Creation: Proletarian Liberation Struggle Association Political Economy Group
On June 3, 2025, South Korea’s Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung won the 21st South Korean presidential election and was sworn in the following day. The whole world was not surprised by this result: before the election results were announced, international media such as AFP, Reuters, and AP generally believed that Lee Jae-myung would win the presidential by-election by a large margin. Since early December last year, when former South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol launched an attempted military coup, the Korean people have repeatedly erupted into large-scale protests demanding Yoon Suk-yeol’s immediate resignation and arrest, plunging various bourgeois right-wing parties into chaos. Meanwhile, Lee Jae-myung, leader of South Korea’s largest opposition Democratic Party and former presidential candidate representing bourgeois democratic factions, quickly became the focus of South Korean politics. He personally went to the National Assembly to vote to end martial law during the coup, attended various political activities within South Korea multiple times after the coup, publicly comforted the families of victims of last year’s plane crash, and has seemingly regarded himself as South Korea’s de facto president. Lee Jae-myung’s victory did not surprise any media in any country, but if we examine the “rightful” victory he achieved, we find the outcome somewhat bleak—in this presidential election, the highest voter turnout in South Korea since the 21st century, reaching 79.4%, Lee Jae-myung received 17,287,513 votes, with only 49.42% of the vote share. This result not only fell short of the over 50% predicted by bourgeois polling agencies but was also slightly below the combined vote share of the two major bourgeois right-wing parties, the People Power Party and the Reformation New Party (49.47%), far from the “overwhelming victory” initially expected. After the heavy blow of the military coup’s failure, why are the bourgeois right-wing forces in South Korea still so strong? To understand this, we need to analyze the class struggle situation in South Korea before and after Yoon Suk-yeol’s removal.
After the Korean people thwarted Yoon Suk-yeol’s attempted military coup, everything seemed to be developing in favor of bourgeois democratic factions, with increasing blows against bourgeois right-wing forces. First, the representative of South Korea’s bourgeois right-wing, reactionary politician Yoon Suk-yeol, has been completely politically finished, which is a heavy blow to South Korea’s bourgeois right. Yoon Suk-yeol belongs to the largest right-wing party, the People Power Party. In early December last year, Yoon Suk-yeol’s heinous attempt to restore military dictatorship was met with angry protests from the Korean people. The “martial law” was ultimately defeated, and he completely alienated himself from the people. After the coup failed, key leaders of the People Power Party, including party leader Han Dong-hoon, announced their break with Yoon Suk-yeol, almost all explicitly opposing martial law. Despite some back-and-forth, under the strong pressure of the broad masses, the South Korean Constitutional Court unanimously approved the impeachment of Yoon Suk-yeol on April 4, and he officially fell into the pile of shameful disgrace; secondly, with the top leader overthrown, the most powerful bourgeois right-wing party, the People Power Party, could not nominate a candidate truly “worthy of public trust” to represent the group’s interests. After Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment and removal, the People Power Party became a disorganized rabble, embroiled in internal disputes, and hesitated to decide on a presidential candidate. To win more support, they temporarily decided to revoke the original candidate Kim Woon-soo’s eligibility, allowing independent, politically unaligned acting president Han De-soo to quickly join the party and directly appoint him as the presidential candidate. However, Kim Woon-soo was originally a candidate through the party’s primary process, and this hasty move by the bourgeois oligarchy within the party caused great indignation among ordinary members. Ultimately, the party had to restore Kim Woon-soo’s candidacy just hours before submitting the list of presidential candidates, which was ridiculed by the public. Lastly, amid extreme chaos within the largest right-wing party, the entire South Korean right was also fighting among themselves. The third-largest political party, the Reformation New Party, founded by former People Power Party leader Lee Jun-seok, announced its independent candidacy, refusing to unite with the People Power Party. The two parties held similar political stances, which inevitably divided the right-wing voters, worsening the bourgeois right-wing electoral situation. Despite attempts by Kim Woon-soo to woo Lee Jun-seok, even proposing on the eve of voting that he would accept any conditions if Lee agreed to be the sole right-wing presidential candidate, Lee Jun-seok still insisted on refusing to withdraw and rejected any alliance. The right-wing leadership in South Korea has alienated itself from the people, and internal chaos persists. Most bourgeois media predicted that Lee Jae-myung would achieve an overwhelming victory, which is not surprising.
