The aftershocks of former President Yoon Suk-yeol's illegal martial law declaration have profoundly shaken the landscape of Korean party politics. The shockwaves show no signs of subsiding. Through the impeachment and presidential election, the Democratic Party of Korea has secured an overwhelming advantage, while the People Power Party (PPP) remains mired in a prolonged slump. In major polls by Gallup Korea and the National Barometer Survey (NBS), PPP's approval rating fails to reach even half of the Democratic Party's.
What deserves even greater attention is the shifting regional political landscape. It has been some time since surveys began showing the Democratic Party leading in Busan, Ulsan, and South Gyeongsang Province — traditionally conservative strongholds. More recently, even in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province, long considered the last bastion of conservatism, unprecedented results have been observed with the Democratic Party overtaking the PPP. Judging by polling indicators alone, it is difficult to deny the assessment that PPP's prospects for the June local elections are not bright.
The core problem facing the PPP is not merely the aftershocks of the martial law crisis. The more fundamental cause lies in its failure of crisis management afterward. During the impeachment process, factional conflicts between so-called pro-Yoon and anti-Yoon camps laid bare just how deeply the party had drifted from public sentiment. What the PPP has demonstrated is endless internal strife and an absence of leadership capable of reading the public mood. The decline in approval ratings is therefore not solely a product of the martial law incident but also a cold verdict from voters disappointed that nothing has changed since.
While the conservative opposition has struggled to find a way forward, a notable phenomenon has emerged since the launch of the Lee Jae-myung administration. Support ratings have simultaneously risen among demographics and regions where the Democratic Party had consistently trailed in elections — voters in their 20s and 30s, those aged 60 and above, centrist and conservative voters, and the Yeongnam region. This is the so-called "New Lee Jae-myung" phenomenon. According to a panel survey by STI, the Korean Association of Party Studies, and the Hankyoreh, approximately 22 to 23 percent of all voters did not support President Lee Jae-myung in the last presidential election but now positively evaluate his administration's performance. This has sparked serious discussion among party scholars about the possibility of the Democratic Party becoming a truly national party and whether the traditional two-party structure is fracturing.
Since democratization in 1987, the Korean party system has rarely deviated from a structure in which the Honam-based democratic camp and the Yeongnam-based conservative camp competed along regional cleavages. Under that entrenched regionalism, it is virtually unprecedented for a party in the democratic camp to simultaneously gain meaningful support in the Yeongnam region and among centrist and conservative voters.
This phenomenon, of course, cannot be explained simply as a political windfall from the martial law and impeachment crises. The fact that shifts in support are being observed simultaneously — not limited to a specific generation — among centrist and conservative voters and in the Yeongnam region appears not unrelated to the Lee Jae-myung administration's centrist pragmatic policy line. However, it is premature to conclude that this signifies a structural realignment of Korean party politics. The critical clue is that support for the president as an individual has not yet sufficiently transferred into rising approval for the Democratic Party as a political party. For this phenomenon to lead to a genuine structural realignment, a confirmed trend of centrist and conservative support for the president structurally transferring into support for the Democratic Party would be necessary.
Of course, when any party's unchecked dominance is prolonged, the health of democracy inevitably deteriorates. While the PPP has remained helpless against the erosion of public support, merely repeating internal conflicts, the space that an opposition party should fill — competing on policy and presenting alternatives — is increasingly left vacant. The ruling party has its role, and the opposition has its own. It is time for the PPP to reflect on whether it is voluntarily abandoning its duty as the primary opposition party.
Ultimately, as the opposition vacuum persists, whether the "New Lee Jae-myung" phenomenon will prove a temporary trend or lead to a structural realignment that reshapes the landscape of Korean party politics cannot be determined at this moment. What is clear is that the crisis of democracy triggered by martial law is now shaking the entrenched walls of regionalism that have long defined Korean party politics. Whether this will lead to the Democratic Party becoming a national party or serve as a competitive catalyst spurring the rebuilding of the conservative opposition remains to be seen. Regardless of which direction things unfold, if competition among national parties centered on policy and vision — rather than regional identity — takes root, that would be a change long overdue in Korean party politics. Korean party politics now stands at a crossroads.