A party system in crisis: The collapse of Yeouido’s power narratives

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A party system in crisis: The collapse of Yeouido’s power narratives

Published: 19 Jan. 2026, 00:01

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Jaung Hoon

The author is an emeritus professor at Chung-Ang University and a columnist at the JoongAng Ilbo.

At this point in the political calendar, it would be normal for both ruling and opposition parties to be abuzz with talk of recruiting new faces and renewing themselves. With local elections scheduled for June, parties should be busy rebranding and presenting themselves earnestly before voters.

Han Dong-hoon, former leader of the People Power Party, arrives at the National Assembly’s communication hall on Jan. 14 and heads to a press conference, cheered by supporters, to state his position on the ruling by the party’s central ethics committee to expel him. [LIM HYUN-DONG]

Instead, Korea’s major parties are mired in confusion that bears little resemblance to reform. The Democratic Party (DP) is engulfed in allegations of illicit money linked to nominations for local elections. Its ethics committee has expelled a former floor leader who stepped down, while police investigations have begun into figures connected to the alleged nomination donations. The People Power Party (PPP) is hardly in better shape. Last year, it attempted a predawn replacement of its own presidential candidate. More recently, its ethics committee expelled a former party leader who had played a key role in leading the National Assembly vote to lift martial law in late 2024.

These episodes go beyond the familiar mix of corruption scandals and power struggles that periodically surface in politics. The parties appear to be in free fall, with nowhere left to descend. With major elections imminent, such disarray is itself evidence of a deepening crisis.

The root of the turmoil, I would argue, lies in the bankruptcy of the power narratives that have long sustained the political aristocracies dominating both camps. Within the PPP, the mainstream has been shaped by technocrats drawn from the courts, the prosecution and the bureaucracy. These are legacy political elites still trapped in the values of the developmental state era, defined by hierarchy, command and loyalty. Their entry into politics followed worldly success in the judiciary, prosecution or administration. Unsurprisingly, they cling to familiar habits of obedience and top-down instruction.

It is hardly surprising that such legacy elites struggle to adapt to the compromise and coordination demanded by party politics in a democratic era. As a result, their isolation has deepened, and they have remained unable to step out from the shadow of “Yoon Again,” the lingering influence of the former administration.

The DP’s mainstream, by contrast, has been led for more than two decades by figures rooted in the pro-democracy movement. The so-called 586 and 686 generations (“586” refers to politicians in their 50s who entered university in the 1980s and were born in the 1960s, while “686” extends the label to the same cohort now in their 60s) consolidated power by foregrounding morality and ethics. By presenting themselves as guardians of new moral codes — minority rights, environmental protection, integrity and human rights — they succeeded in strengthening their political dominance. There is no denying that these norms contributed to the deepening of democracy.

The problem arises when those who built power on moral legitimacy succumb to the temptations of abuse and corruption. The recent uproar over nomination donations is not merely a case of individual misconduct. It represents a crisis shaking the power that was constructed on moral claims from its very foundations.

Consider first the PPP. Even after democratization, it remained dominated by bureaucrats from the courts, prosecution and administration, while styling itself as the rightful heir of the industrialization era. Under the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations, these figures largely played supporting roles. They reached their zenith as legacy political elites when a former prosecutor general Yoon Suk Yeol was elected president.

Yet as the country painfully witnessed, a president from the prosecution never adapted to democratic politics. He squandered 30 months issuing unilateral directives and ruling from above, only to end in self-destruction by turning violence against democratic governance itself.

Even after the self-inflicted collapse triggered by martial law, little has changed among the party’s political aristocrats. For them, politics remains a world defined solely by domination and loyalty. The faction controlling the party cannot tolerate dissenting voices and remains obsessed with expelling internal minorities. In hindsight, one must ask whether society granted far too long a grace period to legacy elites clinging to outdated industrial-era values while relentlessly pursuing power.

The DP tells a different but equally troubling story. Former democracy activists and their allies rose to dominance, particularly in metropolitan districts, where lawmakers with three, four or five terms are commonplace. Their ascent followed the discovery of new post-authoritarian values and the elevation of those values into society’s moral code. They expanded the horizon of democracy beyond anti-dictatorship to include minority rights, environmental rights, human rights and equality.

Investigators from the Public Crimes Investigation Division of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Metropolitan Investigation Unit carry seized materials after completing a search and seizure of the office of Rep. Kim Byung-kee, a former floor leader of the Democratic Party, at the National Assembly Members’ Office Building in Yeouido, Seoul, on Jan. 14. [NEWS1]

In this sense, the moral cause of democratization evolved into a new ethical framework. As Japanese scholar Ogura Kizo has observed, former democracy activists strengthened their political power by preemptively claiming society’s new moral legitimacy in the post-democratization era.

The contradiction lies in the gap between the moral authority they wield and their personal ethics, which often remain stuck in a pre-democratic mindset. Holding both moral legitimacy and power, some have shown little hesitation in resorting to favoritism, shortcuts or heavy-handed behavior in pursuit of money or their children’s success. As the distance widens between the ideals that justified their rise and the realities of their conduct, the power narrative crafted by DP elites has begun to tilt and erode.

When public sentiment turns away, parties often respond through a familiar sequence: the emergence of a reformist faction, renewal of party organizations and personnel, and the recovery of support leading to electoral victory. The question this spring is whether Korea can finally move beyond the exhausted narratives of industrialization and democratization — and whether a genuinely new story, and new reformers, can still emerge.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.