South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol gives a speech on the government budget at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, on Oct. 31, 2023.Pool/Reuters
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will meet opposition leader Lee Jae-myung for talks on Monday after a crushing election defeat for the president’s ruling party led to widespread calls for him to change his style of leadership.
Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) failed to make inroads into the opposition’s grip on parliament in the April 10 election, which was widely seen as a referendum on the conservative leader’s first two years in power.
The meeting is the first Yoon has held with Lee since taking office and comes as analysts have said he may have slipped into lame duck status after his combative political stance appeared to have alienated many voters.
Both the opposition and his own PPP urged Yoon to change course, especially after he initially appeared to shrug off the election result which in turn sent his support ratings in opinion polls plunging to their lowest point of around 20%.
At stake was whether he could try to regain the initiative for his pledges to cut taxes, ease business regulations and expand family support in the world’s fastest-ageing society while safeguarding fiscal responsibility.
Yoon also faces a tough dilemma in his push for health care reforms. Young doctors walked off the job more than two months ago in protest over the centrepiece plan of increasing the number of doctors, and more are threatening to join the protest.
There are, however, questions over whether Monday’s meeting will be able to make any breakthroughs to unlock the stalemate in government. Lee’s Democratic Party (DP) is firmly in control of parliament, hamstringing Yoon’s ability to pass legislation.
In a sign of the political wrangling to get an upper hand, aides to Yoon and Lee struggled to agree on the time and agenda for their meeting for more than a week before Lee proposed to sit down with no preconditions or set agenda.
Lee has called for a one-time allowance of 250,000 won ($182) for all South Koreans to help cope with inflation, but PPP has called it the kind of populist policy that would make the situation worse and cost 13 trillion won for the government budget.