After the elections: where is South Korea going?

Last month, on 4 June 2025, South Korean voters were summoned to the ballot box in a snap election. With a record-breaking voter turnout of 79.4 percent, this election was hailed as a “judgment day” by the victor, opposition leader Lee Jae‑myung of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), who claimed a narrow yet decisive victory with nearly half of the vote.

His rival, Kim Moon‑soo of the conservative People Power Party (PPP) – party of former president Yoon Suk-yeol – trailed at 41 percent. Third‑party candidates Lee Jun‑seok (Reform Party) and Kwon Young-gook (Democratic Labour Party) each captured 7.7 percent and 0.9 percent of the vote, respectively.

This comes after former president Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment, following his short-lived adventure in attempting to place the country under martial law last December. Since then, South Korea has undergone an acute political crisis, which saw thousands of workers and youth mobilised against Yoon’s insurrectionary forces in defence of their democratic freedoms. But it was the lack of a conclusive, class-based resolution to this crisis that has shaped this present victory for the liberal DPK.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the largest labour organisation in the country, played an integral role in the movement against Yoon, launching an indefinite general strike for instance. However, shortly after Yoon’s presidential powers were suspended, strike action was put to an end.

Unfortunately, despite its lack of official ties to any establishment party, the KCTU leadership has tacit illusions in the Democratic Party. In the run-up to the elections, KCTU president Yang Kyung-soo attempted to push an endorsement of the DPK – which was rightfully rejected by union delegates. As a consequence, however, this left the KCTU with no unified position, and its constituent unions were left to endorse whatever candidates they wanted.

Had the KCTU carried on in its struggle against not only Yoon’s clique but the entire political establishment, it could have galvanised support from its radical base. Had it been equipped with a revolutionary socialist programme, even if it might have struggled to win the whole of the working class to the need for revolution, it could have won at least the advanced workers over to this perspective. The seed would have been planted for a future offensive against the whole system.

It was the masses’ hatred of Yoon, and their instinct that they must fight coup-mongering and stand up for their democratic rights that, in the absence of a class struggle alternative, left the political situation wide open for the Democrats to exploit, and win by virtue of being the ‘lesser evil’.

Lee Jae-myung’s triumph has been celebrated in bourgeois media at home and abroad as a ‘return to political stability’ and ‘democratic norms’ after a period of uncertainty following Yoon’s self-coup attempt. While this may temporarily hold true for the bourgeois establishment, Lee’s electoral victory does not indicate any sincere mass support for him or his programme on a broader level. It is precisely the profound discontent of the masses against Yoon’s regime that has been reflected in the ballots.

The PPP itself has been mired in a deep internal crisis. Despite attempts to distance themselves from Yoon, they continue to be viewed as the party of insurrection. Additionally, flanking the PPP to the right was the Reform Party, which separated from the PPP last year, and no doubt split their vote to a degree.

Under these circumstances, Lee had no need to make radical promises. Positioning himself in opposition to the PPP was more than sufficient to take hold of this lingering mass sentiment. The results should be of no surprise to anyone.

The dead-end of the DPK

Lee’s election is ultimately a favourable result – not for the working class, but for the capitalists.

Yoon’s desperate gambit to save his own skin only served to politically discredit the establishment and threaten the stability of the country. It has exposed the undemocratic safeguards of the bourgeois state far too blatantly for the ruling class’ liking, and mobilised thousands of workers in response.

What is required for South Korean capitalism at the present time is a reliable pair of hands that can ensure smooth sailing through troubled waters. Between the tarnished PPP and its traditional bourgeois opposition, the DPK, the latter was the clear choice for the preservation of the system.

Lee’s shallow reformism would inevitably see him reined in and integrated into the bourgeois establishment / Image: Republic of Korea, Flickr

Lee entered politics as a labour rights lawyer and built up his image as a progressive ‘left’ figurehead, branded as a “South Korean Bernie Sanders”. He quickly rose within the DPK ranks, riding a wave of support in calling for universal basic income and to curtail the power of the chaebols, the monopoly oligarchs.

