SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s embattled conservative party canceled then reinstated the presidential candidacy of Kim Moon Soo within hours as internal turmoil escalated ahead of the June 3 election.
Saturday's chaotic U-turn, after a failed attempt to replace Kim with former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, underscored the People Power Party’s leadership crisis following the ouster of former President Yoon Suk Yeol over his martial law imposition in December, which possibly doomed the conservatives’ chances of winning another term in government.
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South Korea's People Power Party's presidential election candidate Kim Moon Soo, center, arrives to submit documents to register as a candidate to run in the June 3 presidential election, at the National Election Commission, Gwacheon, South Korea, Sunday, May 11, 2025. The letter read "The 21st Presidential election candidate registration application, Kim Moon Soo."(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
South Korea's People Power Party's presidential election candidate Kim Moon Soo, left, submits documents to register as a candidate to run in the June 3 presidential election, at the National Election Commission, Gwacheon, South Korea, Sunday, May 11, 2025. The letter read "The 21st Presidential election candidate registration application, Kim Moon Soo." (Yonhap via AP)
South Korea's People Power Party's presidential election candidate Kim Moon Soo speaks after submitting documents to register as a candidate to run in the June 3 presidential election, at the National Election Commission, Gwacheon, South Korea, Sunday, May 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
South Korea's People Power Party's presidential election candidate Kim Moon Soo, right, talks with independent preliminary presidential election candidate Han Duck-soo during a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (Yonhap via AP)
South Korea's People Power Party's presidential election candidate Kim Moon Soo, right, and independent preliminary presidential election candidate Han Duck-soo pose for a photo during a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (Yonhap via AP)
Kim, a staunch conservative and former labor minister under Yoon, was named the PPP’s presidential candidate on May 3 after winning 56.3% of the primary vote, defeating a reformist rival who had criticized Yoon’s martial law. But the PPP’s leadership, dominated by Yoon loyalists, had spent the past week desperately pressuring Kim to step aside and back Han, whom they believed stood a stronger chance against liberal Democratic Party frontrunner Lee Jae-myung.
After talks between Han and Kim failed to unify their candidacies, the PPP’s emergency committee took the unprecedented step early Saturday of nullifying its primary, canceling Kim’s nomination and registering Han as both a party member and its new presidential candidate. However, the replacement required approval through an all-party vote conducted through an automated phone survey, which ultimately rejected the switch on Saturday night.
“While we cannot disclose the figures, the vote on switching the candidate was rejected by a narrow margin,” party spokesman and lawmaker Shin Dong-wook said. Kim, who had denounced the party’s attempt to replace him as an “overnight political coup,” was immediately reinstated as the candidate and plans to officially register with election authorities on Sunday, according to the party.
“Now everything will return to its rightful place,” Kim said in a statement.
Kim, 73, was a prominent labor activist in the 1970s and ’80s, but joined a conservative party in the 1990s, saying he gave up his dream of becoming a "revolutionist” after witnessing the collapse of communist states. Since then, he has served eight years as governor of South Korea’s Gyeonggi province and completed three terms in the National Assembly.
Han served as acting president after Yoon was impeached by the legislature in December and officially removed by the Constitutional Court in April. He resigned from office May 2 to pursue a presidential bid, arguing his long public service career qualifies him to lead the country amid growing geopolitical uncertainty and trade challenges intensified by the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Han, who had called for unity after being promoted as the candidate, said in a statement that he “humbly accepts” the voice of party members.
Han and Kim have lagged well behind Lee in recent opinion polls. Lee, who spearheaded the Democrats’ efforts to oust Yoon, ridiculed the PPP efforts to switch candidacies, telling reporters Thursday, “I have heard of forced marriages but never heard of forced unity.”
South Korea's People Power Party's presidential election candidate Kim Moon Soo, center, arrives to submit documents to register as a candidate to run in the June 3 presidential election, at the National Election Commission, Gwacheon, South Korea, Sunday, May 11, 2025. The letter read "The 21st Presidential election candidate registration application, Kim Moon Soo."(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
South Korea's People Power Party's presidential election candidate Kim Moon Soo, left, submits documents to register as a candidate to run in the June 3 presidential election, at the National Election Commission, Gwacheon, South Korea, Sunday, May 11, 2025. The letter read "The 21st Presidential election candidate registration application, Kim Moon Soo." (Yonhap via AP)
South Korea's People Power Party's presidential election candidate Kim Moon Soo speaks after submitting documents to register as a candidate to run in the June 3 presidential election, at the National Election Commission, Gwacheon, South Korea, Sunday, May 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
South Korea's People Power Party's presidential election candidate Kim Moon Soo, right, talks with independent preliminary presidential election candidate Han Duck-soo during a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (Yonhap via AP)
South Korea's People Power Party's presidential election candidate Kim Moon Soo, right, and independent preliminary presidential election candidate Han Duck-soo pose for a photo during a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (Yonhap via AP)
Iran eased some restrictions on its people and, for the first time in days, allowed them to make phone calls abroad via their mobile phones on Tuesday. It did not ease restrictions on the internet or permit texting services to be restored as the death toll from days of bloody protests against the state rose to at least 2,000 people, according to activists.
Although Iranians were able to call abroad, people outside the country could not call them, several people in the capital told The Associated Press.
The witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said SMS text messaging still was down and internet users inside Iran could not access anything abroad, although there were local connections to government-approved websites.
It was unclear if restrictions would ease further after authorities cut off all communications inside the country and to the outside world late Thursday.
Here is the latest:
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years, gave the latest death toll on Tuesday.
