By the numbers, the June 3 local elections were a crushing defeat for conservatives. Of 16 metropolitan and provincial governorships, the Democratic Party of Korea took 12 and the People Power Party took four. The map of local power looks unlikely to change for some time. And yet Seoul alone remained an exception. Without reading where the force behind this exception came from, conservatives cannot design their next decade.
In this election, Seoul was not simply "the last bastion conservatives barely held." Candidate Oh Se-hoon won with a final vote share of 49.22 percent, beating candidate Jung Won-oh, who recorded 48.07 percent, by a margin of 1.15 percentage points. It was a dramatic late comeback. More notable was the departure of young women, who had long been considered a core support base of progressive parties. Based on exit polls, Oh led among women in their 30s in Seoul with 53.6 percent, ahead of Jung's 42.8 percent. This is the exact opposite of the 2022 Seoul mayoral election, in which 54.1 percent of women in their 30s supported the Democratic Party's candidate Song Young-gil. Seoul's terrain is no longer "progressive versus conservative" but closer to a confrontation between "the established older generation with vested interests" and "a generation with accumulated deprivation." Voters in their 20s and 30s living in Seoul who chose Oh cited dissatisfaction with housing policy and the continuity of redevelopment projects as their key reasons. They cast their votes based on housing, labor, and intergenerational distribution, not on anti-communist or ideological frames.
Nationally as well, the movement of those in their 20s and 30s was not simple. By exit poll figures, 55.8 percent of men aged 20 and under chose the People Power Party candidate, while 66.4 percent of women aged 20 and under supported the Democratic Party candidate, showing a clear divergence in voting by gender. Their character as swing voters who change their choices each election, unbound to any particular party, has grown stronger. They are more sensitive to how much burden their generation bears and whether that burden is distributed fairly than to ideological debates over welfare and fiscal soundness. A political generation has emerged that is not merely cynical despite its grievances, but one with more demanding standards and more fluid choices.
To simply call this generation's shift "turning conservative" is inaccurate. A more accurate name is closer to "pragmatic new conservatism." What matters to them is not which camp is more just, but which side can at least guarantee the life path of their generation. On issues such as housing prices, entry into permanent employment, pension depletion, and the intergenerational tax burden, they have already finished their calculations coldly. They are conservative on fiscal burdens and radical in their demand for generational transition. Whether progressive or conservative, the side that loses trust in this calculation will be cast aside at once in the next election.
The problem is the established conservatives. The existing conservative parties, including the People Power Party, win votes from those in their 20s and 30s yet fail to read their meaning to the end. They mistakenly believe they have responded to generational divergence simply by recruiting a few young supreme council members and putting faces familiar with YouTube and shorts front and center. But the nomination system remains tied to the interests of factions and regional organizations, and the agenda of those in their 20s and 30s is always pushed to the back of policy priorities. Conservatives treat the young as mere promotional decoration, and do not place them in the seats where real power is distributed.
Seoul's young people in their 20s and 30s chose Oh not because "conservatives are impressive." It was a cold judgment that "things do not seem likely to get worse than now." The assessment within political circles is that the votes of Seoul's youth can change at any time depending on issues, policies, and candidates. During the time the established progressives monopolized youth discourse, the anxiety of the young accumulated into far more concrete problems in housing, labor, and pensions. Through that gap, the possibility of a new conservatism entered.
Therefore, the core of conservative realignment is no longer grand conservative unity. A politics that demands that those in their 20s and 30s "now become our side" while keeping old figures and structures intact under the slogan of unity carries no persuasive power. What is needed is generational divergence within conservatism, and a new conservative order that recognizes that divergence through institutions and organizations. If established conservatives in their 40s and 50s take charge of regional organizations, finances, and experience, the new conservatives in their 20s and 30s must lead agenda-setting, digital space, and new forms of solidarity. Without this division of roles, if generational conflict is covered up with the word unity, young conservatives will scatter again.
Party structures must also change. A few proportional youth seats and a few youth supreme council posts are not enough. A certain proportion must be mandatorily assigned to the 20s and 30s generation in nomination rules, and a channel must be opened through which voters in their 20s and 30s actually choose conservative candidates via citizen and party member primaries. Only when a new conservative group within the party can put forward its own line and candidates like a generational party can the interests and language of different generations coexist under the conservative banner. As long as the new conservatism remains an accessory of the existing conservatism, generational divergence will remain only a seed of division.
The June 3 local elections, more than revealing that conservatives lost, revealed who will be the agent to lead conservative reconstruction. The nation ended in a landslide for the ruling party, but the movements in Seoul and among the 20s and 30s foreshadow a different political map. Conservatives now stand before two choices. Will they erase generational divergence in the name of unity and return to the past, or will they recognize generational divergence and design a new conservative order upon it? The starting line of the new conservatism diverges here.
He is...
(Current) Head of the Institute for Public Policy (IPP), Secretary-General of the Happy Birth, Secure Future foundation
(Former) Ph.D. in Political Science (International Politics) from Sungkyunkwan University, Adjunct Professor at Pusan National University, Research Professor at the East Asian Studies Center at Western Washington University, Vice President of Realmeter
