DP's Kang Deukgu: "Supports One-Person, One-Vote System... Conflict of Interest Over Applying to Current Leadership Must Be Addressed"

Deukgu Kang, Supreme Council member of the Democratic Party of Korea, stated on January 18 regarding the renewed push for the "one delegate, one rights party member, one vote system," that "my proposal is to ask, during the process of gathering party members' opinions, whether the new system should also be applied if the current leadership seeks re-election at the National Party Convention."

On Facebook that day, Supreme Council member Kang said, "My support for the one-person, one-vote system has not changed, and my position that it should be implemented immediately remains the same," expressing this view.

Deukgu Kang, member of the Democratic Party of Korea

He explained, "The only additional point I raised at the closed Supreme Council meeting on the 16th was to consider how to address potential conflicts of interest that some party members may have if the current leadership decides and immediately applies the result to themselves."

Supreme Council member Kang added, "This is not about stopping or slowing down the push for the one-person, one-vote system," and emphasized, "The one-person, one-vote system reflects the spirit of the times and is the path the Democratic Party should take. Is it wrong to try to eliminate any seeds of misunderstanding in advance to avoid damaging that spirit?"

He continued, "It is hard to understand how a proposal to strengthen legitimacy without any room for concern could be misrepresented as an attempt to undermine the one-person, one-vote system," and pointed out, "If we talk about party member sovereignty but do not even allow questions from the perspective of party members, can we truly call it party member sovereignty?"

This is interpreted as a rebuttal to Chief Spokesperson Suhyeon Park's remarks to reporters earlier that day, in which he said, "Some are pressuring Representative Jeongcheongrae not to apply the one-person, one-vote system to this leadership election if he wants to keep his promise. This disregards even the basic principles of democracy, and I would like to question whether they deserve to be Democratic Party members."

On January 16, the Democratic Party resolved at the Supreme Council meeting to pursue an amendment to the party constitution to reintroduce the one-person, one-vote system, but some Supreme Council members expressed concerns.