DP takes up 'dream' mantle as PPP slides into infighting nightmare

Chin Jung-kwon
 
The author is a professor at Kwangwoon University.
 
 
Politics, at its core, is the business of offering dreams.
 
In the 1970s, banners reading “$10 billion in exports, $1,000 in per capita income” hung across city streets. The government promised that once those goals were met, Korea would finally enter the era of “my car.” By today’s standards, the targets seem almost quaint. But at the time, they were enough. The public endured hardship and political turbulence, sustained by the modest promise of upward mobility. Rapid growth — even under authoritarian rule — secured conservative hegemony.
 
The income gaps that accompanied high growth could be justified through the logic of Pareto improvement. If inequality widened from “1 to 2” to “2 to 5,” the argument went, was it not still better to earn 2 than to remain at 1? Growth softened the political cost of disparity.
 
What remained was the question of assets — above all, housing. The conservative remedy for surging real estate prices was typically straightforward: Increase supply. The Roh Tae-woo government launched an ambitious project to build 2 million homes, significantly raising the national housing supply rate.
 

Hana Bank staff celebrate as the Kospi surpasses the 5,000 mark for the first time on Jan. 27. [NEWS1]

 
The political effects were profound. A generation of once-radical youth was absorbed into the system. Former revolutionaries moved into newly built apartments in the Seoul area. Some, newly attuned to capitalist instinct, eventually settled in Gangnam District, southern Seoul — once regarded as the citadel of class adversaries.
 
To own a home has long been the average Korean’s life goal. There was once a standard path: Work diligently, save, rent on jeonse — Korea’s unique lump-sum deposit lease system, under which tenants pay a large upfront deposit instead of monthly rent — win a housing lottery, take out a loan and buy. That pathway has largely vanished. In the Seoul metropolitan area — especially in the capital proper — there is little land left to build on.
 
What remains is demand suppression. But policies aimed at restraining demand often run counter to market principles, producing the opposite effect: rising prices. The Democratic Party’s (DP) defeat in the 2022 presidential election — an election many believed it could not lose — was widely attributed to the real estate policies of the Moon Jae-in administration.
   

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Today, absent the “cheat code” of parental wealth, purchasing a home through wage income alone is effectively impossible. Existing homeowners in the metropolitan area have already secured their positions. Those who missed the opportunity — or are only now entering adulthood — appear to have abandoned the dream altogether.
 
Income has stagnated. Homeownership is out of reach. Is there still a dream left?
 

Apartment complexes in Seoul are seen from the Lotte World Tower in Songpa District, southern Seoul, on Oct. 15, 2025. [NEWS1]

 
There is. If a real estate windfall is unattainable, a stock market windfall remains. The president is offering the public a new aspiration. A pledge to push the Kospi to 5,000 has become something of a secular gospel.
 
What is striking is that this shift is being driven by the DP — traditionally not the party associated with market exuberance. This suggests two things at once: that the conservative People Power Party (PPP) has lost its capacity to set the agenda, and that the DP has moved perceptibly rightward.
 
The political center the conservatives vacated has been occupied. Recent efforts by the DP to recruit policy minds associated with market-oriented institutions can be read as attempts to broaden its appeal to the right.
 
Industrial capitalism has long since given way to financial capitalism. Conservatism in Korea has struggled to adapt. Nostalgic invocations of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee — even occasional calls to rehabilitate the image of Chun Doo Hwan — suggest a lingering attachment to the era of industrialization.
 
Meanwhile, there are nearly 100 million active domestic stock trading accounts in Korea — roughly two per citizen. In effect, almost the entire population now holds equities. Workers of the past have become, at least nominally, capital holders.
 
In this new environment, the DP is recasting its traditional commitment to “equality” as “fairness in the stock market.” By elevating shareholder value and positioning itself as the defender of investors’ interests, it seeks to claim a future electorate defined less by labor than by asset ownership.
 
To be sure, the contrast between a cooling real economy and a feverish stock market is unsettling. Yet the political resonance of shareholder capitalism is difficult to ignore.
 
As the DP advances into traditionally conservative territory, the PPP appears to be moving in the opposite direction — retreating into identity politics and internal purification. Talk of excising “leftist elements” from party doctrine underscores a crisis of vision.
 
A party that has lost its future can fall back only on fealty and factional drama. In an era defined by artificial intelligence and financial markets, such politics appeals primarily to older generations.
 
Some conservatives murmur that only a crushing electoral defeat can bring renewal. Yet even in the face of national setbacks, there is little sign they would relinquish control.
 
Who, then, will articulate conservatism’s next gospel? 


This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.