Former presidential candidate Lee Jae-Myung was elected as the new leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) on Sunday, taking on a mandate to recoup the party after its consecutive defeats in the presidential and local elections.
Lee, who was elected to the National Assembly in June’s by-election after losing to President Yoon Suk-yeol in March’s presidential vote, won 77.77 percent of the vote against Rep. Park Yong-jin’s 22.23 percent in the race that wound up at Sunday’s national convention.
His victory had all but been officially decided long before Sunday’s national convention, as he had been an overwhelming front-runner in the race that narrowed to a two-way contest between Lee and Park after a minor candidate, Rep. Kang Hoon-sik, dropped out earlier this month.
During his two-year term as chair, Lee will take on the mission to unite the liberal bloc tattered by faction politics and election losses, and lead the party to victory in the general elections scheduled for April 2024.
The DPK has been without a chair since March after the previous leadership resigned en masse following the party’s loss in the presidential election. An emergency steering committee has taken helm of the party since then.
While Lee was seen as the dominant front-runner, his bid for chairmanship had been a point of contention among party members and supporters, with opponents claiming he should take responsibility for the DPK’s election defeats.
In the June local elections, the DPK managed to win only five of the 17 metropolitan mayorships and provincial governorships up for grabs. Lee himself was elected to the National Assembly representing Incheon’s Gyeyang-B district.
The former presidential candidate pledged to take “real responsibility” by transforming the party into a “winning” party and carrying out reforms to rebuild the DPK into a pragmatic party focused on livelihood issues.
Park, a younger candidate who vocally protested against Lee’s chairmanship bid and held him accountable for the elections losses, called for a generational change to revamp the embattled party. (Yonhap)
