Park Sang-hyuk

Park Sang-hyuk (, born 20 March 1973) is a South Korean activist, lawyer and politician. A member of the liberal Democratic Party, he is the incumbent Member of the National Assembly for Gimpo 2nd constituency since 2020. Politically, he is close to the former Mayor of Seoul Park Won-soon.

Park had previously served as the President of the Student Council during schooldays and later became a secretary of 2 former MPs — Kim Geun-tae and Lim Chae-jung. After qualifying for the bar in 2012, he became a lawyer and handled several cases, including Lance Corporal Yoon case in 2014. Prior to be elected to the National Assembly, he served as the political adviser to Park Won-soon while he was the Mayor of Seoul in 2016, as well as the Executive Officer for Judicial Affairs of the Office of the President under the President Moon Jae-in from 2017 to 2019.

Early life and education Park Sang-hyuk was born on 20 March 1973, the son of a trade worker who had ever been to Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. His second elder brother, Park Chul, is a poet. He was educated at Gaehwa Primary School, Banghwa Secondary School and Konghang High School. He went to the Hanyang University, where he consecutively graduated with a LLB, an LLM and a PhD degree in International Law. He then moved to the Netherlands and obtained a postgraduate LLM degree in Business Law at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Prior to the 1996 election, North Korea had sent the armed forces to Panmunjom. Shortly after elected the President of the Student Council at Hanyang University, he joined the South Korean Federation of University Students Councils, He was wanted for this activities and could not return to home for more than a year. He was pardoned on 15 August. The next year, he started his legal career, starting as a town lawyer in Gochon-eup, Gimpo. Along with Chung Yeon-soon, he urged that the defendants should be punished for reckless homicide. Park criticised the sentence, citing "they must be punished for murder on appeal".

On 22 June 2019, Park opened his own law firm in Gurae-dong, named Gimpo and Together With Park Sang-hyuk Law Firm .

2020 legislative election

On 16 December 2019, Park announced he would run for Gimpo 2nd constituency in the 2020 election through YouTube and Facebook.

On 17 February 2020, he was excluded from the Democratic preselection. He criticised the party's decision and submitted an appeal in order to be a pre-candidate. While the other pre-candidates have ever convicted of driving under the influence (DUI) before, Park faced a challenge from the incumbent MP and the United Future candidate Hong Chul-ho. Despite the early leading, on 15 April, the exit poll showed that Hong came closed to Park (Park: 49.6%, Hong: 48.7%). However, Park received 53.83% and was elected with a majority of 10,993. Along with Kim Nam-kuk from the same party, he became the first MP graduated from a law school.

Election results General elections Year Constituency Political party Votes (%) Remarks 2020 Gimpo 2nd Democratic 63,193 (53.83%) Won