Do we like them?

Do we like Han Dong-hoon?

Our score: 5 out of 10. Nothing harmful found and a brave call on martial law, but the record on the things we care about is thin and the good-person questions are unresolved.

Han is a former prosecutor who entered party politics in December 2023, when he was handed the ruling People Power Party's emergency leadership just before the 2024 general election. He quit after a weak result, came back to lead the party, then stepped down again in the turmoil after Yoon Suk Yeol's martial law declaration. He later lost the conservative presidential primary.

The martial law saga is the best thing on his file. He first resisted impeachment, then on 6 December 2024 said it was necessary to suspend Yoon's duties, and told lawmakers he was allegedly one of the people targeted for arrest. By 12 December he was backing impeachment outright and telling MPs to vote their conscience, which cost him with senior conservatives.

Then came his own party turning on him. On 29 January 2026 the PPP expelled him, with eight of nine Supreme Council members voting yes, over a case that began in November 2024 when reports said posts critical of Yoon and his wife had been made on the party's members-only board. The party accused people close to him of manipulating opinion. He calls it “a political retaliation based on fabrication”, and his allies say the case was applied selectively.

On the harm test, we found nothing. There are no anti-LGBTQ+ or anti-trans words of his on the record that we could find, and nothing on climate or vaccines either, so that is a gap rather than a clean bill. What we do know is that he stood against a leader trying to override the constitution. He's conservative, not harmful, as far as the sources go.

The recent stoush is a fresh one. In October the Democratic Party urged police to re-examine a 2022 probe that civic groups allege was halted while he was justice minister. It's an allegation, not a finding, and no charge has been reported. He ran into more legal weather in July, when a court dismissed his 500 million won defamation suit against KBS.

The comeback is real, though. Running as an independent in Busan's Buk-A by-election on 3 June 2026, he beat the Democratic Party's Ha Jung-woo by 1,382 votes, 42.96 per cent to 41.26, with the PPP candidate a distant third. He campaigned on local development and rebuilding conservatism, and says the path back to the PPP is “not what's important”.