Moonsoo

May 28 (UPI) — The People Power Party’s Kim Moon-soo, 73, is the main conservative candidate in South Korea’s June 3 snap presidential election. The former labor minister trails his liberal opponent, Democratic Party frontrunner Lee Jae-myung, by a large margin in most polls.

Kim emerged as a prominent labor and democracy rights activist in the turbulent 1970s, and as a former labor activist, he began his career in politics when he participated in the founding of the progressive People’s Party in 1990. Watching the collapse of communist countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he abandoned his “leftist view of labor” and shifted to a moderate stance, expressing the view that resources should be concentrated on growth while also improving welfare. He ran as a candidate for the conservative New Korea Party in 1996 and became a three-term lawmaker representing Bucheon. He was later elected governor of Gyeonggi Province in 2006 and won a second term in 2010. Kim served as Labor Minister under impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol in 2024-2025.

The PPP candidate was born in Yeongchon, North Gyeongsang Province, as the sixth of seven children in an impoverished household. He was able to enter business school at Seoul National University in 1970 but was expelled for his anti-dictatorship activism during the regime of President Park Chung-hee.

Kim found factory work after expulsion and grew deeply involved with the labor activist movement as well, rising to national prominence and facing arrest and torture by the authoritarian government during the 1980s. He eventually finished his university degree in 1994, some 25 years after first enrolling.

After a turn to the conservative camp in 1994 under the invitation of then-President Kim Young-sam, himself a former activist who moved rightward, Kim saw his political star rise as a lawmaker and then Gyeonggi governor. In 2014 he announced that he would not run for re-election, ending his term as Gyeonggi governor. Instead, he supported his party colleague Nam Kyung-pil. Nam was elected governor that year but lost to the Democratic Party candidate four years later, who was none other than Lee Jae-myung.

Kim re-emerged in the Yoon Suk Yeol administration and maintained support for Yoon even as some other primary candidates called for distancing the party from the impeached president.

He was the sole cabinet member who refused to stand and apologize for Yoon’s martial law attempt in a session at the National Assembly and won the strong backing of hardline loyalists who opposed impeachment.

Kim won the PPP nomination on May 3, but faced a late push by party leadership to replace him with former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who some saw as a less polarizing figure with a better chance of defeating Lee. An all-member meeting finally confirmed Kim as their candidate a week later.

Kim has outlined a conservative vision for the country in his campaign, touting business-friendly economic policies and a hard line against threats from North Korea, as well as promising to push through sweeping political and anti-corruption reforms.

Economy

Kim said he would be a “job president” in his acceptance speech for the PPP nomination in May, and has promoted business-friendly policies such as economic deregulation and tax relief. Like his opponent, Lee Jae-myung, Kim has vowed to make South Korea an AI powerhouse, promising to establish a $71 billion public-private fund to invest in infrastructure and technology development in the sector.

Other pledges include child support grants and housing assistance to help address South Korea’s declining birthrate crisis, and the expansion of nuclear power as an energy source.

If elected, Kim has vowed to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump immediately to negotiate tariffs and resolve trade issues.

Defense and Foreign Policy

In his nomination acceptance speech, Kim vowed to be a “security president who eliminates the fear of North Korea’s nuclear weapons,” and has signaled a hard-line stance similar to the approach taken by Yoon Suk Yeol.

He has called for strengthening extended deterrence capabilities under the U.S.-South Korea military alliance, including the potential of redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.

“If we can arm ourselves with nuclear weapons within the scope of the South Korea-U.S. alliance, we should do it,” Kim said during a presidential debate on May 28.

Kim has also called for enhancing South Korea’s own defense capabilities and has pledged to develop nuclear-powered submarines.

On May 26, Kim’s key foreign policy advisers said that the candidate would seek engagement with North Korea while maintaining a demand for its complete denuclearization, and would “proactively support” a summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Government Reforms

Like his opponent Lee Jae-myung, Kim has proposed transitioning from South Korea’s current single five-year presidential term to a two-term, four-year presidency. He has promised to cut down his own term to three years if elected, allowing presidential and general elections to synchronize in 2028.

In the wake of the martial law crisis under Yoon, Kim has proposed decentralizing executive power and removing presidential immunity. He has also been deeply critical of the current Democratic Party-led parliament, calling it the “worst National Assembly dictatorship in history” over its opposition to Yoon and numerous impeachment motions. Kim has said he would slash the number of lawmakers by 10% and relocate the National Assembly to the administrative city of Sejong.

Kim has maintained a connection with Yoon and received the impeached president’s endorsement on May 17.

He issued an apology for the “suffering” caused by Yoon’s martial law attempt earlier in May and called it an “extreme measure” that he would not look to employ.

“If I become president in the future, I will not use martial law,” he said while campaigning. “I will complete democracy through dialogue, persuasion and patience to resolve any issues between the ruling and opposition parties.”

