Political mistrust derails move to amend Korea’s aging constitutional framework

South Korea’s Constitution has survived tear gas, impeachment and even a midnight flirtation with martial law. Yet the latest attempt to revise it was undone by something more familiar: partisan arithmetic.

On Friday, National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik suspended the constitutional amendment process after days of deadlock and threats of boycott. The initiative had aimed for a national referendum during the June 3 local elections, potentially producing the first constitutional revision in nearly four decades.

Instead, the effort collapsed into mutual recrimination, exposing a legislature more skilled at tactical obstruction than institutional repair.

The bill itself pursued only limited revisions. It avoided divisive debates over presidential term limits or sweeping structural reform. Instead, it focused on relatively achievable revisions that would add the democratic legacies of the 1979 Busan-Masan protests and the 1980 Gwangju Democratic Uprising to the constitutional preamble while strengthening parliamentary oversight of martial law declarations.

The proposal reflected the political reality after the Dec. 3, 2024, martial law crisis under former President Yoon Suk Yeol. Under the draft revision, a president would have been required to report a martial law declaration to the National Assembly without delay, while lawmakers could invalidate it within 48 hours.

Public sentiment broadly favored such safeguards. Recent surveys show nearly 60 percent of respondents support constitutional revision overall, while backing for tighter legislative checks on martial law is substantially higher.

On Thursday, the main opposition People Power Party boycotted the parliamentary vote, leaving the assembly short of a two-thirds quorum. By the next day, procedural paralysis and filibuster threats forced Speaker Woo to abandon the vote entirely.

The main opposition insists its resistance was procedural rather than substantive. The party argued that holding a referendum alongside local elections could politicize constitutional revision and complained that the process lacked sufficient public deliberation.

Those concerns cannot simply be dismissed. Constitutional change is not ordinary legislation. The requirement for approval by two-thirds of lawmakers exists precisely because revision is meant to rest on a broad consensus rather than a temporary parliamentary advantage.

Still, the opposition’s position remains difficult to reconcile with its earlier openness to constitutional reform during the previous presidential cycle. Many of the proposed revisions, including recognition of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising, align with principles the party itself has previously endorsed.

Refusing even to participate in the vote invited accusations that electoral calculations had overtaken institutional responsibility.

The ruling camp, however, cannot escape criticism either. The Democratic Party of Korea pushed ahead without establishing the bipartisan constitutional committee that such a process normally demands. Instead of persuasion, it relied on moral pressure and binary rhetoric.

President Lee Jae Myung deepened tensions by implying that opponents of the amendment were sympathetic to unlawful martial law. That may have energized his supporters, but constitutional revision requires coalition-building, not ideological sorting.

Both camps ultimately treated reform less as a national undertaking than as a variable in June’s electoral equation. The result was a predictable collapse disguised as procedural drama.

Dial back to 1987 when South Korea’s ninth constitutional revision emerged from negotiations between ruling and opposition representatives who, despite profound mistrust, recognized the urgency of democratic transition. Their agreement won more than 93.1 percent support in a national referendum.

But the "1987 system" is plainly showing its age. The concentration of presidential power, regional imbalances and recurring institutional confrontation have produced years of political volatility.

After the local elections next month, both parties should return to the issue through a genuine bipartisan process that extends beyond symbolic revisions toward broader questions of governance and power structure.

Otherwise, South Korea’s Constitution will remain tethered to an aging blueprint while its politics grows steadily less capable of governing the present moment.


khnews@heraldcorp.com