The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan suffered a crushing defeat in Sunday’s Lower House elections. After the LDP with 247 seats in the lower chamber of the Diet lost 56 seats in this election, it failed to grab a majority – 233 seats – in the 465-member lower house. Even including the 24 seats the LDP’s coalition partner Komeito won in this election, the two parties have only 215 seats – the worst since 2009, when the LDP surrendered power to the Democratic Party. The LDP has failed to secure a majority on its own for the first time since 2009.

The overwhelming defeat of the governing party poses a serious challenge to the Shigeru Ishiba cabinet. The prime minister will have to bear the responsibility for holding a general election without expecting a defeat.

The LDP’s election loss can be attributed to the slush fund scandal involving some factions and people’s deepening disappointment about reductions in their real income from high inflation. Former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also had to step dow
n because he couldn’t overcome a steep fall in his approval ratings. Without public support, any government cannot survive.

We hope the Yoon Suk Yeol administration takes the LDP’s landslide defeat as a chance to reflect on itself. With only less than two weeks left before the halfway point, President Yoon’s approval rating plunged to 20 percent, sounding loud alarms over his remaining term. His approval rating among people in their 40s – the core of the population – is only 6 percent.

In Japan, which adopts the parliamentary system, the prime minister can turn the tide by dissolving the legislature and staging a general election. But in Korea, only the president can change the course. That is possible only when the president listens to a precise diagnosis of the current situation and gets closer to the people. Without such determination, he cannot block his abysmal approval ratings from falling further.

The government must carefully manage the Korea-Japan relations to avoid worsening them. The rise of the
Constitutional Democratic Party led by former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda notorious for his anti-Korean stance – coupled with the current prime minister’s possible concentration on domestic politics – won’t help brighten the two countries’ ties in 2025, the 60th year of normalizing their diplomatic relations. On top of the risk, North Korea’s dispatch of troops to Russia and the results of the Nov. 5 presidential election in the United States also can shake the security in Northeast Asia. The government must do its best to manage its relations with Tokyo and Washington.

Source: Yonhap News Agency