Past and present presidents mobilized as ruling, opposition parties go all out for local elections

With the June 3 nationwide local elections just days away, every living former and current president has been drawn into the campaign. President Lee Jae Myung spent the entire weekend urging voters to the polls, while former President Moon Jae-in cast an early ballot and called for a verdict on what he described as insurrection forces. On the conservative side, former presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye hit the campaign trail in support of People Power Party candidates. Former President Yoon Suk Yeol, held at a detention center, issued no public statement and cast his ballot from his cell.

With two days to go before the June 3 local elections, the confrontation between the ruling and opposition parties has reached a peak, with former and current presidents exerting influence on the race directly and indirectly. Early in the campaign, the dominant themes were assessments of the Lee Jae Myung government's first year and calls to punish those linked to the Dec. 3 emergency martial law declaration. But nomination disputes within the ruling party and PPP candidates distancing themselves from the so-called "Yoon Again" movement have turned contests across the country more competitive.

Against that backdrop, former President Lee Myung-bak visited a church in Busan on Saturday before taking the microphone at a street rally in Haeundae-gu. Campaigning for Park Heong-joon — a former aide at Cheong Wa Dae during the Lee administration who is now running for Busan mayor — Lee appealed to voters to "choose candidate Park, a mayor who gets things done and will see his work through to the end." It was the first time Lee had campaigned in a local election.

Former President Park Geun-hye swept through Daegu, the Chungcheong region, Busan, Ulsan, South Gyeongsang Province and Gangwon Province to stump for PPP candidates, in a campaign blitz that resembled the role of an election committee chair. On the same day, she visited Daegu's Seomun Market — considered a barometer of conservative public sentiment — for the first time in eight days. Pointing to Choo Kyung-ho, the PPP candidate for Daegu mayor, she said, "If those of you here give candidate Choo your overwhelming support, he will revive Daegu's economy and repay you for it."

On the progressive side, former President Moon Jae-in called for a verdict on insurrection forces after casting his early ballot on Thursday. Voting in Yangsan, South Gyeongsang Province, where he lives, Moon said he hoped the local elections would "decisively punish the insurrection forces and change the political landscape in the Busan-Ulsan-South Gyeongsang region, including Yangsan where I live."

President Lee, meanwhile, urged voters to go to the polls for a second consecutive day. Having voted on the first day of early voting, Lee posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday: "Giving up on voting is not neutrality — it is siding with those who harm your life and community." On Saturday, he wrote: "In a democratic republic, a sovereign's silence and abstention from voting gives an opportunity to those who deceive the people, abuse power for private gain, and ruin the lives of you and your family." He added, "If there are politicians or political groups who find these words uncomfortable, they are precisely the entrenched old guard that the sovereign must overcome through the ballot."

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who received a life sentence in his first-trial verdict on insurrection charges, has made no public statement. Yoon, held at the Seoul Detention Center, is an unsentenced detainee pending a final ruling and is believed to have voted by absentee ballot from his cell in late May. The National Election Commission said it had mailed ballots, voting guides and election materials to more than 71,000 registered absentee voters in late May, and had sent election materials to some 10,000 military personnel and police officers who had applied for the service.