South Korea’s June 3 local elections are emerging as the first major political test of whether public backlash against former President Yoon Suk Yeol remains strong enough to sustain the ruling Democratic Party’s (DP) dominance, or whether concerns over concentrated political power are beginning to give conservatives a path toward recovery about a year-and-a-half after the martial law crisis.

The DP entered the campaign expecting a decisive victory across most of the country’s major metropolitan and provincial races following Yoon’s impeachment and the main opposition People Power Party’s (PPP) subsequent collapse in public support.

But with less than three weeks