No soul-searching over satellite parties, just a fight over scrapping semi-proportional representation
The People Power Party on the 10th formally proposed scrapping entirely the semi-proportional representation system, which allocates legislative seats according to each party's share of the vote, intensifying a standoff between the ruling and opposition camps over the electoral system. The proposal came as criticism of 'satellite parties' — affiliated parties that a main party sets up for election purposes — flared up again after Gender Equality and Family Minister nominee Yong Hye-in of the Basic Income Party was designated to the post while keeping her proportional representation seat.
Jeong Jeong-sik, floor leader of the People Power Party, proposed opening talks on abolishing the system at the party's Supreme Council meeting held at the National Assembly that day. "It was the Democratic Party that handed nominee Yong a National Assembly seat not once but twice, and the Democratic Party that sent the Basic Income Party to the Assembly," he said. "Left-leaning parties with weak support bases latch onto the Democratic Party every election like pop-up parties — conjured up briefly for the vote and then gone," he argued. "A system that puts parties in the National Assembly not by the people's choice but by the Democratic Party's, to act in the Democratic Party's stead, must now be done away with," he asserted.
The semi-proportional representation system, introduced to help satellite parties formed by the two major camps and other minor parties gain a toehold in the legislature and to strengthen the proportionality of votes, fills 50 percent of a party's seat shortfall with proportional seats when its district seat count falls short of its national vote share, and is designed so that the more district seats a party wins, the harder it is to secure proportional seats. In the 2020 general election, the United Future Party (now the People Power Party) set up the proportional-only Future Korea Party, while the Democratic Party countered with the Together Citizens' Party; in the 22nd general election (2024), the People's Future (People Power Party) and the Democratic Alliance of Korea (Democratic Party) were likewise created.
Minister nominee Yong Hye-in, a member of the Basic Income Party, won election twice on the proportional ticket of the Democratic Party's satellite party in the 2020 and 2024 general elections, then went through the satellite party's expulsion process and returned to the Basic Income Party. Since her nomination as minister, she has drawn criticism for refusing calls to resign her proportional representation seat.
The Democratic Party did not put forward any notable official position on the matter that day.
Kim Hyung-jun, an endowed-chair professor of political science at Pai Chai University, diagnosed the situation: "While there is sympathy for the principle of proportionality, the episode involving nominee Yong broke out amid a fatal outcome that destroys accountability, the very foundation of party politics." He added, "Rather than haggling over electoral reform in a carve-up between the parties, reform proposals should be drawn up on the basis of research by a neutral body."
