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The headquarters of the People Power Party in Seoul’s Yeouido. (Hankyoreh file photo)

The People Power Party (PPP), which espouses liberal democracy as its guiding principle and core identity, is the ruling party in South Korea. It dates back to the Democratic Liberal Party (1990-1995), which was established through a merger of the authoritarian forces behind Korea’s military dictatorship and proponents of liberalism based in the Yeongnam region, in the southeast corner of the peninsula.

Ideologically speaking, the PPP has anti-communist and statist tendencies; economically speaking, it strikes a pro-business line. The PPP has at times exhibited McCarthyist tendencies as a result of the North Korea factor, but the party itself has rarely been regarded as standing on the far right. It had never denied the current constitutional order, which is grounded in the separation of powers, the rule of law and the guarantee of individual liberties, nor attempted to deviate from those principles.

But that situation has undergone a dramatic shift following Yoon Suk-yeol’s short-lived declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, 2024. Many no longer hesitate to call the PPP a far-right political party. 

And indeed, it has been demonstrating classic behaviors of the far right: defending an attempt to overthrow the constitutional order with the aid of the military, challenging the authority of the courts and the Constitutional Court, fomenting distrust in the electoral system that is the foundation of our representative democracy, and inciting hatred of minority groups and latent xenophobia, including hatred of China.

Hong Jun-pyo (center), then a presidential candidate for the Liberty Korea Party, raises his hands with Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon after being endorsed by the Christian Liberal Party and other Christian organizations on May 29, 2017. (Yonhap)

 Indications of what was to come

While it would be tempting to blame all this on the political turbulence that followed the declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, that wouldn’t be accurate. Experts generally say the PPP’s lurch to the far right began around the inauguration of Moon Jae-in as president in 2017.

That was when anti-communist groups, strident opponents of North Korea, and far-right Christian groups were building political strength through street rallies. These groups had been galvanized by a number of factors: the conservatives’ defeat in the 2016 parliamentary elections, the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, the schism in the conservative party, the relegation of conservative parties to minority status in the National Assembly, the rapid thaw in inter-Korean relations, and civic groups’ push to enact an anti-discrimination law.

The inflection point was the emergence of Hwang Kyo-ahn as leader of the Liberty Korea Party, the forerunner of today’s PPP. Hwang’s leadership emerged at a time when the radical fringe began gaining power and influence and exerting pressure on the mainstream conservative party at a time, in the middle of the Moon administration, when many conservatives feared their cause was in crisis.

The Liberty Korea Party turned to street protests in the years 2019 and 2020, which is also when Jun Kwang-hoon, then the chair of the Christian Council of Korea, created a national organization in partnership with the “Taegeukgi brigade” — conservative protesters who fought Park Geun-hye’s impeachment — and began collecting signatures demanding Moon’s resignation.

Former and current lawmakers with the Liberty Korea Party joined that campaign in October 2019. Gangwon Province Governor Kim Jin-tae and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon were among the politicians who took the stage at Jun’s rallies.

On Oct. 25 of that year, Hwang Kyo-ahn brought lawmakers from his party to a rally at Gwanghwamun organized by Jun’s group. Large numbers of far-right Protestants attended a rally opposing a fast-track bill that was held at the National Assembly by the Liberty Korea Party on Dec. 16.

When Hwang said, “Let’s put our lives on the line to defend Free Korea,” Protestant protesters responded by shouting “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” As the crowds waved Korean flags, American flags and Israeli flags, some protestors attempted to break into the National Assembly and ended up clashing with the National Assembly’s security guards.

Yoon Suk-yeol, then the People Power Party’s candidate for president, performs his signature uppercut move at a campaign event on Feb. 15, 2022. (pool photo)

 A temporary break with the far right

The fraternization with the far right that began under Hwang’s leadership had disastrous results. The United Future Party (as the Liberty Korea Party renamed itself) only won 103 seats in the 2020 parliamentary elections — the worst showing of a conservative party in Korean history.

