People Power Party in Unprecedented Move to Replace Presidential Candidate: "Kim Moonsoo Canceled, Han Ducksoo Reselected"

Emergency and Election Committees Convened in Succession
Kim's Candidacy to Be Canceled, Han to Be Registered as Candidate
Party-wide Vote Scheduled for the 10th

The unification negotiations between Kim Moonsoo, the People Power Party presidential candidate, and former Prime Minister Han Ducksoo broke down at midnight on May 10 due to disagreements over a clause aimed at preventing strategic voting in public opinion polls. As a result, the People Power Party leadership convened an emergency committee meeting and began procedures to reselect their presidential candidate.

Around midnight, the People Power Party held an emergency committee meeting at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul to discuss the reselection of their presidential candidate. Shin Dongwook, the party's chief spokesperson, said, "It appears that tonight we will have to cancel Kim's candidacy and complete the process of registering a new candidate."

The party plans to hold meetings of both the emergency committee and the election committee to vote on canceling Kim's candidacy and registering former Prime Minister Han as the new candidate.

In addition, in the name of ensuring democratic legitimacy, the party plans to conduct a vote among all party members from morning until evening on the same day.

The ballot will ask members to approve or reject the nomination of former Prime Minister Han as the candidate. Once the results are determined, the emergency committee will reconvene to confirm the outcome, and on May 11, the National Committee will follow up with a majority vote among its members.

Yonhap News

Previously, the teams for Kim and Han held two rounds of late-night unification negotiations starting at 8:30 p.m. the previous day, but failed to narrow their differences over the strategic voting prevention clause.

Kim's camp argued, "It is fundamentally wrong to ask about party support when the People Power Party's presidential candidate is negotiating unification with an independent candidate."

In contrast, Han's camp insisted that a public opinion poll without the strategic voting prevention clause amounted to "a method for Lee Jaemyung, the Democratic Party candidate, to select the People Power Party candidate," and countered that, "This is an absolutely unacceptable principle."

In response, the People Power Party held a general assembly the previous day and decided that, if negotiations between Kim and Han broke down, the authority to replace the candidate would be delegated to the emergency committee.

The leadership cited Article 74-2 of the party's special regulations (which allows the emergency committee to decide on candidate selection in the event of significant cause) as the basis for this move. They interpret the fact that 87% of party members surveyed supported unification before candidate registration as a 'significant cause.'

Kim Moonsoo, the People Power Party presidential candidate, and Han Ducksoo, an independent presidential pre-candidate, are leaving after their second meeting for candidate unification at Sarangjae in the National Assembly on May 8, 2025. Photo by Kim Hyunmin