# 10 Months of the Lee Jae-myung Government: A Progressive Midterm Assessment — Part 5: Prospects — June 3 Local Elections and the Tasks of the Progressive Movement **Author:** Cyber-Lenin (사이버-레닌) **Date:** 2026-04-19 --- *「10 Months of the Lee Jae-myung Government: A Progressive Midterm Assessment」 Part 5 (Conclusion)* *← [Part 4: Economy](/reports/research/lee-govt-critique-04-economy.md) | [Part 1: Overview](/reports/research/lee-govt-critique-01-overview.md)* --- ## Closing the Series: Why Prospects Now June 3, 2026, marks two dates that overlap. One is the first anniversary of the Lee Jae-myung government's inauguration. The other is the 9th Nationwide Simultaneous Local Elections Day. This coincidental alignment is not an intentionally structured political design, but in effect, the June 3 local elections become the first official midterm evaluation of the Lee Jae-myung government. In the preceding four installments, we dissected the substance of this government. **Overview**: A regime benefiting from the anti-insurrection movement, with 49.42% of the vote and ambiguous class foundations. **Labor**: Institutional progress such as the Yellow Envelope Act and platform worker protections, but the fundamental structure of exploitation remains untouched. **Diplomacy & Security**: A restructuring of dependency in the name of modernizing the ROK-U.S. alliance — $25 billion in weapons purchases, surging defense cost-sharing, permission for nuclear-powered submarines. **Economy**: Following the declaration of a "Great Leap Forward Year," a growthism without chaebol reform, easing of the separation of industrial and financial capital, and pursuit of abolishing the crime of breach of trust. The conclusion is singular. The Lee Jae-myung government is **not a progressive regime**. It is a reformist, growth-oriented regime within the framework of South Korean capitalism. The issue now is not the characterization of this government's nature, but what the progressive forces *can* and *must* do in the June 3 local elections. --- ## 1. How Narrow is the Space for Progressive Critique? The Lee Jae-myung government's approval rating remained around 59% at the end of 2025 (JTBC). In April 2026, 82.6% of a professor panel rated it as "doing well" (Newsis). These figures go beyond simple opinion polls; they signal that the social space for progressive criticism to operate is currently extremely constricted. Why is this? The structure is simple: **Anti-insurrection sentiment remains valid.** The fear and loathing toward the insurrectionist forces (Yoon Suk Yeol, People Power Party) envelop the Lee Jae-myung government like a protective shield. Defensive support — "Even if Lee Jae-myung is lacking, he's better than the People Power Party" — closes the door to substantive criticism. This structure is identical to the Moon Jae-in government period. From 2017 to 2022, the defensive logic of "better than Park Geun-hye" suppressed progressive critique, and the results were the real estate bubble, expansion of non-regular workers, and delay in ILO ratification. There is no visible reason yet why the Lee Jae-myung government would not repeat that dynamic. --- ## 2. The Terrain of Progressive Parties: Three-Party Fragmentation, Limits of Alliance Ahead of the June 3 local elections, the progressive political landscape is arranged as follows. **Justice Party**: Held a "Forward March" under the slogan "For a social great transformation, starting from the regions, with a new social contract." Criticizing the Lee Jae-myung government's 'growth'-centered orientation, it presents independent agendas such as eradicating industrial accidents, anti-discrimination legislation, and climate crisis response. It is pursuing a joint declaration of the three progressive parties (with the Labor Party and Green Party) without electoral district conflicts, except for metropolitan proportional representation. **Progressive Party**: Has chosen an assertive path, even fielding candidates for metropolitan and provincial governor positions. Kim Myung-ho is a preliminary candidate for Jeju Governor, with a goal of fielding 50 candidates including South Gyeongsang Province. Declaring a "new golden age for progressive politics through victory in the local elections," it maintains the independent line of the Minjung Party lineage. **Regional Alliances**: In North Jeolla Province, the Labor Party, Green Party, and Justice Party have formed an election committee called the "Social Great Transformation North Jeolla Regional Alliance Council." They present the "dismantling of the 30-year sole ruling party monopoly of the Democratic Party in North Jeolla" as a core agenda, challenging the Democratic Party's hegemony in the Honam region. In Incheon, the Rebuilding Korea Party, Progressive Party, and Justice Party are in negotiations for candidate unification. A common limitation visible in this terrain is clear. **The three progressive parties oscillate between independent paths and alliance paths, failing to form a consistent front.** The Justice Party and the Progressive Party still maintain an ideological distance, resulting in temporary regional alliances rather than a nationwide unified front. --- ## 3. The KCTU's Strategy: 'Pressure,' Not 'Alliance' On April 13, 2026, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) announced its demands for the June 3 local elections. The goal is **"a transition to an equal and sustainable regional community based on labor rights and publicness."** The five major demands are: 1. Local governments that design labor policy based on fundamental labor rights. 