Park Young-sun, the floor leader of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, has dropped her plan to leave the party in protest over demands from party hard-liners that she resign.

On the surface, Park’s decision to stay, announced in a news conference she held Wednesday after three days in seclusion, may seem to pave the way for the party to recover from a crisis which was so serious as to raise talk of a split.

But Park’s return to the fold is unlikely to pull the party out of the crisis by itself. It is doubtful that the party will be able to pull together behind someone who has become a figurehead, and will only serve as its leader for a limited time.

Rather, Park’s resignation as head of the emergency committee and decision to remain as the party’s floor leader only until it reached a deal on the Sewol bill could further intensify the power struggles within the NPAD.

In fact, some hard-liners still insist that Park should cease involvement in the negotiations on the special Sewol bill.

The root cause of the crisis in the NPAD is its deep-rooted factional strife, which has been exacerbated by disagreements about how to deal with the special Sewol bill. Park, who assumed the post of the chair of an emergency committee after its crushing defeats in recent elections, added fuel to the internal strife by mishandling the negotiations for the Sewol bill and recruitment of an outside figure.

In protest against the mounting pressure from the party’s hard-liners to resign, Park went into seclusion for three days before returning Wednesday. Before cutting all contact with party members and the media, she even mentioned the possibility of leaving the party.

It is common for party leaders to step down in the face of a major crisis, but it is unprecedented for a party leader to mention ― or threaten, to be precise ― the possibility of leaving the party. This alone attests to the gravity of the problems in the NPAD.

Park faced her first crisis when she had to rescind an agreement on the special Sewol bill with the ruling Saenuri Party twice in the face of strong protests from party hard-liners and the families of the victims of the sunken ferry.

With her leadership facing increasingly stronger challenges inside the party, Park attempted to bring in two outside figures as cochairs of the emergency committee in the hope that they could reform the party and refresh its public image ahead of a national convention next year.

There was no problem with Ahn Kyong-whan, a liberal-minded professor emeritus of Seoul National University. But Park’s other choice caused an uproar among the hard-liners on the left of the party.

She should have known that brining in Lee Sang-don, a middle-of-the-right professor emeritus of Chung-Ang University, into the progressive party was not like a football club hiring the head coach of a rival team in the same league.

Lee has been deeply involved with the conservative ruling party in recent years. He served on the party’s emergency committee in 2011 and also played a key role in its “special committee on political innovation” ahead of the 2012 presidential election. In other words, he was a key architect of President Park Geun-hye’s campaign to enter the Blue House.

The NPAD leader did not have the leadership skills to persuade the leftist stalwarts, nor did they have the insight and courage to embrace their once-archenemy as the party’s interim leader.

The NPAD is in danger of losing its proud legacy of being the mainstay of the nation’s liberal political forces over the past 60 years. The NPAD should put its house in order quickly, not only for the sake of itself and the liberal front, but also for the sake of parliamentary democracy, which cannot thrive without a healthy opposition.