Opposition must not abandon dialogue with government

People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyuk abruptly canceled his planned attendance at a three-way luncheon with President Lee Jae-myung and the ruling party leader on Feb. 12, causing the meeting to collapse. Jang notified the presidential office of his decision just one hour before the event was scheduled to begin. As recently as the party’s Supreme Council meeting earlier that morning, he had said he would attend and convey public sentiment directly. However, after other Supreme Council members voiced opposition, he reversed course, citing the Democratic Party of Korea’s unilateral passage of two judicial reform bills at the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee the previous day. The meeting would have been the first in five months between President Lee and the leaders of the two major parties, offering an opportunity to ease escalating partisan tensions. Instead, it was called off.

It was Jang who initially requested talks with the president. Last month, he declined to attend a luncheon between President Lee and leaders of seven political parties, instead calling for a one-on-one meeting. On Feb. 4, during a speech to the National Assembly as leader of the main opposition party, he again proposed talks with the president. In that address, Jang said that simply having the president and the leader of the main opposition sit down together to discuss pending issues would help ease public anxiety. Even at the start of the Supreme Council meeting on Feb. 12, he cited U.S. tariff hikes and local government integration as key agenda items, saying there were numerous urgent matters to resolve. Yet shortly before the scheduled meeting, he withdrew from the engagement arranged at his own request, effectively contradicting his earlier statements.

Jang pointed to the ruling party’s legislative drive as justification for his boycott. Yet those very measures were matters he could have confronted directly with President Lee and Democratic Party of Korea leader Chung Cheong-rae. If he regarded the administration and the ruling party as having gone too far, the luncheon offered a venue to articulate his concerns in detail, outline alternative proposals and press for specific remedies. That approach would have aligned with the sense of responsibility voters expect from a major opposition party. Instead, he treated issues suited for negotiation as grounds to forgo dialogue altogether. With the People Power Party holding far fewer seats than the ruling party and trailing in public approval, his decision invites scrutiny over how the party intends to assert its role if it declines even infrequent chances for presidential talks.

The party’s actions that day were not confined to withdrawing from the luncheon. It also skipped the National Assembly plenary session, even though the rival parties had already agreed to approve about 80 livelihood-related bills, including measures to strengthen essential medical services, that drew little substantive disagreement. The understanding unraveled, and several of the measures were approved without the People Power Party’s participation. The party has repeatedly pledged cooperation on bread-and-butter issues. Jang himself had said he planned to focus on such matters, rather than partisan confrontation, at the luncheon. If that was the case, keeping his commitment to attend and joining the passage of livelihood bills despite political friction would have been a consistent course. He opted for a different path.