But as we explained at the time, Lee’s shallow reformism would inevitably see him reined in and integrated into the bourgeois establishment. This was unambiguously apparent during his presidential election bid in 2022 against Yoon. All of his previous radical demands were buried in favour of a programme of “national unity”. This capitulation to the establishment is what partially drove Yoon’s victory in 2022, coupled with the abject failure of the previous DPK administration to deliver any of its promised reforms.

The DPK is and has always been a pro-business, pro-market, liberal establishment party. Its representatives, including Lee himself, are neck-deep in various corruption scandals.

In power, the DPK may be able to grant small reforms, such as Lee’s proposal for a reduction of the legal working week from 40 to 36 hours. But this will be nowhere near sufficient to seriously address terrible pay, intense competition for jobs and the stagnation of the economy – which is set to grow by a tremendous 0.8 percent this year. As long as the administration remains enmeshed within capitalism, which Lee is more than happy about, there is no hope of escaping the contradictions facing the wider economy.

Nor could South Korea stay above the fray of imperialist conflicts even if Lee calls for resetting the country’s overtly pro-US position that Yoon previously established. Lee imagines that through clever and pragmatic diplomacy, South Korea could enjoy good relations with China and Russia without upsetting ties with the US and Japan. But as capitalist world relations continue to break down and the relative decline of US imperialism accelerates, South Korea – a country that is dwarfed by China and the US – will find it hard not to be forced to take a side in the latter two’s competition.

Moreover, no matter which side South Korean capitalism turns to, none of the crises in society, which have incubated the enormous discontent against the system, would be resolved by diplomatic realignment.

The new presidency was a blowback against the self-serving excesses of one clique, and means, superficially, a temporary restoration of democratic decorum. But it will not bring any fundamental change for workers and youth.

For a working-class alternative

Neither Yoon, Lee, the PPP nor the DPK, represent the interests of the working class. There is clearly a political vacuum, one which only the South Korean workers and youth can fill.

A clear rift exists between the leadership and the rank-and-file of the trade unions / Image: Prachatai, Flickr

At the moment, the KCTU has taken steps in the right direction. The membership has consistently displayed militancy in mass mobilisations – apart from the indefinite strike last year, in 2016 too they took a major part in the movement to impeach former president Park Geun-hye.

The KCTU states one of their aims as “workers’ participation in the institutions of decision making in all spheres of political, social, and economic life”, and the workers seizing their “rightful place in production and historical progress”. However, this cannot be realised without a decisive break with capitalism, which is a conclusion its leadership has stopped short of drawing.

A clear rift exists between the leadership and the rank-and-file of the trade unions. What is required is an extension of the labour movement from the industrial onto the political arena. Those within the KCTU who held their line against attempts at collaboration with the DPK from the leadership should organise themselves and argue for a class-independent political programme that the whole union should adopt. This should conclude in forming a mass revolutionary party of the working class, beyond reformist politicians and parliamentary outfits.

A howling vacuum exists in South Korea, but the persistent absence of a class leadership with a revolutionary programme yielded a way for the ruling class to maintain power through the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the urgent problems faced by the vast majority of society will not only remain unsolved but worsen.

Thus the RCI invites all genuine class fighters in South Korea to join us in the struggle for workers’ democracy and the socialist transformation of society. The opportunity has never been more ripe.

Postscript: on the ‘gender war’

This election has also brought to light an important culture war element which influences South Korean politics. The polls revealed a sharp gender-based division in the votes, especially among young voters. Of male voters in their 20s, just 24 percent supported Lee. In contrast, 58 percent of women in the same age group supported him.

Similarly in this election, hard-right Reform Party candidate Lee Jun-seok, appropriating the same reactionary rhetoric as Yoon, gained notable support from men in their 20s and 30s and very little from women.

