SEOUL, May 13 (UPI) — Kim Moon-soo, the candidate from the conservative People Power Party in next month’s snap presidential election, said Tuesday that the party was not considering expelling impeached former President Yoon Suk Yeol.

“Whether former President Yoon decides to leave the party is entirely up to him,” Kim told reporters during a campaign stop in the southeastern city of Daegu.

“It’s not right for our party to tell a president to leave or not,” Kim said. “If we believe that Yoon did something wrong and demand that he leave, then the party shares responsibility too.”

Campaigning for the June 3 election opened Monday, with the PPP’s Kim set to face off against Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung, who leads by a sizable margin in opinion polls.

The race comes after months of turmoil following Yoon’s shocking martial law declaration and impeachment in December. He was finally removed from office last month by Seoul’s Constitutional Court, but the lengthy process deepened long-simmering political divisions in the country.

While some PPP primary candidates called for distancing the party from Yoon, Kim maintained his support for the president under whom he served as labor minister.

The 73-year-old was the sole cabinet member who refused to apologize for Yoon’s martial law attempt in a session at the National Assembly and won the strong backing of hardline loyalists who opposed impeachment.

On Monday, Kim offered his first public apology for the “suffering” caused by martial law.

“The public has had a difficult time since the martial law attempt,” Kim told broadcaster Channel A News. “The economy and domestic politics are difficult right now and so are exports and diplomacy.”

Calling it “one of the most extreme measures,” Kim said he did not attend the cabinet meeting where martial law was declared and would not have supported it at the time.

“If I become president in the future, I will not use martial law,” he said. “I will complete democracy through dialogue, persuasion and patience to resolve any issues between the ruling and opposition parties.”

Kim won the PPP nomination on May 3, but then faced a late push by party leadership to replace him with former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who some saw as a less polarizing figure with a better chance of defeating Lee. An all-member meeting on Saturday finally confirmed Kim as their candidate.

The Democratic Party’s Lee, who lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election by a razor-thin margin, has also faced barriers to his second bid for the presidency. He is facing a retrial on an election law violation charge that could have threatened his eligibility, but the Seoul High Court last week postponed a hearing until after the election.