Hwang stepped down after 14 months in charge of the party, and Kim Chong-in took over as interim leader.

Kim Chong-in began cutting ties with the far right, declaring that the party had “no relationship” with Jun. Joo Ho-young, the party’s floor leader at the time, stressed that “the individuals and parties called ‘far right’ in our society are distinct from us.” But that wasn’t a clean break, but just a temporary attempt to create distance.

A new phase in the PPP’s move to the far right began with Yoon Suk-yeol’s run for president. During a sermon at his church in January 2022, Jun offered full-throated support for the former prosecutor general: “If anybody has a better way to gain power than through Yoon, let’s hear it.”

During the same period, Yoon himself began to exhibit traits of a right-wing populist. Under his slogan of “restoring fairness and common sense,” Yoon doubled down on dividing society into “citizens” and “plunderers.”

Under Yoon’s populism, the “plunderers” are the liberals and politicians of the “86 generation” and the labor unions like the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, feminists, progressive activist groups, sexual minorities, and migrant workers — groups that Yoon and his supporters have long been voice animosity toward. 

Yoon then referred to everyone who wasn’t one of these so-called plunderers simply as “the people” in order to get them on his side. In this context, “the people” refers to Koreans who have to pay comprehensive property taxes and high-income taxes, far-right seniors, megachurch attendees, men in their 20s and 30s, traditional conservative voters, and people who have otherwise been marginalized during processes of political polarization. 

The result was Yoon’s skin-of-his-teeth victory in the 2022 presidential election, which he won by a mere 0.73 percentage points. 

Kim Jae-won, a member of the People Power Party’s Supreme Council, appears in a YouTube video with Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon and the conservative YouTuber Shin Hye-sik on March 12, 2023. (still from You Know TV, a YouTube channel operated by Jun)

Laying low before making a comeback

The problem is while right-wing populism has been effective in strategically taking power, it has floundered when it comes to governance. That’s because criticizing those in power and amassing resistance is different from managing a national community. 

The PPP’s transformation into a far-right party, therefore, was not obvious during the first year of the Yoon administration. Rather, the party made sure at that time to steer clear of Jun and moved to decisively cut off any party members who were aligned with the pastor. When Kim Jae-won, member of the PPP Supreme Council, joined Jun during a rally in March 2023, the party denounced him as having “violated the May 18 spirit written in the Constitution” and subjected him to discipline by the party’s ethics committee. Hwang Kyo-ahn blew the whistle on Jun’s interference in party nominations and said that forces aligned with him “must be expelled from the party.” 

However, Kim Jae-won was picked to serve on the PPP Supreme Council in the party’s first, second and third leadership elections, effectively nullifying the disciplinary action levied against him. It is widely accepted that this was at least in part due to the organized efforts of far-right Protestants and Taegeukgi protesters that had entered the party en masse over the course of the rallies protesting Park Geun-hye’s impeachment in 2017, the far right’s collusion with the Liberty Korea Party in 2019, and the 2022 presidential election. 

Considering such circumstances, it was difficult for this movement to remain out of sight for longer than a year. Yoon’s Liberation Day address in 2023 was filled with bellicose language. He characterized the opposition, activist groups, and labor unions as “anti-state forces that blindly follow communist totalitarianism, distort public opinion, and disrupt the society through manipulative propaganda.” The phrases he used in that speech were a preview of the language of eradication to come 15 months later when he declared martial law and issued a decree vowing to “eradicate” and “crush” such anti-state forces. 

“In the beginning, they emphasized fairness and talked about the public livelihood, but when things didn’t go their way, they started to blame the opposition and declared an ideological war,” assessed Kim Yun-cheol, a professor at Kyung Hee University’s Humanitas College.

A long-term political stalemate resulted from plummeting public approval and conflict with an opposition that had a major National Assembly majority. That is when the far-right virus, which had been lying dormant, was reactivated. 

