A new Democratic Party

Kim Jin-pyo, the main opposition Democratic Party’s new floor leader who was elected Friday, is a bureaucrat-turned-politician who passed the high-level civil service exam and served as an economic policymaker in the industrialization era of the 1970s. A lawmaker for the 17th and 18th National Assemblies, he also has ample experience in politics and spearheaded efforts to introduce the real-name financial transaction system under the Kim Young-sam administration. Kim also served as vice finance and economy minister, presidential secretary for policy and planning, minister for government policy coordination, and deputy prime minister for economy and education under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations. Were it not for his close relationship with the late Roh, Kim might as well have been named floor leader of the ruling Grand National Party.

By winning in Seongnam’s Bundang B district in the April 27 by-elections, the Democratic Party demonstrated its capacity to garner votes from centrist or moderately conservative voters. Now that Kim, who hails from the Yeongtong district in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, has emerged as the party’s floor leader after party chief Sohn Hak-kyu’s victory in the Bundang B district, the opposition party has effectively established a leadership system headed by two leaders hailing from the Seoul metropolitan region. This has created an opportunity for the party to shed its image as a group whose power base is the Jeolla Provinces.

If floor leader Kim soundly competes with Grand National Party floor leader Hwang Woo-yeo over policy and legislation for the people and cooperates from the grand perspective for the nation, more people will consider the Democratic Party an alternative party of choice. If Sohn, Kim and moderate forces with sound ideology take the center stage in the Democratic Party, the party will no doubt win more public trust. This means the party must “transform itself into a truly progressive party" like democratic and progressive parties in advanced economies that pursue the public’s general benefits by upholding the values of freedom, democracy and market economy. Only then can the Democratic Party become a legitimate and orthodox party in power in line with the value of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea.

If the party seeks to recover power only by banking on an anti-ruling party coalition, its identity will increasingly be likened to that of the progressive Democratic Labor Party, which has yet to shed its practice of following North Korea’s ideology and communist regime. The labor party is a force that even denies market economics and private ownership of wealth, which are the foundation for South Korea’s prosperity, and seeks national reunification counter to the orientation of the Republic of Korea’s Constitution. If the Democratic Party joins forces with such a party, will it guarantee the Democratic Party regaining power? The Democratic Party should not pursue this in light of the “value of democracy.” Moreover, it will only have more things to lose by scaring away moderate ideology voters rather than gaining voters supportive of the labor party even when viewed from the perspective of election strategy.

Sohn is urged to return to the time when he served as Gyeonggi Province governor, when he sought to create jobs and attain economic growth as an advocate of a market and open economy. Kim should remember his time as an economic bureaucrat, struggling to revive the economy for the people’s livelihood and consolidate the soundness of the national economy. This should be the new starting point of the Democratic Party’s politics.