He also met two former conservative presidents, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye and received their support.

SEOUL, May 26 (UPI) — Conservative South Korean presidential candidate Kim Moon-soo would ”proactively support” a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un if elected, a key policy adviser said Monday.

Kim Hyung-suk, co-chair of the Unification and Foreign Affairs Committee of the candidate’s People Power Party, made the remark during a briefing with foreign media in downtown Seoul. South Korea’s presidential election will be held on June 3, with Kim trailing liberal frontrunner Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party in polls.

“If Mr. Trump seeks to re-engage with Kim Jong Un on talks of denuclearization [and] addressing peace and prosperity issues on the Korean Peninsula … [Kim Moon-soo] will proactively support the communication between the two,” Kim said.

“We [would] respect and highly approve of their communications,” he added.

The White House has not prioritized North Korea in its foreign policy agenda since Trump returned to office, but there has been speculation that the president may look to revive nuclear negotiations with Kim Jong Un.

During Trump’s first term, the two leaders held a pair of high-profile summits and met briefly a third time at the DMZ. The diplomatic outreach failed to result in a nuclear deal, however, and Pyongyang has accelerated the development of its weapons programs in the intervening years.

At the beginning of April, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that there has been communication with North Korea and that the two sides would “probably do something at some point.”

“I have a very good relationship with [Kim],” Trump said. “I think it’s very important. He’s a big nuclear nation and he’s a very smart guy.”

Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated dramatically in recent years, with Pyongyang officially designating the South a “hostile state” in a 2024 constitutional revision.

On Monday, Kim Hyung-suk said that a Kim Moon-soo administration would aim to “normalize inter-Korean relations” while maintaining Washington and Seoul’s longtime stance calling for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.

“The Kim Moon-soo administration will consistently strive for a phased and actionable solution for the complete denuclearization of North Korea in close cooperation with the Trump administration,” he said.

The policy adviser added that Kim is eager to engage with North Korea and is making outreach plans with or without involvement from the Trump administration.

“As we know, President Trump is very busy these days due to a long list of different engagements internationally,” Kim said. “I don’t think we can wait years and years for the two to meet. In order to bring North Korea to the table, we are going to actively pursue communication, whether it be three-party or two-party.”

Kim’s opponent in the election, Lee Jae-myung, also voiced his support for engaging with North Korea while on the campaign trail Monday, but called the prospect of his own summit with Kim Jong Un “very difficult.”

Lee announced a campaign pledge on Monday to improve inter-Korean communications, including restoring a military hotline that North Korea has not responded to since 2023, but said that a face-to-face meeting with Kim would pose a challenge.

“It is something that should obviously be done, but I am not sure if it would be possible,” he told reporters at Ajou University in Suwon, south of Seoul. “It would be very difficult in the current situation.”

SEOUL, May 13 (UPI) — Kim Moon-soo, the candidate from the conservative People Power Party in next month’s snap presidential election, said Tuesday that the party was not considering expelling impeached former President Yoon Suk Yeol.

“Whether former President Yoon decides to leave the party is entirely up to him,” Kim told reporters during a campaign stop in the southeastern city of Daegu.

“It’s not right for our party to tell a president to leave or not,” Kim said. “If we believe that Yoon did something wrong and demand that he leave, then the party shares responsibility too.”

Campaigning for the June 3 election opened Monday, with the PPP’s Kim set to face off against Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung, who leads by a sizable margin in opinion polls.

The race comes after months of turmoil following Yoon’s shocking martial law declaration and impeachment in December. He was finally removed from office last month by Seoul’s Constitutional Court, but the lengthy process deepened long-simmering political divisions in the country.

While some PPP primary candidates called for distancing the party from Yoon, Kim maintained his support for the president under whom he served as labor minister.

The 73-year-old was the sole cabinet member who refused to apologize for Yoon’s martial law attempt in a session at the National Assembly and won the strong backing of hardline loyalists who opposed impeachment.

On Monday, Kim offered his first public apology for the “suffering” caused by martial law.

“The public has had a difficult time since the martial law attempt,” Kim told broadcaster Channel A News. “The economy and domestic politics are difficult right now and so are exports and diplomacy.”

Calling it “one of the most extreme measures,” Kim said he did not attend the cabinet meeting where martial law was declared and would not have supported it at the time.

“If I become president in the future, I will not use martial law,” he said. “I will complete democracy through dialogue, persuasion and patience to resolve any issues between the ruling and opposition parties.”

Kim won the PPP nomination on May 3, but then faced a late push by party leadership to replace him with former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who some saw as a less polarizing figure with a better chance of defeating Lee. An all-member meeting on Saturday finally confirmed Kim as their candidate.

The Democratic Party’s Lee, who lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election by a razor-thin margin, has also faced barriers to his second bid for the presidency. He is facing a retrial on an election law violation charge that could have threatened his eligibility, but the Seoul High Court last week postponed a hearing until after the election.