Left: Jang Dong-hyuk, the leader of the top opposition People Power Party, attends a protest at Olympic Park in Seoul on July 7, 2026, while holding a sign that reads, “Hey, Jae Myung, stop picking fights with high schoolers and fight me instead.” Right: Jang Dong-hyuk and Kim Min-soo, a member of the PPP Supreme Council, laugh while participants in a rally in Incheon on July 8, 2026, over ballot shortages chant “Hey Jae Myung.” (via social media; via Threads)
Politics is a competition about who is more competent. The candidate who does a better job can expect to win the election.But it’s also a competition about who is less incompetent. Even a poorly performing candidate can still prevail provided the other team is doing an even worse job.Those political truisms are evidently not lost on Korean President Lee Jae Myung. After watching the fallout from a last-minute scheme by People Power Party (PPP) insiders to swap out their presidential candidate in May 2025, Lee quoted a famous remark by former President Kim Young-sam: “In politics, you often win not through excellence, but through patiently waiting until the other side falls flat on their face.”Lee has been doing decently in recent job performance ratings. In poll results released by Gallup Korea on Friday, Lee enjoyed a 53% approval rate, compared to 35% disapproval. That was about the same as the previous week’s poll.The same poll found that 57% of respondents were bullish on the three “megaprojects” — massive investment in AI infrastructure buildout — that Lee recently announced, believing they “will benefit balanced regional development,” while just 26% said the ventures would “exacerbate regional disparities.”But the Lee administration’s real estate policy is moving into the danger zone. Monthly rents, including Korea’s unique “key money” system of lump sum deposits, are growing burdensome. Meanwhile, Democratic Party members are preoccupied with an internal power struggle.Nevertheless, polls measuring party support give the Democratic Party (42%) a comfortable lead over the PPP (24%). The ruling party’s support hasn’t dropped below 41% since the local elections on June 3.The PPP’s support rose to 29% after the elections, but has since slipped to 27%, 26% and then 24%. In short, the main opposition party has lost the temporary boost gained from its victory in the Seoul mayoral election.The PPP is likely to lose even more support in the weeks to come for the following two reasons.The first reason is the Yoon Suk-yeol effect. Yoon is currently on trial for several charges. Just when it seems that the public has forgotten about him, his face pops up on our television screens. It’s only natural that support for the PPP drops whenever Yoon makes the news. The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the original sentence of seven years in prison for Yoon for obstructing investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials from executing an arrest warrant against him in January 2025. On the same day, senior Presidential Security Service officials who had obstructed investigators from arresting Yoon — including Park Chong-jun, the head of the service, Kim Seong-hun, the deputy head, and Lee Kwang-woo, the head of the service’s protection bureau — were convicted of obstructing the execution of public duties and were immediately placed in custody. Do you remember the 44 PPP lawmakers who assembled in front of the presidential residence in Seoul’s Hannam neighborhood on Jan. 6, 2025, to thwart Yoon’s arrest? Now that the Supreme Court has confirmed those who had tried to stop Yoon’s arrest were guilty of obstruction of justice, it is time for those lawmakers to finally issue a public apology.
