On 22 December 2017, the supreme court convicted representative Yoon Jong-oe of breaking campaign laws and he was removed from office.
The meeting was not authorized by the Ministry of Unification which could have punished the party for violations of South Korea's National Security Act.
[15] In January 2023, President Yoon Suk-yeol's administration launched investigations into Progressive Party members for allegedly planning anti-American and anti-government activities by receiving orders from North Korea spies.
[16] Editorials in the Kyunghyang Shinmun expressed concerns that the Yoon Suk-yeol administration was pressuring labor unions and civic groups and creating a police state through counterintelligence investigations.
The term "independence" here means opposition to Japanese imperialism, support for reunification with North Korea, a protectionist trade policy, and establishment of equitable diplomatic relations with world powers such as the United States.
The Progressive Party believes that South Korea's socioeconomic contradictions are primarily due to the United States, rather than China or Japan, and hence opposes American domination of the Korean economy.
This is a significant departure from liberal parties such as the DPK and JP, who are hostile to China and Japan but somewhat favourable to the United States in order to offset Chinese and Japanese hegemony.
[27][28][29] The party supports the redistribution of wealth and economically progressive positions such as imposing a 90% tax rate on inheritances of more than 3 billion won (roughly US$2,500,000).
[2] The party has a negative view of multinational corporations and chaebol, the large industrial conglomerates that dominate the South Korean economy.
Their official party platform proposes to "dismantle the monopoly economy of transnational capital and chaebol" (초국적 자본 및 재벌의 독점경제를 해체).
[32][33] Following a policy of left-wing nationalism, the party seeks to liquidate the remnants of colonialism from the Japanese imperialist era and end the inequality in South Korea–United States relations.
When the party was founded, American left-wing intellectuals such as Ramsey Clark and Noam Chomsky expressed their sympathy for the cause, especially with respect to attitudes regarding Korean reunification, and policy towards North Korea.
[44] The Progressive Party also contacted certain American politicians such as Jesse Jackson and Bernie Sanders in 2018 to draw support for the declaration of the end of the Korean War.
However, regional branches of the Progressive Party have run campaign banners calling for the removal of "illegal migrant workers."
"[49][52][53][34] The Progressive Party, along with human rights groups, accused the Moon Jae-in government's COVID-19 quarantine policy in March 2021 of being discriminatory against foreign workers.