with his successors Chung Sye-kyun and Kim Boo-kyum. Former DP leader Song Young-gil also suggested at joining forces with former PPP leader Lee Jun-seok, though the possibilities are slim.
The uncertainty of electoral reforms — including on the proportional representation of satellite parties to be formed with just less than four months left before the parliamentary election — further confounds the future of elections and politics in Korea. Now, let’s turn our attention to other countries with an even longer history of political parties than Korea. Interestingly, many world-renowned politicians changed their party, too. After failing to get nominated for his third term, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. president, left the Republican Party, founded the new Progressive Party, and ran as its presidential candidate. But Roosevelt was defeated by his rival Woodrow Wilson in 1912. All the fuss Roosevelt stirred up rather helped the Republican Party to consolidate its image as a conservative party.
Ronald Reagan, a Republican and proponent of neoliberalism, was a Democrat and an ardent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal initiative. Reagan also served as head of the Screen Actors Guild in Hollywood, traditionally a liberal group. When Reagan migrated to the Republican Party in 1962, he famously said, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.” Reagan was elected president 18 years later.
Arguably the most dramatic transformation was played out by Hillary Clinton. She was a zealous member of the Republican Party during her school days. In 1964, she was a “Goldwater Girl” in a cowgirl outfit to show support for the five-term Arizona Senator who launched the modern conservative movement, and served as head of the Republican branch at Wellesley College. Around the time she fell in love with Bill Clinton, Hillary moved to the Democratic Party, became the first lady of the United States, and ran for president 20 year later.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) changed his party three times — from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Party in 1904 to an independent and then back to the Conservative Party in 1924. In 1940, he became prime minister. Befitting his reputation as the uncontested quote maker, he proudly said, “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat,” when he rejoined the Conservatives in 1924, 20 years after leaving them for the Liberals.
Something that could be comparable to the unprecedented division in Korea’s Democratic Party could be the U.S. Republican lawmakers who refused to support Donald Trump. When the political maverick was nominated as presidential candidate of the conservative party, many Republicans declined to endorse his nomination, with some of them even declaring support for his rival Hillary Clinton.
[KIM SEONG-RYONG]
There is another remarkable similarity between the U.S. Republican Party and the Democratic Party in Korea. Aside from ideological differences, the two parties — each led by Trump and Lee Jae-myung — share several affinities such as strong leadership, hardline supporters and judicial risks. As Kim Yong, a confidante of Lee, was sentenced to five years in jail last month for receiving 600 million won ($455,000) in illicit political funds from a real estate developer, Lee will certainly need more hardcore supporters, which makes it more difficult for the majority party to reach out to the center of the ideological spectrum.
The demand last week by former DP head Sohn Hak-kyu — the current counsel to the East Asia Future Foundation, who now has no political stakes in the party — that current DP leader Lee Jae-myung take responsibility for throwing the entire party into the swamp of his own judicial risks precisely points to the deepening danger from the leader.
Keith Poole, an emeritus professor at the University of Georgia and an expert in the history of the U.S. Congress, analyzed the roll-call voting behavior by House and Senate members who switched their parties over the past 200 years. According to his research, what drove legislators’ defection and impaired the normal function of the Congress was the ideological polarization of the times and the disappearance of a “second dimension” related to concrete policies.
The Congress traditionally had two dimensions of legislation competition. While the first dimension involves the unavoidable contest under the two party system, the second dimension is connected to regional division, including racial segregation, which has sustained since the Civil War. But after the significance of the second dimension gradually weakened, only political battles were left, the scholar claimed. Interparty conflict with the absence of policy competition is nothing but political bickering for its own sake.
What would be a second dimension for Korea, which does not really have racial issues? Two pillars of Korea’s modern history were industrialization and democratization — and at the start line of all the process was national security. If security and industrialization were the identity of the conservatives — and if democratization was the identity of the liberals — the distinction of the conservative discourse has lost traction for a majority of the voters who have never experienced poverty. The liberal discourse of the liberals also has lost its appeal, but liberal politicians are still proactive, as clearly evidenced by the fact that the leadership of the DP is still dominated by former student democracy fighters. Their persistent attempt to equate the past military dictatorship with the new “prosecutor-led dictatorship” is a bid to extend the expiration date of their glorious democratization narrative.
Under such circumstances, the governing party and the Yoon administration are not able to create a new “second dimension” to replace the past discourse — or national security and industrialization — of the conservative camp. Despite the people’s tough livelihoods, though in different forms, the ruling front has failed to create the second dimension the people can sympathize with and gladly join. That forces politicians to immerse themselves in distinguishing the conservatives from the liberals, and vice versa. That again compels one side to blindly take a path in the opposite direction. The rush to defect to another party — or launch a third — owes much to the vacancy of the second dimension.
Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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