July 17 is Constitution Day in South Korea. It honors the day that the Republic of Korea adopted its Constitution in 1948. Since then, the Constitution has been amended a number of times in response to changes in the national leadership. The most recent amendment was the set of democratic reforms in 1987 in response to the successful democracy movement. 

The 29 years since the most recent amendment represents the longest period of Constitutional stability in the history of the Republic of Korea. In the 1997 presidential campaign, Kim Dae-jung won the support of Kim Jong-pil, an important kingmaker in the Chungcheong-do region, by promising to adopt the parliamentary system. Kim Jong-pil supported the parliamentary system because he did not have political strength to win the presidency. The parliamentary system was his only hope of wiggling into a position of power. After Kim Dae-jung became president, the deal unraveled, as expected, and talk of revising the Constitution subsided. Political observers have long worried about the long lame duck period during the last half of the single five-year presidential term, but such talk has failed to stir public interest.

In a speech in honor of Constitution Day, National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun, stated that Constitutional reform was one of his main goals for his two-year term as speaker that began in June this year. He stated that the post-1987 Constitution has failed to keep up with social change and there is public consensus in favor of a new Constitution.

Against the backdrop of public distrust of politicians, the use of the word “new” in reference to the Constitution is surprising. Speaker Chung intends to form a committee in the National Assembly to look at the Constitution, but it remains unclear whether he is referring to an entirely new Constitution or substantial reform to the current Constitution.

What are the important issues involved in Constitutional reform? A poll published in the Hankyoreh Newspaper on July 17 showed that 67 percent of those polled thought that Constitutional reform was needed -- only 20 percent disagreed. Regarding presidential powers, 44 percent thought that division of powers between the president and the prime minister was desirable, whereas 24 percent thought that a presidential system was desirable and 21 percent favored a parliamentary system. If a presidential system is retained, 62 percent thought that a two-term presidency was better than the current one-term presidency, which was favored by 33 percent.

Though seemingly contradictory, the results of the poll suggest that the public wants to limit the power of the chief executive, but wants that person to be able to function effectively. This no doubt reflects public dissatisfaction with the cycle of presidential overstep at the beginning of the five-year term followed by the growing inability to govern as the term winds down.

The results are consistent with voting patterns since 1987 in which the public has voted strongly for opposition parties in National Assembly elections as a way to check the power of the president. The results also contrast with recent elections in Japan where voters have given the winning political alliance large majorities in the Diet. Other established democracies have at times given one political group of large majorities.

The interest in limiting the power of the president in Korea is natural because people in their 40s and above lived through years of dictatorship. Younger people do not know those years and the struggles involved, but they are wary of authoritarianism and strong leaders.

Korean political pundits often comment about the low level of political awareness in their country, but the facts suggest that Koreans have a sophisticated awareness of the need to check political power. The problem is how. After 1987, they used the ballot box within the existing system. Constitutional reform, however, is about changing the system, and the strong desire to check political power will help guide the debate as it unfolds.

The poll also showed that 62 percent wanted Constitutional reform before the presidential election in 2017, which fits Speaker Chung’s timeline. The presidential election is a little more than a year away, which leaves little time for the type of careful consideration on which a consensus can be built.

This highlights an importance of process to a healthy democracy that often gets overlooked in Korea in favor of the final result. Korea, of course, is not the only country facing this problem. To be meaningful, Constitutional reform must go beyond the president and focus on the process of democracy, which is based on the simple idea that the people rule the government, not the other way around.

By Robert J. Fouser

Robert J. Fouser, a former associate professor of Korean language education at Seoul National University, writes on Korea from Ann Arbor, Michigan. -- Ed.