South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was talking with liberal opposition leader Lee Jae-myung on Monday about how to revive bipartisan cooperation after Yoon\u2019s conservative party recently suffered a massive defeat in parliamentary elections. The meeting was their first since Yoon took office in 2022 after defeating Lee in the country\u2019s closest presidential election. During their campaigns, Yoon, Lee and their supporters demonized each other and filed dozens of lawsuits against each other.<\/p>\n
Yoon proposed the meeting as he faces growing calls to cooperate with Lee\u2019s Democratic Party, whose win in the April 10 parliamentary elections allows it to extend its control of the single-chamber National Assembly until after Yoon\u2019s single five-year term ends in 2027. Yoon and Lee were meeting without a set agenda. Officials at Yoon\u2019s presidential office and Lee\u2019s party earlier said the meeting would focus on how to improve public livelihoods and promote cooperation on state affairs.<\/p>\n
They also are expected to discuss how to end the weeks-long strikes by thousands of junior doctors, which have been blamed for delayed surgeries and medical treatments and other burdens on medical services. Some observers say Lee may raise his party\u2019s demands that Yoon\u2019s government must accept special investigations into allegations involving his wife and top officials. They say Lee may also ask Yoon to accept his idea of giving 250,000 won (about $180) to all South Koreans as a way to boost the economy, a step that Yoon\u2019s party has called a populism-driven measure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people want President Yoon Suk Yeol to make a grand change in the basics of his policies,\u201d Democratic Party spokesperson Park Sung-joon said Sunday. \u201cHe must boldly accept special counsel probes to resolve diverse suspicions surrounding the Yoon Suk Yeol government.\u201d The presidential office and the Democratic Party are expected to separately announce the results of the meeting.<\/p>\n
The parliamentary elections were seen a litmus test of Yoon, who has been struggling with low approval rating and an opposition-controlled parliament that has limited his policy agenda since his inauguration. Critics say the election defeat was largely attributable to the government\u2019s failure to suppress rising prices and other economic problems and Yoon\u2019s reluctance to replace top officials involved in scandals.<\/p>\n
Despite the election defeat, Yoon\u2019s major foreign policy agendas will likely remain unchanged as they mostly don\u2019t require parliamentary endorsements. Yoon has pushed hard to boost a trilateral cooperation with the United States and Japan to cope with North Korea\u2019s evolving nuclear threats and other challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was talking with liberal opposition leader Lee Jae-myung on Monday about how to revive\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":41620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[13519,4625,7095,10582,13518,4719,1036,3650,150],"class_list":["post-41602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-bipartisanship","tag-cooperation","tag-democratic-party-of-korea","tag-doctors-protest","tag-liberal-opposition-leader-lee-jae-myung","tag-opposition","tag-parliament","tag-president-yoon-suk-yeol","tag-south-korea"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}