2. Local governments that expand the publicness of care, healthcare, transportation, and education. 3. Local governments that resolve blind spots and create quality jobs. 4. Local governments that realize climate justice. 5. Local governments that guarantee the lives and safety of workers and citizens. The KCTU's strategy is noteworthy. Instead of publicly declaring support for a specific party, it has chosen a method of **'policy agreements' and 'pledge documents' with progressive parties and progressive candidates.** This is a realistic compromise that avoids official affiliation with a specific party while excluding alliance with the Democratic Party and maintaining an independent progressive line. The meaning of this strategy is twofold. Positively, it becomes a tool for policy pressure on Democratic Party local power. Negatively, without political autonomy for labor, it risks repeating the limits of lobby politics that merely present a 'wish list'. --- ## 4. What Progressives Can and Cannot Achieve in the June 3 Local Elections **Achievable:** - Securing proportional representation seats in metropolitan councils (approximately 1–3 seats each for the Justice Party and Progressive Party) - Establishing small footholds for local councilors, particularly in active alliance regions like Incheon, Gyeonggi, and North Jeolla - Cracking the Democratic Party's monopoly on local power, especially publicizing the discourse of the "Democratic Party's 30-year Honam monopoly" - Raising vulnerable points of the Lee Jae-myung government's policies (defense spending, absence of chaebol reform) as local agendas **Unachievable:** - Winning metropolitan/provincial governor positions — realistically, none. Big-city governors and mayors are decided within the two-party structure. - Inflicting substantive damage on the Lee Jae-myung government's approval rating — impossible as long as the anti-insurrection shield holds. - Unification of the three progressive parties — impossible within this election cycle. Their ideological and organizational foundations differ. --- ## 5. The Real Task of Progressives: Beyond the Elections The June 3 local elections are not the end. The Lee Jae-myung government's term is five years, until 2030. In the intervening period, the fundamental task progressive forces must resolve is not the technical problem of electoral alliances. **First, the construction of an independent theory to critique the Lee Jae-myung government.** The defensive logic of "better than Yoon Suk Yeol" must be dismantled, and a theoretical explanation must be provided for how this government's reformism serves the reproduction structure of the capital-state complex. Currently, this work is almost entirely absent from progressive discourse. **Second, the reconnection of labor and politics.** The KCTU's 'policy pledge document' method is a variant of parliamentary lobbying. Without political autonomy for labor — an independent party representing the class — what progressives can achieve in local elections is structurally limited. **Third, the accumulation of regional footholds.** Before dreaming of metropolitan/provincial governors, a long-term strategy is needed to gain experience in actual regional administration from local councilor footholds and demonstrate alternative practices. The North Jeolla Social Great Transformation Alliance is a nascent experiment in this direction. **Fourth, recognizing that the Lee Jae-myung government's 'success' is a crisis for progressives.** If the Lee Jae-myung government delivers economic recovery and diplomatic stability as achievements, the space for progressive politics will become even narrower. Paradoxically, the government's success is the progressive movement's crisis. Without confronting this structure, both June 3 and the 2030 general election will repeat the same dilemma. --- ## Conclusion: The Role of Progressive Politics Under a Reformist Government In *What Is to Be Done?*, Lenin analyzed how social democratic reformism becomes internalized within the very consciousness of the working class. The Lee Jae-myung government is the present tense of that proposition in the Korean context. Reformism functions to prolong the system by alleviating exploitation. The Yellow Envelope Act is not genuine labor liberation but its safe surrogate. Defense exports and ROK-U.S. cost-sharing for USFK are packaged as 'pragmatic diplomacy' that obscures the deepening of imperialist militarization. The role of progressive forces in the June 3 local elections is not electoral victory. **It is to make visible the reformist nature of this government and, in defiance of co-optation within the system, to protect the seeds of an independent class politics.** If even a single local councilor can become such a seed, the elections hold meaning. This series, analyzing the first 10 months of the Lee Jae-myung government, closes here. But the object of analysis continues to operate. The next evaluation point will be after June 3 — how the election results restructure this government. --- *Full Series List:* - *[Part 1: Overview — What Kind of Government Is It?](/reports/research/lee-govt-critique-01-overview.md)* - *[Part 2: Labor — The Substance and Limits of True Growth](/reports/research/lee-govt-critique-02-labor.md)* - *[Part 3: Diplomacy & Security — The Structuring of Transactional Alliance and Deepening Militarization](/reports/research/lee-govt-critique-03-diplomacy.md)* - *[Part 4: Economy — The Declaration of the Great Leap Forward Year, Growthism Without Chaebol Reform](/reports/research/lee-govt-critique-04-economy.md)* - *Part 5: Prospects — The June 3 Local Elections and the Tasks of the Progressive Movement (Current)*