박근혜 전 대통령, 14년 만에 국민의힘 연찬회 등장

Former President Park Geun-hye took the podium at a People Power Party retreat for lawmakers held in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, on the afternoon of the 27th, her first appearance at an official party event since she stood as the Saenuri Party’s presidential candidate in 2012, fourteen years ago. Some commentary has already reduced the scene to a warm reunion, or cast her as a mother returning to embrace her children. That reading misdiagnoses the moment entirely. What the party put on that stage was not a party matriarch but a president elected directly by the people in South Korea’s constitutional history, and the most authoritative political ally the party has ever produced. Many of the lawmakers who rose to applaud below the podium were among those who added their votes to the tide of her 2016 impeachment. The standing ovation came without an apology, and Park is said to have smiled through it knowing exactly what it was.

Lee Jae-myung’s approval rating fell to 36.3 percent in a survey conducted August 23-24 by Election Public Opinion Fairness for Pen&Mike among 1,004 adults nationwide, the lowest of any poll since he took office. The same survey put party support at 41.7 percent for the People Power Party against 38.8 percent for the Democratic Party, within the margin of error. A strange contradiction unfolded at the same time: crisis talk erupted inside a party whose support was actually rising. As a vacuum of power opened up, rumors circulated, amplified by some media outlets, of an alliance forming outside the party linking Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, former leader Han Dong-hoon and Reform Party lawmaker Lee Jun-seok, while inside the party, lawmakers serving four or more terms were spotted organizing meetings warning that the current trajectory would doom the next general election. Analysts say the real crisis lies not in the party’s polling numbers but in the political calculations of figures anxious about their own nominations, undermining the party from within. It was in precisely this moment that Park, the movement’s most potent living symbol, appeared and drove home the need for unity around the leadership. In her remarks, she said nothing is more frightening than internal division when facing an adversary, and that unity around the leadership matters most in difficult times. She added that the nation must come before individual thinking, the public’s livelihood before narrow factional interests, and South Korea’s future before political calculation. The appearance amounted to a de facto public endorsement of the Jang Dong-hyeok leadership by a conservative elder stateswoman, and a final warning to those working to destabilize it, analysts say.

Park also said that a tiger’s stripes are on the outside, but a person’s stripes are on the inside, a line read less as a pleasantry than as a verdict. Among those applauding beneath the podium were lawmakers who once called rejecting her 2016 impeachment a disgrace, and others who switched to voting for it citing local public opinion. It was Park herself, not anyone else, who delivered the line that betrayal came from within rather than from outside. The remark reads as a warning to forces that voice concern about the next general election in public while privately prioritizing efforts to destabilize the leadership and factional calculation. Analysts describe it as squarely targeting the very structure by which those joining the destabilization effort hope to profit from it, grounded in the principle that politics is ultimately driven by organized forces, not individuals. Some in political circles read the remark less as aimed at any single figure than as a broader warning against a political culture that abandons the will of party members and supporters in favor of individual political survival. Both inside and outside the party, there is speculation that the remark will significantly weaken the standing of forces that have gone along with efforts to undermine the leadership.

In 1990, the U.S. Republican Party brought then-sitting President George H.W. Bush together with former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford at the dedication of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. Analysts say the resolve to embrace even a president driven from office by Watergate as part of the party’s own history helped build the strength of a party with nearly 170 years of history. Conservatives in South Korea have long characterized Park’s 2016 impeachment as a political impeachment driven by a fabricated frame without any substantive bribery, and have consistently argued that former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s declaration of martial law was a legitimate exercise of the emergency powers the constitution’s Article 77 grants the president. Because Yoon immediately accepted the National Assembly’s demand to lift martial law once it was raised, and because no lives were lost, voices within the conservative camp continue to argue that branding it an insurrection goes too far. There are also calls for the entire People Power Party to show respect toward Yoon, who remains held at the Seoul Detention Center, and to speak up for restoring his honor. That is why critics argue that a party that denies its own roots has no standing to represent the nation.

Park also described the special counsel investigation into the National Election Commission as an achievement won through a struggle waged jointly by the leadership and party members, declaring that trust in the electoral system is the foundation of the nation. That is widely read as pointing to the next task: restoring national sovereignty. The message that party members who have crossed the river of impeachment must now rally around Chairman Jang Dong-hyeok is said to have run through the entire retreat. Whether Park’s first appearance in fourteen years turns out to be a one-time event or the start of genuine unity around the leadership will depend on the party’s next moves, observers say. Now, they say, it is the People Power Party’s turn to answer the question of whether it can be trusted to follow her lead.