{
  "id": 1694964,
  "title": "Ex-PM Kim Min-seok elected to lead Korea’s Democratic Party",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/18/ex-pm-kim-min-seok-elected-to-lead-koreas-democratic-party",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-08-18T09:24:49.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Hankyoreh",
    "slug": "the-hankyoreh",
    "url": "https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1273476.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "On Monday, Kim Min-seok was chosen to lead the ruling Democratic Party of Korea. As the party’s leader, he will serve a two-year term. At the party’s national convention in Daejeon, Kim defeated Jung Chung-rae by a margin of 54.08% to 45.92%. This result came from votes gathered from party members and delegates, public opinion polls, and strategic regions such as Daegu and the provinces of North and South Gyeongsang, with 70% of the votes coming from dues-paying members and delegates, 30% from public opinion polls, and a 5% weighting for the strategic regions. Although Kim did not win a majority in the first round of voting, he secured the win through the ranked-choice runoff system. Under this process, voters rank their top three candidates; if no candidate receives a majority, the second-place votes from the lowest-ranked choice are redistributed and added to the other two to determine the winner. Kim, a former student council president at Seoul National University, is part of the “86 generation,” a term for those who attended university in the 1980s and were born in the 1960s. He became the youngest member of the National Assembly at age 32 in 1996 and was elected again four years later. In 2002, Kim left the party to run for Seoul mayor for the Millennium Democratic Party but lost to Lee Myung-bak, who later became president. He was later labeled a political turncoat after an incident involving a council promoting a unified presidential candidate, which impacted his political career. Kim rejoined the Democratic Party in 2016 and won a seat in the National Assembly in 2020. He has since remained a four-term lawmaker and has been closely involved with Lee Jae-myung, starting in 2022 when Kim was head of strategic planning for Lee’s election campaign committee. After Lee’s defeat, Kim continued to serve as his key aide, chair of the policy committee during Lee’s first term as party chairman, and later head of the situation room for the election campaign committee during the 2024 general elections. Additionally, Kim worked as a senior member of the Supreme Council during Lee’s second term as party chairman. During Monday’s convention, several Supreme Council members were elected, with three supporting Jung Chung-rae and two backing the president, Park Sun-won and Seo Mi-hwa.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Hankyoreh",
        "title": "Ex-PM Kim Min-seok elected to lead Korea’s Democratic Party",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/18/ex-pm-kim-min-seok-elected-to-lead-koreas-democratic-party-1696838",
        "published": "2026-08-18T09:27:49.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}