However, despite nearly all unfavorable factors on the bourgeois right-wing in South Korea, 49.47% of voters still cast their ballots for right-wing parties, about 17.5 million people, accounting for approximately 34% of South Korea’s total population. This high figure is perplexing; fundamentally, the solid foundation of the South Korean right-wing is entirely due to a large number of men deeply poisoned by fascist male chauvinist ideas. South Korea is a country with extremely sharp gender contradictions. As a neighboring region of China, Confucianism was introduced to the Korean Peninsula early. Even in modern times, although feudal production relations have largely disappeared, reactionary Confucian ideas demanding women unconditionally obey men still poison the Korean people. Women’s status in South Korea remains very low, facing significant discrimination in social production. As late as 2016, the gender wage gap in South Korea was still as high as 36.7%, with female employment rates 21% lower than males. Even bourgeois circles acknowledge the severity of gender discrimination; among the OECD countries composed mainly of wealthy nations, South Korea has the largest gender wage gap. In The Economist’s ranking of 29 wealthy countries based on how friendly the work environment is to women, South Korea was ranked last. Moreover, due to the increasing decay of capitalism during the imperialist era, reactionary pornographic arts flourish in South Korea, a country where Confucianism prevails. Horrific sex crimes such as “Nth Room” continue to occur, and women suffer profound oppression socially and within families. However, where there is oppression, there is resistance. South Korean women refuse to accept their oppressed status and continuously fight against capitalist patriarchy. Despite long-term slander and suppression of communist ideas due to the existence of the North Korean revisionist regime, women’s struggles have significantly improved their labor rights and social status. The fight of South Korean women after the “Cho Doo-soon” incident exemplifies this. In 2008, criminal Cho Doo-soon brutally raped an eight-year-old girl in a bathroom, leaving her permanently disabled, requiring artificial anus and urinary bags for life. Due to legal flaws in South Korea, Cho Doo-soon was sentenced to only 12 years in prison. This caused widespread anger among women in South Korea, and through persistent struggle, South Korea became the first country in Asia to allow chemical castration of sex offenders, with laws published revealing personal information of offenders and electronic anklet monitoring. In terms of labor and social rights, women workers in South Korea have repeatedly staged strikes and protests demanding equal pay for equal work, ultimately prompting the government to pass the “Equal Employment Opportunity Act,” nominally banning gender discrimination and differential treatment at work, and abolishing reactionary “head of household registration” system (which defaulted to men as heads of households to protect their inheritance rights). However, many South Korean men automatically oppose women’s liberation struggles. Economically, they remain on the brink of bankruptcy, desperately wanting to “marry and have children” to maintain their small bourgeois status. Additionally, due to rampant pornographic arts, many of these petty bourgeois men have fallen into extreme moral depravity, with many even being teenagers. In last year’s widely publicized “deepfake” cases in South Korea, many men used AI to replace faces of acquaintances into pornographic videos and even spread them online, mostly victims being friends, favorite women, or family members. Among men arrested for deepfake sex crimes, 80% were under 20, with 25% under 14. Naturally, this group of men poisoned by reactionary pornography overwhelmingly opposes women’s emancipation. They intensely hate women’s participation in social labor, higher education, and believe women “stole their degrees and jobs.” They also respond with hostility to women’s struggles against becoming household slaves, leading to a large number of so-called “involuntary singles” in South Korea. They blame “women’s discrimination against men” for their single status, claiming “feminism” is the cause of their inability to find suitable household slaves, and harbor extreme hatred for women’s liberation. A 2021 survey found that up to 79% of South Korean men in their twenties considered themselves victims of “reverse discrimination.” Politically, these men who oppose women’s liberation largely support bourgeois right-wing forces, which promote conservative and reactionary policies to cater to these morally degenerate men. Before Yoon Suk-yeol took office, he repeatedly claimed he would abolish South Korea’s “Ministry of Gender Equality,” making this backward move his “campaign promise,” gaining support from a group of petty bourgeois right-wing men. In this election, right-wing candidates also proposed various policies to attract right-wing voters. The most reactionary was Lee Jun-seok of the Reformation New Party, who has repeatedly made sexist remarks, claiming feminism “treats men as potential offenders” and is “no different from anti-Semitism and racial discrimination,” openly denying systemic discrimination against women in South Korea. During last year’s deepfake incident, he also claimed that the risks of AI in pornography were “exaggerated” and warned against “overregulation.” To incite right-wing men’s discrimination against women, he even blamed the issue of male unemployment on the “female job quotas,” demanding the abolition of the “gender quota system” that nominally gives women some job opportunities; on the other hand, in view of Yoon Suk-yeol’s “precedent,” Kim Woon-soo, the candidate representing the People Power Party, did not openly reveal reactionary views but instead advocated policies like increasing fertility subsidies. These policies seem to favor women on the surface but only target women who have already secured their household slave status, effectively appealing to men who control family affairs. Under such social conditions of increasing moral depravity among men and deliberate incitement by monopolist bourgeoisie, the right-wing vote among men in their twenties reached 77.3%, nearly 20% higher than in the previous election, with Yoon Suk-yeol’s support in this group also rising sharply.
