SEOUL, South Korea: South Korea's prime minister and senior presidential officials offered to resign en masse Thursday after their ruling party suffered a crushing defeat in parliamentary elections in a huge blow to conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol.
The results of Wednesday's elections mean the liberal opposition forces will prolong their control of parliament until after Yoon completes his single five-year term in 2027. That will likely set back Yoon's domestic agenda and weaken his grip on the ruling party as he faces the opposition's intensifying political offensive during his remaining three years in office, experts say.
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and all senior presidential advisers to Yoon, except those in charge of security issues, submitted their resignations, according to Yoon's office. It didn't immediately say whether Yoon accepted their resignations.
Executive power in South Korea is heavily concentrated in the president, but the prime minister is the No. 2 official and leads the country if the president becomes incapacitated.
Yoon said he will "humbly uphold" the public sentiments reflected in the election outcome and focus on improving people's economic situations and on reforming state affairs, said Yoon's presidential chief of staff, Lee Kwan-seop, in a televised briefing.
In a separate news conference, ruling People Power Party leader Han Dong-hoon said he would step down as well to take responsibility for the election defeat.
"I apologize to the people on behalf of our party, which wasn't good enough to win the people's choices," he said.
With most of the votes counted, the main opposition Democratic Party and its satellite party appeared to have won a combined 175 seats in the 300-member National Assembly. Another small liberal opposition party was expected to win 12 seats under a proportional representation system, according to South Korean media tallies.
Yoon's ruling People Power Party and its satellite party were projected to have obtained 108 seats.
The final official results were expected later Thursday.
Regardless of the results, Yoon will stay in power and his major foreign policies will likely be unchanged. But Wednesday's elections were widely seen as a midterm confidence vote on Yoon, a former top prosecutor who took office in 2022.