PM Kim Min-seok says overconfidence in 'making a president' must be checked

Prime Minister Kim Min-seok said Saturday that the attitude of criticizing the president out of an excessive sense of having "made" him must be properly restrained, as factional tensions within the Democratic Party of Korea intensify ahead of the party's August leadership convention.

Kim made the remarks to reporters on the sidelines of a workshop for newly elected Democratic Party women members held in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province. He opened by saying the tensions were "something that can happen ahead of an election, a phenomenon arising from disappointment over the election results."

The comments were widely interpreted as an indirect rebuke of writer Yoo Si-min, who said Friday that "what the people who ardently supported and cheered for President Lee on his path to the presidency wanted was an extension, but the president seems to have been trying for a full reconstruction," adding that the president "may have been overly confident."

Kim described the outcome of the June 3 local elections as a "stumble," warning that "if we lose the middle ground, it will be hard to win going forward. A sense of dread has crept in — the fear that if we are not careful, we could end up as the opposition party indefinitely."

He then said, "The president must not waver, and neither must the government," and went on to say he wanted to "get back to the work of rebuilding a Democratic Party that wins."

Kim laid out three tasks: "First, we must protect the president's leadership. Second, we must hold to the path of people's livelihoods, pragmatism and rational reform — that winning formula must be upheld without fail. And third, we can only succeed by uniting through addition."

Kim also said he would be stepping down from the prime ministership within days, noting that he had "spent a year diligently working on loan to the government and felt it was time to return to the party."

He urged those present to "run together until the day we can look back and say that the history we made together opened a new golden age for the Democratic Party — 20 or 30 years from now."

Asked by reporters about the possibility of running in the August leadership convention, Kim said only that he would "speak when the time comes, after returning to the party."