In the spring of 2026, Korea's conservative party stands once again before a familiar question. Defeat in general elections, defeat in an early presidential election, calls for leadership accountability, an innovation committee, slogans of renewal. It is a ritual repeated after every election. Yet citizens recognize the futility of this repetition faster than politicians do. When the same words are repeated, the same people remain, and accountability is blurred in the same way, a party's crisis turns from electoral defeat into a loss of the capacity to learn.
Two diagnoses confront each other over this latest crisis. One side says the party lost because it did not fight harder. The other says it was dragged along by hardline supporters and lost the moderate center. Both are partly right but insufficient. A more fundamental question lies elsewhere. Why has the party come to mistake the applause and anger of its most enthusiastic supporters for the sentiment of the broader public? Why is it that within the party, only the loudest voices become political reality, while the signals of voters who quietly walk away are confirmed only belatedly, in the form of defeat?
Political science has long explained this problem. A party's enthusiastic activists and organized supporters hold stronger convictions and a higher willingness to participate than ordinary voters. They pay party dues, take part in primaries, raise donations, and shape opinion online. In party politics, they are an indispensable engine. The problem arises when this engine seizes the steering wheel of the party itself. To win elections, a party must persuade ordinary voters; but to survive internally, it must read the mood of its most organized supporters. When this gap widens, the party listens more loudly to the minority within the party than to the majority of society.
The essence of fandom politics is not the enthusiastic supporter himself. In democratic politics, enthusiastic supporters are an asset. Citizens who spend time, money, and energy on a party are a precious bulwark against political cynicism. But when that enthusiasm monopolizes the party's standards of judgment, the asset turns into a danger. Politicians quickly learn whose words draw applause, what expressions provoke protest, and what attitudes are branded as "betrayal." At first, it is a realistic calculation. But when that calculation is repeated, the party grows more accustomed to the technique of avoiding internal criticism than to the ability to persuade a broader public.
What disappears first in this process is the voice of the quiet voter. Those who value the rule of law, security, fiscal soundness, and the market economy, but feel repelled by extreme language. Those who disagree with the policies of the current government and ruling party, yet hesitate to publicly support today's conservative party. They are not people outside conservatism. They are the citizens whom conservatism must persuade once again. But these people do not fight in comment sections. They do not send floods of text messages. They do not shake up local organizations. They simply step back, fall silent, and ultimately make a different choice at the ballot box, or do not go to the ballot box at all.
What a party should fear most is not loud criticism but quiet distancing. The cost of an attack is immediate and visible. Text messages, comments, party member bulletin boards, backlash from local organizations, and disadvantages in primaries press upon politicians at once. The cost of defection, by contrast, surfaces late. It is confirmed only in the next opinion poll, the next election, or the post-defeat analysis report. So the party repeatedly tolerates quiet defections in order to avoid immediate attacks. When such avoidance accumulates, it becomes the party's constitution.
Fandom politics is more dangerous because it turns a party from a community of values and lines into a community of personal loyalty. The moment internal criticism is read as betrayal rather than as a signal of self-correction, those who first speak of problems are isolated and those who stay silent are kept safe. On the surface it looks like unity, but in reality it is an organization that has lost its capacity for self-diagnosis. A party bound by loyalty to a particular figure shakes whenever that figure shakes, and goes through civil war whenever that figure disappears. A party must endure for the long term, but a fandom is usually tied to the political fate of a particular person.
Therefore the renewal of the conservative party must be a matter of institutions, not slogans. This is not a call to abolish the fandom. A party without enthusiastic supporters does not move. But that energy must not be allowed to replace the judgment of the party as a whole. What matters is how to balance the will of party members with the opinion of the general public in candidate selection, how to guarantee deliberation and accountability in setting party positions, and how to verify breadth of appeal and quality in nomination screening. Innovation is proven not by manifestos but by procedures.
For the conservative party to broaden itself again, it must first distinguish between those who applaud it and those who could choose it. The former are the party's engine. But without the latter, the party cannot win elections. A party is moved by the heat of its engine, but the steering wheel that sets its direction must be the trust of a broader public. A party that only repeats words drawing applause may run hot inside, yet it cannot persuade society as a whole.
What Korean conservatism needs now is not a louder voice but a wider ear. Not abandoning enthusiastic supporters, but preventing that enthusiasm from monopolizing the party's standards. Receiving uncomfortable internal questions as warnings rather than betrayals. Not losing quiet citizens in order to avoid immediate anger. The path to conservative recovery does not lie in further stoking the heat of the fandom. It lies in converting that heat into responsible politics capable of persuading a majority of citizens. A fandom can move a party, but it cannot save one.
He is...
(Current) CEO, Institute for Public Policy (IPP); Secretary-General, Happy Birth, Secure Future
(Former) Ph.D. in Political Science (International Politics), Sungkyunkwan University; Adjunct Professor, Pusan National University; Research Professor, Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University; Vice President, Realmeter
*The author continues research and practice centered on political reform and party innovation, as well as low birth rates and issues facing future generations. Through this column, he intends to chart the path forward for Korean politics and society based on the sustainability of the community, opportunities for the next generation, and practical solutions for the community.
