After crushing defeat in the presidential election, the progressive camp is busy debating on a ‘new progressive party.’ With a concern that the progressive camp would not overcome the current far-right inclined political situation, some leftist groups like Solidarity for New Progressive, the Preparatory Committee for Cho-rok Party and some members of the DLP and Korean Socialist Party share the perception that the existing framework will not work anymore. Can their different vision and plans over the ‘second progressive party’ converge to make a new way?

One hundred have one hundred thoughts

A move to build a new party is on the rise. A tentatively named ‘Movement to New Progressive Party’ was formed within the DLP, which covers some hardliners of the equality faction including former DLP spokesman Kim Hyung-tak and the head of DLP's progressive political think-tank Cho Seung-soo, and about 50 defectors, who live in Hae-wun-dae District, Busan and conducted collective defection on January 11. They all have demanded the party to reflect and apologize the party’s history of following North Korean line, to dissolve itself and turn into a preparatory committee for ‘forming second progressive party’.

Former spokesman Kim says “We, as a third party, are to steer the emergency committee lawmaker Shim Sang-jung takes charge of in the right direction of rebuilding the party thoroughly, not to be affected by the NL faction,” and “if the emergency committee meet all the requirements we demand, we won’t try to make a new party. But if the committee resorts to a temporary expedient, we will make our own way towards a new one.” They have been known to consider making coalition with some leftist groups such as Korea Socialist Party, the Preparatory Committee for Cho-rok Party, Power of Working Class, and Labor Front to make a new progressive party.

The Korea Socialist Party is reported to claim that three parties, DLP, KSP and would-be Cho-rok Party, should open the door to public organizations and social movement groups so as to inaugurate a preparatory committee for setting up a brand new radical party.

Oh Jun-ho, acting representative of KSP, presented a careful view over the debate that without significant values and impression the would-be new progressive party will only be neglected by people as a move of political engineering, in a conference named “Finding a Way of the Progressives in an Era of Lee Administration” on Jan. 15.

Oh remarked “The new progressive party should shed off specific doctrines like nationalism, unionism, factionalism and have universal orientation and practices,” and “the party has to be popular leftist party headed forward green and peaceful nation securing human rights.”

The Solidarity for New Progressive, which has advocated a unified progressive party since the presidential election, supports this movement. Representative Lee Su-ho said “We need a new framework (=party) that meets the spirit of the times, so that we should make the progressive camp united,” in the same conference.

Lee said “We should make ourselves ‘faithful’, ‘responsible’ to the nation, making alternative plans, not negating everything.” He emphasized growing out of Marx-Leninism and North Korean socialism, restructuring the economy to Northern-Europe style economy, and establishing basic progressive agendas such as social integration and resolving social tensions.

The Cho-rok Party (preparatory committee) focuses not on the form of party but on solidarity. Joo Yo-seop, a member of the executive committee, said “the new progressives should not be a result of compromise among heads of existing groups. It should be a result of grass-rooted solidarity,” and “then it will allow existing members of official parties to join us.”

Joo added “Koreans are closing their ears to ideologies imported from foreign nations, something like red party or green party. What is important is to show people new visions of Korea, which has to be beyond existing frameworks.”

Power of Working Class emphasized labor party that will conduct anti-capitalist revolution. In a statement entitled “Alternate Failed Progressive Politics with Revolutionary Politics!” issued on January 14, they said “The DLP is simply like a small bowl. It has simply been caught in the mechanism of the bourgeois politics and failed to correspond with people’s aspiration for revolution. Its recent move towards ‘new progressive party’, as pro-North Korea line has done, also appears to confine the longing of people aspiring to revolutionize the world.”

Then they remarked “Revolutionary political movement is really like huge vessel that can contain and change the whole mechanism of the existing politics. Such a movement should get started from building a party of labor’s own.”

On the other hand, a conference named “Crisis of the Progressive Party and Prospect of Revolutionary Party Politics” will be held by progressive academic figures and activists like Kim Se-kyun, a professor of Seoul National University, on 18 Jan.

Translated by Cho Eunseok