Kim Min-seok Wins Democratic Party Chair in Ranked-Choice Runoff

Former Prime Minister Kim Min-seok has been elected as the leader of the ruling Democratic Party (DP) in a ranked-choice runoff, defeating outgoing party chair Jung Chung-rae.

The election was held after Kim fell short of a first-round majority under the combined count of member, delegate, and opinion-poll votes, triggering the party's ranked-choice runoff for the first time in its history.

Kim won 54.08 percent of the final vote, while Jung took 45.92 percent. The new DP leader will oversee candidate nominations for the general elections in April 2028.

The race was widely seen as a test of how firmly President Lee Jae-myung has consolidated control over the DP since assuming presidency in 2025. The contest has been described as a proxy fight between the pro-Lee camp and a harder-line faction associated with Jung.

Kim's campaign speech in July framed the race as a referendum on whether the party would fully back Lee's agenda. Kim's strongest results came in Gwangju and the Jeolla provinces and the greater Seoul area after Lee announced an 800 trillion won ($564 billion) semiconductor investment package for the Gwangju region.

However, Lee's approval rating slipped to 44 percent in recent days, the lowest since he took office, according to local media reports.

### How the Election Unfolded

The DP's first party chair race under the new one-member, one-vote system was held with dues-paying members and delegates accounting for 70 percent of the weight, and a national opinion survey making up the remaining 30 percent.

The public opinion poll was conducted over two days by two polling firms among a combined 4,000 respondents reached by automated phone survey, with participation limited to Democratic Party supporters and independents to screen out backers of the conservative opposition.

Because no rule guarantees a majority winner, the party adopted ranked-choice voting: if no candidate clears 50 percent on first-preference ballots, the last-place finisher is eliminated and votes are reallocated by second choice.

The voting took place in waves, with results announced region by region. Voting opened August 1 in Chungcheong, where Kim narrowly outpolled Jung, 45.05 percent to 44.61 percent, with Song a distant third at 10.34 percent.

| Region | Kim Min-seok | Jung Chung-rae | Song Young-gil | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Chungcheong | 45.05% | 44.61% | 10.34% | | Busan, Ulsan, South Gyeongsang Province | 43.85% | 46.65% | 9.50% | | Jeju, Incheon | 47.75% | 42.08% | 10.17% | | Gangwon Province, Daegu, North Gyeongsang Province | 48.54% | 44.40% | 7.06% | | Gwangju, Jeolla provinces | 57.54% | 32.65% | 9.81% | | Seoul, Gyeonggi Province | 46.66% | 46.28% | 7.06% |

The race turned decisively in Kim's favor on August 15 in Gwangju and the Jeolla provinces, the party's largest single bloc of members at roughly a third of the total.

Kim won 57.54 percent there to Jung's 32.65 percent, pushing his cumulative share past 50 percent for the first time. The final regional round, in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province on August 16, went to Kim by a far tighter margin, 46.66 percent to 46.28 percent, pulling his majority back below 50 percent and leaving him with an overall cumulative lead of 49.91 percent to 41.51 percent heading into August 17 and the party's national convention.

### Supreme Council Race

Alongside the chair, on August 17 the DP seated five Supreme Council members from an eight-candidate field. Voters picked two of the eight names and the five candidates with the highest combined vote share won seats, with the top finisher becoming senior Supreme Council member.

Five of the eight candidates were aligned with the pro-Lee camp, while three were aligned with Jung's camp. Late on August 16, two lower-ranked pro-Lee candidates, Im Mi-ae and Kim Young-ho, dropped out of the race and threw their support behind Kim Yong, in an effort to consolidate pro-Lee votes and prevent Jung's camp from taking three of the five seats.

The final results confirmed a split verdict. Choi finished first by vote share and will serve as senior Supreme Council member, followed in order by Park Sun-won, Seo Mi-hwa, Lee Sung-yoon and Han Min-soo. Three of the five seats went to lawmakers aligned with Jung while only two went to pro-Lee lawmakers.

### Who Is Kim Min-seok?

Kim, the new leader of the DP, belongs to South Korea's so-called 86 generation, student activists who led the pro-democracy movement of the 1980s and later entered mainstream politics. As Seoul National University's student council president, he was recruited into politics in 1990 by the late President Kim Dae-jung and joined the merger of Kim's party with the New Democratic Alliance Party, earning him the nickname "first son of democratic unification.