Fort Towson

The Platform Party (Korean더불어시민당; Hanja더불어市民黨), also known as Citizen's Party of Korea,[1] was an electoral alliance and political party in South Korea formed in order to run for party-list proportional representation in 2020 South Korean legislative election.

History

The party was originally established by Woo Hee-jong and Choi Bae-geun as For the Citizens (Korean: 시민을위하여) on 2 March 2020, while condemning the United Future Party for forming its satellite party, the Future Korea Party, in order to obtain compensatory seats after the passage of a new electoral law.[2] It held its founding congress on 8 March and elected Woo and Choi as its co-Presidents.[3]

For the upcoming general election, the party signed a cooperation agreement with the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, as well as the other minor parties such as the Basic Income Party, Transition Korea, Let's Go! — Environmental Party and the Let's Go! — Party for Peace and Human Rights.[4][5][6][7] The next day, it changed its name to the current one.[8]

Nearly 75% of members of the Green Party Korea agreed to join the Democrat-led For the Citizens electoral alliance. However, they quickly left as soon as they joined. The Green Party left the electoral alliance after the Democratic Party's Secretary-General Yoon Ho-joong made sexist and transphobic remarks about sexual minorities. Two of the five National Assembly candidates for the Green Party Korea belong to the LGBT Community.[9]

On 25 March, the Democratic Party confirmed that they would send 7 MPs to this party.[10]

Following the 2020 elections, a process was launched to merge or absorb the Platform Party back into the Democratic Party of Korea by 15 May 2020, as its original task of obtaining new compensatory proportional seats in the election was complete.[11] On 13 May, the party declared its merge into the Democratic Party.[12]

Ideology

The party is described as "pro-Moon Jae-in" and/or "pro-Cho Kuk", supporting Cho Kuk as the Minister of Justice.[5][6][verification needed] During the cooperation agreement, several left-of-centre parties including the Minjung Party refused to join as they did not want to join an electoral alliance led by pro-Moon figures.[6]

The party's position towards same-sex marriage was not clear, as the Democratic Party did not want to include explicitly pro-LGBT parties in their alliance.[6]

Election results

Election Leader Constituency Party list Seats Position Status
Votes % Seats Votes % Seats
2020 Woo Hee-jong
Choi Bae-geun
9,307,112 33.36
17 / 47
17 / 300
2nd Government

Notes

  1. ^ 共同市民黨, 共に市民党 or other variants are translated names in Chinese and Japanese.

References

External links