Democratic Party Panel Points to Housing Policy in Seoul Election Loss

The Democratic Party of Korea's review panel on the June 3 local elections has identified housing policy as one of the reasons behind its defeat in the Seoul mayoral race, sources confirmed.

The panel has completed its assessment of the local elections, according to the party on the 21st. After circulating the draft and gathering final comments from panel members, it plans to revise some sensitive wording and report to party leader Kim Min-seok in late September, sources said.

For the closely watched Seoul mayoral defeat, the panel pointed to housing policy as a key cause, along with the campaign run by the candidate and his team and the candidate's own competitiveness. The housing policy section also covered declining poll numbers that followed social media posts by government and ruling party figures, sources said. "Rather than singling out one factor as the decisive cause of the defeat, we looked comprehensively at how various factors affected the election outcome," a panel official said.

The review also examined the impact of the contested special counsel bill on fabricated indictments, sources said. For the elections in the Honam region, the panel assessed the candidate nomination process and the competitiveness of the candidates.

Meanwhile, after co-chair Lee Jae-young, former head of the Democratic Research Institute, stepped down late last month, the panel carried out its work with its existing members without naming an additional co-chair, sources said.

"Rather than assigning blame to specific individuals, we based the review on the election results and related data," a Democratic Party official said. "Internally, the assessment is seen as having secured objectivity by comprehensively examining a range of factors, including candidate competitiveness, nominations, regional factors, and policy and campaign issues."

The open question is whether the findings will be made public. "The president stressed the spirit of unity in his address to the nation on the 18th," another party official said. "We will consider what effect releasing the report's findings would have on unity within the party."