It said 1,847 of the dead were protesters and 135 were government-affiliated.
This came a day after the European Parliament announced it would ban Iranian diplomats and representatives.
“Iran does not seek enmity with the EU, but will reciprocate any restriction,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X on Tuesday.
He also criticized the European Parliament for not taking any significant action against Israel for the more than two-year war in Gaza that has killed more than 71,400 Palestinians, while banning Iranian diplomats after just “a few days of violent riots.”
Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said he summoned Iran’s ambassador to the Netherlands “to formally protest the excessive violence against peaceful protesters, large-scale arbitrary arrests, and internet shutdowns, calling for immediate restoration of internet access inside the Islamic Republic.
In a post on X, Weel also said the Dutch government supports EU sanctions against “human rights violators in Iran.”
The United Nations human rights chief is calling on Iranian authorities to immediately halt violence and repression against peaceful protesters, citing reports of hundreds killed and thousands arrested in a wave of demonstrations in recent weeks.
“The killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop, and the labelling of protesters as ‘terrorists’ to justify violence against them is unacceptable,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement Tuesday.
Alluding to a wave of protests in Iran in 2022, Türk said demonstrators have sought “fundamental changes” to governance in the country, “and once again, the authorities’ reaction is to inflict brutal force to repress legitimate demands for change.”
“This cycle of horrific violence cannot continue,” he added.
It was also “extremely worrying” to hear some public statements from judicial officials mentioning the prospect of the use of the death penalty against protesters through expedited judicial proceedings, Türk said.
“Iranians have the right to demonstrate peacefully. Their grievances need to be heard and addressed, and not instrumentalized by anyone,” Türk said.
Finland’s foreign minister says she is summoning the Iranian ambassador after authorities in Tehran restricted internet access.
“Iran’s regime has shut down the internet to be able to kill and oppress in silence," Elina Valtonen wrote in a social media post Tuesday, adding, “this will not be tolerated. We stand with the people of Iran — women and men alike.”
Finland is “exploring measures to help restore freedom to the Iranian people” together with the European Union, Valtonen said.
Separately, Finnish police said they believe at least two people entered the courtyard of the Iranian embassy in Helsinki without permission Monday afternoon and tore down the Iranian flag. The embassy’s outer wall was also daubed with paint.
Iranian security forces arrested what a state television report described as terrorist groups linked to Israel in the southeastern city of Zahedan.
The report, without providing additional details, said the group entered through Iran’s eastern borders and carried U.S.-made guns and explosives that the group had planned to use in assassinations and acts of sabotage.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the allegations.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate hailed people who have “long warned about this repression, at great personal risk.”
“The protests in Iran cannot be separated from the long-standing, state-imposed restrictions on girls’ and women’s autonomy, in all aspects of public life including education. Iranian girls, like girls everywhere, demand a life with dignity,” Yousafzai wrote on X.
“(Iran’s) future must be driven by the Iranian people, and include the leadership of Iranian women and girls — not external forces or oppressive regimes,” she added.
Yousafzai was awarded the peace prize in 2014 at the age of 17 for her fight for girls’ education in her home country, Pakistan. She is the youngest Nobel laureate.
The French Foreign Ministry said it has “reconfigured” its embassy in Tehran after reports that the facility's nonessential staff left Iran earlier this week.
The embassy's nonessential staff left the country Sunday and Monday, French news agency Agence France-Presse reported.
The ambassador remained on site and the embassy continued to function, the ministry said late Monday night.
Associated Press writer Angela Charlton contributed from Paris.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he believes the Iranian government is in its “final days and weeks,” as he renewed a call for Iranian authorities to end violence against demonstrators immediately.
“If a regime can only keep itself in power by force, then it’s effectively at the end,” Merz said Tuesday during a visit to Bengaluru, India. “I believe we are now seeing the final days and weeks of this regime. In any case, it has no legitimacy through elections in the population. The population is now rising up against this regime.”
Merz said he hoped there is “a possibility to end this conflict peacefully," adding that Germany is in close contact with the U.S. and European governments.
The Israeli military said it continues to be “on alert for surprise scenarios” due to the ongoing protests in Iran, but has not made any changes to guidelines for civilians, as it does prior to a concrete threat.
“The protests in Iran are an internal matter,” Israeli military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin wrote on X.
Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear program over the summer, resulting in a 12-day war that killed nearly 1,200 Iranians and almost 30 Israelis. Over the past week, Iran has threatened to attack Israel if Israel or the U.S. attacks.
Mobile phones in Iran were able to call abroad Tuesday after a crackdown on nationwide protests in which the internet and international calls were cut. Several people in Tehran were able to call The Associated Press.
The AP bureau in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was unable to call those numbers back.
Witnesses said the internet remained cut off from the outside world. Iran cut off the internet and calls on Thursday as protests intensified.
This frame grab from videos taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdownon the outskirts of Iran's capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)
This frame grab from videos taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdown on the outskirts of Iran's capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)
This frame grab from videos taken between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdown on the outskirts of Iran's capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)
Protesters hold up placards and flags as they demonstrate outside the Iranian Embassy in London, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
Shiite Muslims hold placards and chant slogans during a protest against the U.S. and show solidarity with Iran in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)
Activists carrying a photograph of Reza Pahlavi take part in a rally supporting protesters in Iran at Lafayette Park, across from the White House, in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Protesters burn the Iranian national flag during a rally in support of the nationwide mass demonstrations in Iran against the government in Paris, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
People attend a rally in Frankfurt, Germany, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (Boris Roessler/dpa via AP)
A picture of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is set alight by protesters outside the Iranian Embassy in London, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
