SEOUL – In his last year in office, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea saw his approval ratings in the back of his mind. His brand North Korea diplomacy remains fragmented. Citizens are buzzing about his repeated attempts to arrest rising house prices.
And on Wednesday, voters in South Korea’s two largest cities inflicted another crushing blow on the beleagured leader.
Mr. Moon’s Democratic Party lost the Seoul and Busan mayoral election against the Conservative opposition, the People Power Party. Critics call the result of the two by-elections a referendum on Mr. Moon and his government.
“People have defused their anger for the lunar government through this election,” said Kim Chong-in, head of the People Power Party, referring to large margins by which his candidates won.
The Constitution of South Korea restricts Mr. Moon to a single term of five years. But he hoped a candidate backed by his party would succeed him in the presidential election in March next year and continue his progressive legacy, including a policy of engagement with North Korea.
The mayoral election on Wednesday showed that the Democratic Party faces steep challenges as voters who were once loyal to Mr. Moon – especially those in their twenties and thirties – abandoned it to a great extent.
Oh Se-hoon, the People Power Party candidate, won the race in Seoul, the capital of 10 million people. He called Park Young-sun, the Democratic Party candidate and a former member of Mr. Moon’s cabinet, condemned by more than 18 percentage points, according to the polls announced by the National Electoral Commission.
The mayor of Seoul is considered the second most powerful elected official of South Korea after the president.
In Busan, at the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula, Park Heong-joon, another candidate affiliated with the opposition party, defeated his Democratic rival by a large margin, according to the commission.
The by-elections in Seoul were called after Park Won-son, the former mayor, died of suicide last year after allegations of sexual harassment. The former mayor of Busan, Oh Keo-don, resigned last year amid accusations of sexual misconduct by several female subordinates.
The former mayors were both members of Mr. Moon’s Democratic Party and the president’s close allies. Their downfall has the moral position of mr. Moon’s progressive camp weakened, which saw itself as a clean, transparent and equal alternative to its conservative opponents. Mr. Moon’s two immediate predecessors – Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak – were both conservatives and are now in jail following convictions on corruption charges.
Mr. Moon was elected in 2017 and fills the power vacuum created by the accusation of Ms. Park was created. As a former human rights lawyer, he enchanted the country by promising a ‘just and just’ society. He vehemently criticized a entrenched culture of privilege and corruption that he said had taken root while conservatives were in power, promising to create a level playing field for young voters who have grown tired of dwindling jobs and a still increasing growth. income gap.
Mr. Moon spent much of his first two years in power, struggling to suppress growing tensions between North Korea and the United States, and to successfully mediate diplomacy between the two countries. He paid more attention to domestic affairs after the two summit meetings between North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un and President Donald J. Trump failed to reach an agreement on nuclear disarmament or the easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. does not bring about.
But even on the home front, things quickly soured.
In 2019, major extra-mural rallies erupted over allegations of forgery and preferential treatment in college and internship applications surrounding the daughter of Cho Kuk, Mr. Moon’s former justice minister and one of his closest allies.
The scandal flew amid Mr. Moon’s election promise to create ” a world without privilege ”, causing outrage against the ‘golden spoon’ children of the elite, who slipped to top universities and precious jobs while struggling ‘dirty-spoon peers’ to come together in South Korea’s bumpy economy.
South Koreans expressed their growing cynicism about what they saw as the hypocritical practices of Mr. Moon’s progressive allies with a popular saying: naeronambul. It roughly translates to: “If they do, it’s a romance; if others do, they call it an extramarital affair. ‘
Nevertheless, the Democratic Party won a landslide victory in the parliamentary election last year when Mr. Moon used his strong popularity over the great successful fight against the coronavirus. But the virus campaign of Mr. Moon lost its luster.
In recent months, South Koreans have become frustrated with long-term restrictions on social distance, an emergency economy and the government’s failure to provide vaccines quickly enough. On Wednesday, the government reported 668 new coronavirus infections, the highest increase in one day in three months.
Mr. Moon’s most devastating setback came last month when officials from the Korean Land and Housing Corporation – the state developer – were accused of using privileged information about the government to solicit housing development programs. Kim Sang-jo, mr. Moon, chief economic policy adviser, stepped down last month when it came to light that his family had significantly increased the rent of an apartment in Seoul, a few days before the government imposed a limit on rent increases.
“People were hoping that even if they were incompetent, the Moon government would at least be ethically superior to their conservative rivals,” said Ahn Byong-jin, a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. “What we see in the election results is the dissatisfaction of the people about the ‘naeronambul’ behavior of the Moon government that exploded. Moon has now become a lame duck president. ”
The real estate scandal dominated the campaign ahead of Wednesday’s election. Candidates of the opposition call the government of mr. Moon a ‘thief of thieves’. Mr. Moon’s Democratic Party mentions Mr. Oh, the new mayor of Seoul, an incorrigible ‘liar’.
Mr. Oh resigned as mayor of Seoul in 2011 after his campaign to end free lunches for all school children could not win enough support.
Surveys before this month’s election showed that voters who planned to run on Mr. Oh to vote, it would not do so because they consider him morally better than his Democratic Party rival. Instead, it was because they ‘wanted to pass judgment on the Moon Jae-in government’.