On August 11, Lee Jun-seok, leader of the People Power Party, posted a short message on social media, “It only took 2 weeks to tear down what took 2 years to build.” He claimed that the image of the party, which “Kim Chong-in’s emergency committee” and he built as party leader after the party’s defeat in the parliamentary election in 2020, recently collapsed in a short period of time.

This day, Lee posted a picture of a partially collapsed building with the frames exposed and with a placard that read, “Our restaurant is open for business as usual,” along with his message. The two years that it took to build seems to refer to the time shortly after the 21st general elections, when the People Power Party was led by an emergency committee under Kim Chong-in and Lee himself as party leader.

The United Future Party, which struggled to survive after the utter defeat in the parliamentary elections, recovered its support under Kim Chong-in’s emergency committee and was able to win in the by-elections for the mayors of Seoul and Busan in April 2021. After Lee took over as party leader, the party won in the presidential election last March and in the June local elections.

Lee’s message suggests that the party’s influence and support, which gathered strength in the last two years, crumbled in a short time as the party handed the leadership over to another emergency committee after the fiasco over the “gunning members” text message on July 26. The placard in the picture Lee posted, which claimed to be “open for business as usual,” sarcastically pointed out that the party’s emergency committee pretended things were normal when the party had actually collapsed.