Outnumbered in committees, People Power Party scrambles for strategy in final stretch of national audit

As the National Assembly's national audit of the Lee Jae Myung government's second year passes its midpoint, the People Power Party is struggling to find ways to respond after being repeatedly outmaneuvered in standing committees — losing votes on key witness adoptions and agenda items due to its numerical disadvantage.

According to political circles Saturday, PPP floor operations chief Rep. Kim Seung-su said at a national audit strategy meeting Thursday that "the worst national audit in history is feared" due to what he described as the Democratic Party of Korea's unilateral conduct of proceedings, deliberate disruptions, refusal to adopt key witnesses, and inadequate document submissions and insincere responses from audited agencies.

Kim listed the suspension of the Education Committee's audit, the breakdown of the Political Affairs Committee's proceedings, and the Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee's decision to conduct an on-site inspection in Busan as examples, laying the blame squarely on the Democratic Party.

"The Democratic Party may be blocking key witnesses and reference persons, but does that make the truth disappear?" he said. "For the remainder of the national audit, we will uncover the truth to the end from the public's perspective and will hold those responsible for any wrongdoing accountable."

A senior PPP official said the party was raising its voice loudly in each standing committee, but that being outnumbered was reducing the visible impact. "There is frustration within the party that the opposition's concerns are not getting enough public attention," the official said, adding that the party would focus on the remaining on-site and comprehensive audits to build broader public support.

Throughout this year's national audit, the PPP has continued pressing the government and ruling party with pointed questions in standing committees, but has repeatedly been overruled at the witness adoption and voting stages by the Democratic Party and its allied bloc.

In fact, the PPP's requests to adopt key witnesses have been rejected one after another. In the Political Affairs Committee, the party sought to call former policy chief Kim Yong-beom as a witness in connection with the introduction of single-stock leveraged ETFs, but the request was denied. In the Trade, Industry and Energy Committee and the Climate and Labor Committee, the party demanded that companies related to "Honam semiconductor investment" appear before the panels, but those requests also fell through. In the Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee, the PPP sought to call the director and other figures behind the film "The Assassin" as witnesses over a controversy surrounding alleged historical distortion, but the parties could not reach an agreement.

Conversely, measures the PPP opposed were pushed through by the ruling-party bloc. In the Legislation and Judiciary Committee, a motion to summon Supreme Court Chief Justice Jo Hee-de as a witness — which the PPP had opposed as an infringement on judicial independence — was passed at the Democratic Party's initiative. In the Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee, Rep. Lee Jin-suk was disqualified from serving as an audit committee member on the grounds that her work during her tenure as Korea Communications Commission chairperson posed a potential conflict of interest.

One member of the party leadership said the PPP plans to focus its remaining audit efforts on single-stock leveraged ETFs, what it calls the "Gyeonggi-Seongnam line" personnel manipulation scandal, foreign policy and security failures, and a comprehensive survey of farmland. "We intend to fight hard on these issues for the rest of the national audit," the lawmaker said.