The government's clock and the ruling bloc's behavior are out of sync. The Lee Jae-myung administration is only 16 months old. There is still a long road ahead, yet the ruling bloc already looks like a government in its final days. The president's approval rating has slipped below 40%, the psychological floor for governing momentum, and the contest for control within the ruling party keeps escalating.
Is this about the general election the year after next, or even the presidential race still far off? Political calculation and vested interests already appear to come first. At a time when the administration should be accumulating results, the noise is all about who holds power. It is no surprise that public anxiety and anger are growing.
Consider the property market. The government pledges to rein in home prices, but expansionary fiscal policy is pumping out money, raising the risk that funds will pile into real estate. Meanwhile, no clear remedy for the supply shortage is in sight.
Lending restrictions are producing a paradox. With loans for expensive homes blocked, prices for relatively cheaper housing outside Seoul's Gangnam area are climbing sharply. After multiple-home owners were demonized and single-homeowners were pushed to live in the homes they own, jeonse (a Korean lease system requiring a large lump-sum deposit instead of monthly rent) supply has shrunk and monthly rents have soared. Those who borrowed to buy a home to escape monthly rent now worry about rate increases, while people with ample capacity to repay complain that the lending rules amount to pulling up the ladder behind those who already have. A policy meant to curb home prices is instead adding to the burden on low- and middle-income households.
The problem is not just whether individual policies succeed. It is how much the public can believe the prescriptions the government offers. Taxes are the clearest case. From income tax to inheritance and gift taxes, inflation is delivering what amounts to a tax increase across the board, yet the government has done nothing. More frustrating is the pattern of pushing something through, then backing off once side effects appear. Even after the tax reform plan was announced, the policy has wavered, prompting complaints that people who trusted and followed the government were the ones who got hurt. With taxes, predictability matters as much as the amount owed.
Now look at the various reform measures the ruling bloc is so determined to pursue. The long-held goals of the party and the presidential office are far from the governing priorities the public wants. Amid wide controversy, the ruling bloc pushed through three judicial reform bills — allowing constitutional complaints against court rulings, creating a crime of distorting the law, and expanding the number of Supreme Court justices — and is now openly demanding that Supreme Court Chief Justice Jo Hee-de resign. Prosecution reform, which has become a sanctuary beyond criticism, has been followed up in slapdash fashion. At this point, one has to ask whether this is judicial reform or an effort to shake the judiciary.
The ruling bloc's current conduct looks less like an attempt to persuade the public than a scramble to satisfy its hard-line base. But cheers from the base do not guarantee the legitimacy of reform. The public judges by how their own lives actually change, not by what the government says it will change.
The question of whether the public can trust the government's judgment weighs even more heavily in foreign policy and security. The open clash over the war in Ukraine and the issue of captured North Korean soldiers is anything but a minor matter. Many voices worry about disadvantages in Europe's defense industry or in Ukraine's reconstruction projects.
Relations with the U.S., which bear directly on daily life, are close to walking on thin ice. There is the dispute over investment in the Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, the Coupang episode, friction in intelligence cooperation between Seoul and Washington, and disagreement over relocating a military airfield tied to construction of a semiconductor fabrication plant in Gwangju. These are volatile issues that could exact an unmanageable price if approached through the lens of domestic politics. What can be papered over at home with applause from the base may come back as a loss to the national interest on the international stage.
In the end, it comes back to politics. The public is not idle enough to dwell on the legal battles surrounding the president or on the fight for control inside the ruling party. Housing stability, jobs and their children's futures hang on the choices made by the government and the ruling party. Successful governments govern with an eye on the center. Centrists care less about ideological or partisan victory than about how much their own lives improve. Anyone who truly wants reform to succeed needs to listen to the anxieties of the center rather than the applause of the devoted base.
The abnormality the government must correct is not far away. It is the reality that the public cannot believe the government's words and policies. That is where it should start.