This is an expression of the culture war around gender which has become prevalent in South Korea in recent years. Yoon Suk-yeol’s victory in the 2022 election was largely credited to his weaponisation of this culture war, which he used to whip up backward sections of voters through misogynistic demagogy. Although never implemented in practice, he called for the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, signalling to young men that he would restore their “lost privileges”.

South Korea has the highest gender pay gap among registered OECD nations, at 31.2 percent. Aside from the lack of workplace opportunities for women, incidents of workplace discrimination and violence against women occur regularly, with many left unreported. On top of this, women are expected to work a job and perform domestic drudgery simultaneously.

Meanwhile, however, the situation is rapidly deteriorating for working-class men too. They are also being crushed under pressure from an increasingly competitive job market, in a stagnating economy and intense cultural environment where a well-paying corporate or public-sector job is becoming a near-prerequisite for stable living conditions and prospects of supporting a family. For instance, housing prices stand well out of reach for the average young worker and have only persisted in rising, especially in areas of Seoul where they were reported to have doubled a few years prior.

This is coupled with the intolerable cost of living and wretched working conditions for all young workers – since 2023, average working hours stand at 156 per month, ranking 5th highest among OECD nations. For students, academic success has also become a life-or-death pursuit under South Korea’s system of severe competition in both higher education and the job market.

As a result, there is a sharp political polarisation along the gender issue. On one hand, western-style liberal feminism permeates into women's movements, which the DPK has had a track record of cynically relying on for its own political support. On the other, reactionary demagogy, such as from the PPP – which with equal cynicism identifies ‘feminism’ as the root of the problem – channels the frustrations of young men arising from their economic conditions against women instead.

Yoon’s successful galvanisation of misogynistic sentiment was enabled due to the disillusionment of young men that followed the preceding DPK administration’s failure to deliver on promised ‘equal-opportunity’ reforms / Image: U.S. Secretary of Defense, Flickr

The right-wing appeals to men by telling them how much better things were when women were confined to the home, whereas now they are forced to compete against women to secure such positions. To the disaffected young working men, who are castigated to endless servility, overwork, shame and humiliation by the bosses and society, the ruling class say, “The women have robbed you of your livelihoods and dignity.”

The liberals, given that capitalism cannot offer good jobs for all, appeal to working-class women with measures such as quotas for the hiring of women. To them it says, “the root of your deep suffering lies in your male peers. The solution is to get the capitalist system to deliver ‘justice’ for women.”

The right then whips this up, pointing to hiring quotas and the 18-month military conscription still in place for men only as the chief barrier to gainful employment.

Yoon’s successful galvanisation of misogynistic sentiment in 2022, for example, was enabled due to the disillusionment of young men that followed the preceding DPK administration’s failure to deliver on promised ‘equal-opportunity’ reforms, all while more and more hypocritical corruption scandals were being exposed.

Both camps are infected with the worst forms of identity politics. Neither set of ideas contains an iota of class perspectives. One side says: “we must take jobs from men to give them to women.” The other says: “we must take jobs from women and give them to men.” Both sides are deeply inflamed with class anger as both are being crushed under capitalism. But that anger is being distorted beyond recognition as workers are turned against workers. As such we reject both sides of this reactionary culture war: the openly reactionary right but also the liberal feminists!

The principal root of women's oppression, and the oppression of workers in general, is the capitalist system. And at the same time, it is precisely the capitalist class which utilises divisions such as gender in order to undermine the class struggle and pit one group of workers against another.

Thus neither the DPK, nor the PPP, nor the Reform Party can offer real solutions for women or young men. It is quite clear: working-class men and women have a common interest. Most households require both a man’s income and a woman’s income to get by. Taking from one to give to the other is no solution. It is deliberately divisive.

The workers’ organisations must reject both and fight for well-paid jobs for all. We must unite to overthrow the capitalist system, under which this can never be achieved. Revolutionary communists resolutely stand for women’s liberation to the fullest extent, and recognise that removing the root of women’s oppression, i.e. class society itself, will also liberate men. It is only through the class unity of the workers undivided that we can forge a genuine path forward.