The Internal War Among Pro–North Korean and Pro-Beijing Forces That Could Bring Down the Lee Jae-myung Regime
Young-il KwonEditorial Writer, News and Post
Politics is commonly understood as a contest between “our side” and the enemy. The history of power, however, tells a different story. Great concentrations of political power are often brought down far more disastrously by internal fractures than by attacks from outside. The more impregnable a fortress appears after being built through dictatorship and arrogance, the more likely it is to fall not to artillery fired from beyond its walls, but to mistrust and blades emerging from those closest to power.
The death of Julius Caesar, which marked the end of the Roman Republic, came not at the hands of a foreign enemy but at the point of daggers wielded by his fellow senators. Joseph Stalin, who exercised absolute power, feared his own associates and rivals more than enemies abroad and purged anyone who might one day threaten his rule. Mao Zedong likewise eliminated Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao, both of whom had helped him establish the Communist regime in China.
Power tends to consolidate when it is attacked from the outside. But once power must be divided, those closest to it become the first objects of suspicion. When a common enemy disappears and competition begins over the presidency, party leadership, candidate nominations, and control of the next government, yesterday’s allies become today’s rivals, and today’s rivals become tomorrow’s targets for elimination.
That same paradox of power is now being reenacted inside the Lee Jae-myung government.
Barely more than a year after taking power, the forces that rose alongside Lee Jae-myung have begun turning their weapons on one another. The battle between Jeong Cheong-rae and Kim Min-seok for control of the Democratic Party is not simply another leadership election. It is an internal war among the anti-American activist forces that have sustained the Lee government, each seeking control of the party organization, the nomination process for the 2028 general election, and the political succession after Lee Jae-myung.
The Lee Jae-myung regime is therefore beginning to fracture from within, as pro–North Korean and pro-Beijing forces inside its own power structure enter a struggle to eliminate one another.
Lee Jae-myung’s Coalition Splinters Barely a Year After Taking Power
The Democratic Party will elect a new party leader on August 17. Jeong Cheong-rae stepped down as party chairman on June 24 to prepare for a bid for another term. Kim Min-seok, who served as the first prime minister of the Lee Jae-myung government, also left office and declared his candidacy for party leader on July 6. On the first day of his campaign, Kim attacked Jeong’s leadership over the previous year as an example of the “harm caused by self-serving politics” and called instead for “perfect unity between the party and the government.”
The phrase “perfect unity between the party and the government” may sound reasonable. Its actual meaning is far more dangerous. Kim Min-seok, Lee’s first prime minister, is seeking control of the ruling party so that the Presidential Office can directly dominate not only the executive branch but also the Democratic Party’s organization, legislative agenda, elections, and candidate nominations.
