April 8, 2025
SEOUL – he People Power Party on Monday backed National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik’s proposal to hold a referendum on amending the Constitution to reduce the president’s power on the same day as the early presidential election, highly likely slated for June 3.
Rep. Kwon Young-se, the People Power party’s leader, said the public consensus on reforming the country’s power structure was ripe in the wake of the impeachment crisis.
“We have witnessed the risks of a president having all the powers of the state,” Kwon said, alluding to former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s imposition of martial law in December last year.
But Rep. Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party chair remains convinced that the Yoon’s “insurrection” is still ongoing, and countering it should take priority.
Lee, who has a clear lead in the polls for to be the next president, said that while amending the Constitution and developing democracy were important, “putting an end to Yoon Suk Yeol’s insurrection should come first.”
“I think we all recognize the necessity of having a revised Constitution. But right now, nothing takes precedence over the task of stopping Yoon’s bid to destroy democracy,” Lee said.
Lee also claimed that the necessary preparations couldn’t be completed in time for a referendum on the constitutional amendment to take place in two months.
“It would be physically impossible to revise the Referendum Act to allow early voting, which we will need to get as many to vote as possible,” he said.
Speaker Woo Won-shik held a press conference on Sunday, two days after Yoon was removed from office, and called for an amendment to the Constitution to reduce the president’s term, among other steps to keep executive power in check.
Under the Constitution, which was last rewritten in 1987, presidents can hold office for a single term of five years only. Woo’s proposal would let presidents serve for four years, allowing them to be reelected once for a second four-year term.
Deputy Speaker Rep. Joo Ho-young of the People Power Party came to the speaker’s defense on Monday, saying that a constitutional amendment was the “demand of the times.”
Among the presidential candidates, the People Power Party’s Hong Joon-pyo, the mayor of conservative stronghold Daegu, has consented to the constitutional amendment, but in a way that targets the Constitutional Court itself.
Hong, who had run for president in 2017, said the Constitutional Court needed to be abolished and that the Supreme Court should instead get a separate department for giving rulings on constitutionality. This message from Hong was seen as a bid to court hard-line Yoon supporters unhappy with the Constitutional Court’s decision on Friday, which upheld the ex-president’s impeachment for his martial law declaration.
A People Power Party lawmaker on the Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee, the Democratic Party, thinking it has a better chance at winning the coming election, might be less willing to accept a constitutional amendment that would take away some of the president’s powers.
“Lee Jae-myung himself has spoken on the need for constitutional reform several times in the past. But now with the presidency in sight, he would be less willing to embrace a reform plan that could limit his powers if he is elected,” he said.
A Democratic Party lawmaker close to Lee told The Korea Herald that the speaker’s push to rewrite the Constitution “couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time.”
“The speaker’s announcement has turned this presidential election about the Constitution, when it should be about Yoon’s acts of insurrection, the consequences of which persist to this day. He took the focus entirely off Yoon,” she said.