Recently, a senior delegation of South Korean monks openly condemned President Lee and the DPK as “dictators like Hitler or Stalin” and explicitly declared that “the free Republic of Korea [faces] destruction” as a consequence of President Lee’s regime.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that President Lee and the DPK have long been plagued by accusations of fascism and dictatorial politics, President Lee has consistently refused to earnestly address any allegations of wrongdoing, and, instead, has attempted to explain away the DPK’s political transgressions as a necessary result of former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s so-called “self-coup.”
And yet, it is clear that President Lee is nothing if not Asia’s most recent left-wing dictator, and that the DPK is unequivocally the most urgent and unrepentant enemy to all democracy in South Korea.
Firstly, the Democratic Party of Korea has undermined and violated the fundamental human rights of the South Korean people.
For example, the DPK has precluded South Koreans from their ‘right to free speech’ and ‘right to political assembly’. In fact, since the outset of President Lee’s regime, the DPK government has “constrict[ed] free speech on social media platforms,” and launched false investigations into innocent citizens “for nothing more than lawful assembly and free expression.”
Furthermore, the Democratic Party of Korea has introduced various official bills and legislation that explicitly “threaten free speech” in South Korea, in an effort to suppress right-wing commentary in South Korea and “shield DPK candidate[s]” from political criticism.
Even the United States of America’s renowned former Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice, Morse Tan, recently condemned the Democratic Party of Korea’s enthusiastic abuse of the Korean people and their fundamental human rights, stating that President Lee Jae Myung’s “attack on freedom has been ferocious.”
Moreover, the Democratic Party of Korea has brutally persecuted and terrorized its right-wing political opponents.
For instance, the Democratic Party of Korea has abused the authority and powers vested in its newly minted ‘Special Counsel’, in order to raid the headquarters of its political rivals, the People Power Party (PPP), with impunity. In fact, the DPK has openly broached legislation that seeks to dissolve the People Power Party entirely.
In addition, the DPK has falsely arrested South Korea’s previous President, Yoon Suk Yeol, and charged him with fostering an ‘insurrection’. Furthermore, the DPK has imprisoned the aging Yoon within a tiny, sweltering, cell, deprived him of medicine, and subjected the former President to depraved and “inhumane conditions.”
Incredibly, Kim Byung-kee, the Democratic Party of Korea’s Floor Leader in South Korea’s National Assembly, has even hinted that the DPK intends to jail Yoon indefinitely, stating “Even if [Yoon] lives, he must live in prison, and even if he dies he must die in prison.”
Finally, the Democratic Party of Korea is fraught with corruption and even its most senior officials have repeatedly violated South Korea’s laws and flagrantly abused the Korean nation’s fundamental democratic processes.
For example, South Korea’s Supreme Court recently convicted President Lee himself of violating public election law during his 2022 presidential campaign. Sadly, President Lee is also currently attempting to impose various controversial reforms upon South Korea’s Supreme Court, in a brazen effort to forcibly overturn his own aforementioned conviction and transform South Korea’s justice system into a partisan instrument of the DPK.
Furthermore, throughout former President Yoon’s tenure, the DPK filed dozens of baseless impeachment motions against numerous senior officials, such as the Minister of the Interior, the Chairman of the Communications Commission, the Chair of the Board of Audit, and the Minister of Defense, respectively, in a disgraceful effort to cripple South Korea’s fundamental democratic processes and forcibly advance its own abortive political agenda.
In addition, President Lee and the Democratic Party of Korea openly manufactured “a false narrative of insurrection” and manipulated South Korea’s political apparatus, in order to impeach and arrest former President Yoon. In fact, after the Democratic Party of Korea wrongfully impeached President Yoon, the DPK promptly exploited its ill-gotten “impeachment power” in order to “destabilize the interim government of Acting President Han Duck-soo.” and, ultimately, coerce South Korea towards its tainted 2025 election and current DPK government.
Unfortunately, it is clear that President Lee is Asia’s most recent left-wing dictator, and that the DPK is unequivocally the most urgent and unrepentant enemy to all democracy in South Korea.
More importantly, despite the fact that left-wing pundits and politicians have long attempted to misconstrue bigotry, authoritarian politics, and fascism as the exclusive property of conservatives and right-wing ideologies, such as populism, it is readily apparent that human rights violations and undemocratic politics are by no means the exclusive property of The Right.
Rather, President Lee is himself a living testament that left-wing politicians and political actors routinely seek to violate the fundamental human rights of their people and controvert democracy’s most fundamental processes, in order to accomplish social justice, abject diversity, and their own personal, ‘progressive’, ideal.
Alas, even the DPK’s democratic aspirations exhaust themselves well within the confines of its moniker.
Originally published on October 28th 2025 in The Washington Times