Meanwhile, Lee Jae-myung, representing the bourgeois democratic faction of South Korea and leader of the Democratic Party, cannot propose truly beneficial policies for the people. Although Lee Jae-myung came from poverty, was forced into child labor early on, and suffered lifelong disability from a crushed left wrist during work, he betrayed his class after entering Korea Central University Law School. Against the backdrop of South Korea’s democratization movement, he chose to become a “human rights lawyer,” and in 2005, joined the predecessor of today’s Democratic Party. He was elected as mayor of Seongnam and governor of Gyeonggi Province. Despite claiming to be a “progressive,” his implemented policies—such as opening parts of city government for public activities, promoting free school uniforms and postpartum care—are mostly superficial. He claims to be from a grassroots background, to tax the chaebols, and to “cut out the perks of banquets” to implement welfare policies, but by 2017, he already had assets worth 2.6 billion won (about 13.79 million RMB), half of which were stocks of chaebols. Even his self-proclaimed “clean” image is questionable. As mayor of Seongnam, Lee Jae-myung was suspected of corruption involving collusion with developers in the “Seongnam Development Project,” with witnesses mysteriously dying during investigations, and his wife was fined 1.5 million won for hosting banquets for bourgeois politicians. Ultimately, Lee Jae-myung is also a bourgeois politician who lives off the blood and sweat of the proletariat and opposes the people. His class nature determines that he cannot propose policies that significantly improve workers’ lives in this election. Although he advocates some reformist policies, such as providing universal “national basic income” and planning to build 1 million low-cost public housing to curb real estate speculation, these policies are unlikely to substantively improve workers’ rights. Economically, Lee Jae-myung still supports Keynesian policies of state subsidies to monopolies and public works, which are favored by South Korea’s monopolist bourgeoisie. Even on the issue of promoting gender equality within bourgeois feminism, Lee Jae-myung wavers significantly. In this presidential election, he silently removed previously proposed policies such as expanding healthcare coverage for women who had abortions and providing menstrual supplies subsidies, and did not clearly advocate for stronger legislation to protect victims of sexual crimes. As early as 2022, Lee Jae-myung was mocked by then-candidate Yoon Suk-yeol of the People Power Party for his wavering and ambiguity, calling him “potentially our party’s presidential candidate.” Now, this most wavering bourgeois centrist politician in South Korea still hopes to attract those small bourgeois right-wing men who oppose martial law and favor right-wing policies, but the final result is that he has neither gained support from the small bourgeois right nor retained the support of the small bourgeois women who initially supported him. His support among women in their twenties is only 58.1%, far lower than the support the bourgeois right-wing received from men of the same age.
