Democratic Party leadership race teeters on the edge

With the Democratic Party of Korea's Aug. 17 national convention — which will determine the party's next leader — now little more than a month away, tensions among the leading contenders are intensifying. An internal dispute over the preferential voting system for the party leader election has been settled, but analysts say clashes over key issues tied to rallying core supporters could widen.

Song Young-gil, a former party leader and one of the main contenders for the chairmanship, appeared Thursday on broadcaster Kim Eou-joon's radio program "Humility Is Hard: News Factory" and said he believed it would be difficult for Jung Chung-rae to lead the party to victory in the next general election. He also said he was "genuinely startled" by Jung's remark that "administrations are short, but the people are eternal."

Song also took aim at Jung's recent suggestion that the party should not have fielded a candidate in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, calling it "irresponsible." He added that he believed the right move at the time would have been to steer former party leader Cho Kuk toward running in Busan's Buk-gap constituency.

Song's remarks Thursday were notably more measured than in recent days, when critics inside and outside the party had accused him of being overly aggressive.

In recent radio interviews, Song had deployed harsh language against Jung, comparing his remarks to a parent telling a child "I should have aborted you," and saying that "in the old days, this would have been treason punishable by beheading."

Jung responded on Facebook, writing, "Is running in the party convention now a matter of life and death? It's chilling and frightening," while Song later sought to clarify his remarks, saying he hoped people would "look at the context, not just snippets of text from the broadcast."

Political observers have interpreted Song's recent offensive as a strategy to prevent attention at the convention from focusing solely on Kim Min-seok and Jung.

Jung, by contrast, has refrained from directly attacking his rivals, instead emphasizing his reform agenda in an effort to consolidate support among the party's more hard-line base.

Kim, meanwhile, unveiled what he called a "four-point Democratic Party reform plan" at the party's Yeouido headquarters on Wednesday. Kim pledged to pursue youth engagement to rejuvenate the party, expand solidarity and unity based on a pragmatic line, strengthen deliberation among party members, and build a systematic candidate nomination process, adding that "a minister-level youth policy committee must be established to guarantee solutions to youth issues."

Kim had also thrown a pointed challenge at Jung on July 1, asking, "Is there really a need to serve as party leader twice?"

The Democratic Party opened a two-day candidate registration period for party leader and supreme council member on Thursday. Song completed his registration in person, and Ko Min-jung, a lawmaker who has entered the race on a 'generational change' platform, also visited the central headquarters to register Thursday. Ko said she would "build a Democratic Party that nurtures youth, unites rather than divides, and keeps vision and policy competition alive — to firmly support the success of the Lee Jae Myung government." Kim Bo-mi, a former Gangjin-gun council member, also declared her bid for the party leadership.

Twelve candidates have declared their intention to run for the five elected supreme council seats: lawmakers Kim Young-ho, Choi Min-hee, Park Sung-joon, Park Seon-won, Seo Mi-hwa, Lee Geon-tae, Han Min-su and Im Mi-ae, along with Kim Yong, former vice president of the Democratic Research Institute; Park Seung-won, mayor of Gwangmyeong; Kim Hyeong-nam, former secretary general of the Military Human Rights Center; and Jeong Min-cheol, vice chairman of the Democratic Party's policy committee.

The party will hold a preliminary primary beginning Tuesday to narrow the field to three candidates for party leader and eight for supreme council member. The party leader will then be chosen through preferential voting, under which voters rank candidates in order of preference; if no candidate wins a majority in the first round, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to those voters' next-ranked choices.

The primary will be held as a regional tour. It begins Aug. 1 in South Chungcheong Province, North Chungcheong Province, Daejeon and Sejong, followed by Ulsan, Busan and South Gyeongsang Province on Aug. 2; Jeju and Incheon on Aug. 8; Gangwon Province, Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province on Aug. 9; South Jeolla Province, Gwangju and North Jeolla Province on Aug. 15; and Gyeonggi Province and Seoul on Aug. 16.