PPP lawmaker Na Kyung-won appears with the party’s interim leader Kwon Young-se and floor leader Kweon Seong-dong outside the Seoul Detention Center after meeting with President Yoon Suk-yeol there on Feb. 3, 2025. (Kim Young-won/Hankyoreh)

Defeat and chaos

Yoon is not the only person responsible for the party’s move to the far right. The ruling party failed to restrain the president’s thoughts and actions, which were verging on the extreme. Rather, the PPP chose to walk in lockstep with this shift. This was demonstrated by the party’s response to Yoon’s Liberation Day speech, which said, “Our duty is to resolutely reject all forces that threaten a liberal Republic of Korea.” 

Following the presidential election and internal party leadership elections, pro-Yoon politicians dominated the PPP, which set the conditions for the party’s shift to the far right. Former party leader Lee Jun-seok, who had clashed with Yoon, was expelled from party leadership in July 2022. In March 2023, Na Kyung-won, who was the top pick at the party’s national convention, was effectively pressured to step down in the race to lead the party. In this distorted system of party-administration unity, Yoon and the first lady influenced all major party decisions. 

The result was a massive loss in the general election. In the April 10 general election of last year, the PPP secured only 108 seats. Busan, Ulsan and South Gyeongsang filled 34 seats; while Daegu and North Gyeongsang filled 25, accounting for 54.6% of their National Assembly presence. 

“The concentration of lawmakers from Yeongnam in party ranks had politically disastrous results,” analyzed Jhee Byong-kuen, a professor of political science at Chosun University.

Instead of the average demands of the Korean people, the party excessively focused on their hard-line supporters in the conservative Yeongnam region, effectively removing the party’s capacity to resist a swerve to the far right. 

PPP lawmakers Choo Kyung-ho, Kim Gi-hyeon and others participate in an emergency prayer rally organized by Save Korea on March 1, 2025. (Yonhap)

Insurrection and running rampant

The PPP’s swing to the far right is similar to Japan’s pre-war political mechanism, as described by Japanese political scientist Masao Maruyama (1914-1996). All power in this structure orbited around the ultimate authority of the emperor. Anyone with power justified his authority not from within but by his proximity to the “center” of authority, the emperor. 

Similarly, power within the PPP depends on its proximity to the center, in its case, Yoon and the first lady. The problem is when the center disappears or is weakened. All the orbiting factions of power are suddenly without a guiding force and flounder. That is what happened to the PPP after Yoon’s martial law stunt in December. The pro-Yoon faction, suddenly left without Yoon, was unable to manufacture power from within. They instead rode the wave of radicalized Yoon supporters to preserve their regime amid the threat of collapse. The result was the far right becoming mainstream. 

This entire progression becomes clear when one examines the events that have followed the Dec. 3 insurrection. Shin Jin-wook, a professor of sociology at Chung-Ang University, has summarized the post-insurrection situation into five phases. The first was the Dec. 3 attempted self-coup and its neutralization by the National Assembly and the people. The second was a temporary consensus on the restoration of democracy that followed martial law being rescinded. The third was Yoon, having lost official authority after being impeached, digging in and rallying his supporters and inciting them to attack constitutional institutions. The fourth was a period of far-right terrorism, including massive rallies and the attack on the courthouse. The fifth is the PPP’s participation in the far-right’s violent incitement, an entrenchment of fascist tendencies.  

The end or recovery?

The Dec. 3 insurrection showed that South Korea’s democracy is not only fragile but that forces who wish to suffocate democracy and pluralism exist on a massive scale in South Korean society. The far-right forces’ alignment with political conservatives has progressed to a serious degree, which has shocked everybody. Paradoxically, this also reveals the Korean conservative party’s structural and ideological weaknesses. 

The problem is if this alliance of the far right and political conservatives continues and manages to take power, South Korean society faces an unprecedented threat of collapse. The only way to prevent that is for the PPP and conservatives to distance themselves from far-right groups. There is no hope for the PPP to achieve this through will alone. Political history teaches us that a party can only truly achieve reform when internal efforts are complemented by external shock levied by competing political forces and consistent societal pressure. 

By Lee Se-young, staff reporter; Shin Min-jung, staff reporter

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