Ultimately, only because of the internal split within the bourgeois right-wing did Lee Jae-myung shakily ascend to his “national president” throne. After taking office, Lee Jae-myung immediately passed the “Internal Disorder Special Inspection Law,” promising to appoint independent prosecutors to thoroughly investigate Yoon Suk-yeol’s martial law coup, and the bourgeois democratic system in South Korea seems to have been stabilized. But what if, in the next election, the bourgeois right-wing no longer splits? If South Korea’s economic situation further deteriorates and more petty bourgeois right-wing men turn to the bourgeois right? Lee Jae-myung’s presidency may not be as stable as he imagines. Bourgeois democracy is merely a tool to deceive the people; Lee Jae-myung, as a bourgeois democrat, will never truly eradicate the right wing nor solve the economic crisis. As long as the capitalist system that exploits the proletariat and continually produces moral decay and gender inequality persists, and the social base supporting the bourgeois right remains deeply rooted, fascist coups attempting to restore military dictatorship will inevitably recur. Truly eradicating fascism requires the struggle of the Korean people, especially the proletariat.
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/706708021
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This news commentary has a significant problem: it talks too much about vote politics, turning it into an explanation of phenomena rather than an analysis. For example, it states that the basis for deciding the presidential candidate is votes, and then claims that the support of voters determines who gets votes, which is a tautology. It also attributes the failure of the People Power Party to bourgeois right-wing electoral strategies and organizational shortcomings. This obscures the nature of Korea’s bourgeois dictatorship, failing to point out that under Korea’s bourgeois democratic system, who becomes president is not decided by the ruled classes but by Korea’s small oligarchic conglomerates. Who they support for president depends on the class struggle situation in Korea. Lee Jae-myung’s rise to power is not because Korea’s bourgeois right-wing does not know how to vote, but because the class struggle in Korea does not allow fascism to come to power. The people cannot tolerate a bourgeois right-wing government, and Korea’s big bourgeoisie has not yet reached the point where fascist dictatorship is unavoidable, so they prefer to use a ‘horse exchange’ tactic, bringing in a bourgeois democratic representative like Lee Jae-myung to continue deceiving the people. Additionally, the class foundations of the two parties also carry a flavor of vote politics. Korea’s bourgeois right-wing’s effort to gain support from the petty bourgeois right-wing does not mean they rely on these votes to come to power; they are supported by Korea’s large capitalists. The votes of Korea’s petty bourgeois right-wing cannot determine whether they can come to power and govern. Ultimately, the policies they promote to win petty bourgeois right-wing support—such as reactionary patriarchal policies—are still supported by their behind-the-scenes big capitalists. Lee Jae-myung’s fewer votes are not simply due to efforts to win support from petty bourgeois women or compromise with petty bourgeois male chauvinists. This actually shows that the Korean people are increasingly aware of the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy and are becoming more indifferent to bourgeois democratic parties. Petty bourgeois women are also realizing in the class struggle that Lee Jae-myung does not truly support women’s liberation, so they no longer support him. Moreover, describing Lee Jae-myung’s victory as a ‘narrow victory’ does not address the crisis of Korea’s bourgeois democratic system, especially considering the recent years’ workers’ strikes, women’s protests, and various mass movements that have exposed the system’s inability to suppress these movements effectively. This system is increasingly incompatible with the needs of the Korean bourgeoisie. The nearly complete paralysis of the bourgeois democratic system during Yoon Suk-yeol’s coup is also not mentioned. Lastly, the most important point is the proletarian struggle. Although the proletariat is the core anti-fascist force in Korean society, the article fails to mention that the struggle of Korean workers against the bourgeois right-wing has led to the disintegration and division of fascist forces in Korea. Therefore, it does not clearly explain why the bourgeois right-wing parties in Korea are divided; it only states that after Yoon Suk-yeol’s fall, the bourgeois right-wing split due to electoral strategy mistakes. Under bourgeois dictatorship, election results are merely a formality; which faction of the bourgeoisie comes to power has been clear before the election, as indicated by the class struggle situation. This is true for both U.S. and Korean elections. Lee Jae-myung’s rise to power was even widely anticipated.
Indeed, the primary reason might be that when writing, I didn’t understand the class analysis method, so it was written very roughly and superficially, and many things tend to become superficial and difficult to understand deeply. However, I do have doubts about this, because election results can’t be faked. It’s not like whoever is willing to come to power can just directly ‘violate public opinion’ and be installed. Moreover, from the regional and voter demographics, it indeed reflects some social phenomena, such as young men voting for right-wing parties, with the reformist New Party’s solid support base being 20-year-old men. I personally feel that, ultimately, these voters are all part of the monopoly bourgeoisie who are happy to come to power. Their policies clearly show they are fully supported by the monopoly bourgeoisie and serve their interests, only making some minor adjustments to social policies to attract people.
