Former Prime Minister Kim Min-seok has been elected leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea. His victory at the party convention on Monday, when he won 54.08 percent of the final vote against former leader Jung Chung-rae’s 45.92 percent, marks a consequential moment for both the party and the Lee Jae Myung administration. Kim’s victory, achieved after a runoff, was relatively narrow. It suggests that party members want a stable working relationship between the presidential office and the ruling party, but it also underscores the divisions exposed during the leadership contest. The new leadership faces an urgent task: healing a party fractured between Kim’s pro-Lee camp and Jung’s supporters, and replacing factional warfare with constructive debate over policy. The contest was widely seen as a showdown between Lee and Jung's political factions within the party. Yet the real differences between the two sides were less about policy than about influence and the distribution of power ahead of the next general elections. Such a contest risks turning the ruling party into an ar