Han Dong-hoon, Oh Se-hoon blast Jang's push to consolidate party control

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon and independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon, both considered potential conservative presidential contenders, on Tuesday jointly criticized People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok. They pushed back against what they described as efforts by the party leadership to consolidate its grip on power through disciplinary measures and a proposed direct membership vote for constituency committee chairs.

The two attended a seminar titled "America's Grand Strategy and Korea's Choice" held Tuesday morning at the National Assembly Members' Office Building, organized by the Future Innovation Forum led by PPP lawmaker Kim Ki-hyun.

Speaking to reporters after the seminar, Oh effectively came out against Jang's push to replace constituency committee chairs, saying, "There is an order to everything, and there is an appropriate moment."

"At a time when the Lee Jae Myung government is running amok on real estate policy and its approval rating is in free fall, the party needs to rally all its strength," Oh said. "What we need is party leadership that creates synergy through addition, not subtraction."

On the party's Central Ethics Committee voting to discipline non-leadership lawmakers including Cho Kyung-tae, Seo Beom-su, Kwon Young-jin and Jin Jong-oh, Oh said, "Ethics committee politics is the lowest form of politics." He added that he hoped the party would "return to the opposition's true calling — checking a runaway administration through dialogue and unity."

Han, speaking separately with reporters after the seminar, also criticized the plan to replace constituency committee chairs. "A public party sustained by taxpayers' hard-earned money must not go down the path of becoming a private fiefdom," he said. "If it does, we cannot check the runaway Lee Jae Myung Democratic Party administration."

Referring to Jang, who marks his first anniversary as party leader on Wednesday, Han said, "The party has regressed. It is deeply regrettable." He added, "Going down this road, we cannot fulfill our mission — the conservative mission — of stopping the Democratic Party administration from going astray."

Tuesday marked only the second time the two have appeared together in public since the June 3 local elections, following a joint appearance at the National Public Policy Forum on June 16. They had both been invited to a forum hosted by PPP lawmaker Lee Seong-kwon on June 23 and a seminar hosted by Kim Ki-hyun on June 24, but their schedules did not align on either occasion.

Former PPP lawmaker Yoo Seung-min and Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok had also been invited to Tuesday's seminar but were unable to attend due to personal commitments.

At the seminar's opening, Kim Ki-hyun addressed Han warmly as "our former party leader Han Dong-hoon." Kim, himself a former party leader, said, "There was a time when I thought 'member-centered' was the right approach, but now it seems things have gone too far in that direction. Shouldn't the axis shift from excessive member-centrism toward being centered on the people?" The remarks were widely interpreted as a dig at Jang's advocacy for a member-centered party model.

Han responded, saying, "Conservative politics must be rebuilt before we can set the Lee Jae Myung administration right," and added, "Chairman Kim's words about moving toward a people-centered approach resonate deeply with me."

Oh and Han also each called on the Lee Jae Myung government to fundamentally reorient its foreign and security policy during the seminar.

Oh said, "Peace lived under the shadow of nuclear weapons is false peace." He argued that South Korea "must, in the near term, advance to the level of uranium reprocessing comparable to Japan's — including the introduction of nuclear-powered submarines — and in that regard must pursue a revision of the Korea-US nuclear cooperation agreement."

Han, a member of the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, expressed concern that "the principles of diplomacy are crumbling," pointing to an incident in which Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during a visit to South Korea, used the phrase "the two countries of South Korea and North Korea" in front of National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac without any effort to correct him.