The split of the bourgeois right-wing is indeed a result of the people’s struggle. After the martial law, trade unions such as the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and automobile unions conducted widespread strikes. The Constitutional Court delayed the trial of Yoon Seok-youl, leading to strike protests. Therefore, during the subsequent election, [“The People Power Party must disappear as soon as possible,” said the well-known conservative commentator Jeong Gyu-jae. “Only with its rapid disintegration can true conservatism take root.”], and earlier, Lee Jun-seok’s split was also due to the pressure from the people on the People Power Party, which led to disciplinary actions against Lee Jun-seok (related to Lee Jun-seok’s scandal), preventing him from becoming the party leader, so he established his own faction.
For example, this is entirely a narrative of bourgeois media vote politics, but in reality, these are just the results. The reason why the South Korean bourgeois right cannot unite is that most of the South Korean bourgeoisie have already abandoned them, trying to elevate Lee Jae-myung to deceive the masses. Without common interests, how can they unite? The media outlets controlled by the South Korean bourgeoisie are all condemning the right wing, and this situation clearly shows that they hope the bourgeois democratic camp will come to power.
Bourgeois elections, even if not rigged, can be arbitrarily manipulated; ballots are inherently meaningless. The bourgeoisie does not rely on parliament to maintain its rule. Among those voting for Lee Jae-myung, there are left, center, and right factions. Some people vote because they are genuinely deceived by Lee Jae-myung’s reformist policies; others vote simply because they do not want the bourgeois right-wing to come to power, thus “sacrificing small interests”—they are still just deceived masses. Additionally, some have their own personal interests, believing that Lee Jae-myung can satisfy their benefits; these people are the petty bourgeois right-wing and the bourgeoisie.
Ballots are inherently incapable of deciding anything; the idea that ballots determine political systems is a very malicious lie spread by the bourgeoisie. For example, why are so many masses deceived into voting for Lee Jae-myung? It is because the media controlled by the bourgeoisie promote Lee Jae-myung in this way. So, it appears to be “elected” through ballots, but in reality, it is still bought and promoted with money. The bourgeoisie activates its propaganda machinery, claiming that Lee Jae-myung can bring “democracy” to those who hope for democratic rights, and that he can bring “hope” to fascist male chauvinists. As a result, masses, petty bourgeois right-wingers, and bourgeois elements are deceived into voting for Lee Jae-myung.
The solid foundation of the Korean right is because the class contradictions in Korea are too sharp. The Korean bourgeoisie always wants to deploy fascists to brutally suppress mass movements. Whether it is the People Power Party or other parties, they are all bourgeois parties, not petty-bourgeois parties. The petty bourgeoisie is not an independent force in class struggle; they are merely vassals of the bourgeoisie. Since Lee Seung-man, Korea has been implementing fascist dictatorship, and it was only during Roh Tae-woo’s time that it was forced to “democratize.” Such a long period of fascist dictatorship was supported by Korea’s big chaebols; without this support, Korea would have erupted into revolution long ago.
Moreover, saying it this way seems to exaggerate the power of fascist male chauvinism and does not reveal their weakness. In fact, they are also very weak; when faced with large-scale mass movements, they scatter like birds and beasts, hiding away and dare not appear, so they also cannot save Yoon Suk-yeol from defeat.
Additionally, many of those small bourgeois right-wing groups do not support Yoon Seok-youl’s launching of a military coup, including far-right parties that openly condemn Yoon Seok-youl’s actions in initiating a military coup. Their current support for the right-wing is probably because they believe these bourgeois right-wing groups will no longer “threaten” bourgeois democracy.
Another point is that the attitude of American imperialism was not mentioned. American imperialism supported Lee Jae-myung’s victory, which is also an important reason why Lee Jae-myung was able to come to power. If American imperialism did not support this “democratically elected” president, he would also fall. In Korean history, fascist forces fell because they lost U.S. support, especially the support of the U.S. military.