President Yoon Suk-yeol, while campaigning for the presidency in 2021, appeared on televised debates with the Chinese character for “king” written on his palm. Yet as his very first move as president, Yoon relocated the seat of government from the Blue House to Yongsan – supposedly to whittle down “the imperial presidency” and the sense of “inaccessibility” represented by the former.
The relocation was a sequence of budgetary, logistical and security disasters and the majority of South Koreans were against it. Yet Yoon pushed ahead – because he could. It was the first of many instances where South Koreans witnessed how his predilections trumped the public will. Throughout his term, what people thought and his approval ratings didn’t matter to him. “I need to do what needs to be done even if my approval ratings were at 1 percent,” Yoon once said.
Yoon matches the characteristics and practices described by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., an American historian, in his book “The Imperial Presidency.” While Schlesinger’s book is about Richard Nixon, there are many overlaps between the former United States president and Yoon. Like Nixon, Yoon sought “power to the presidency,” rather than “power to the people.” He badgered and managed the press. He built up a strong, politicized staff. He greatly expanded the “secrecy system” for his own benefit. Most importantly, he fundamentally disdained the legislative body and took political opposition as personal enmity. He pulled strings with the prosecutor’s office to harass his political rivals and critics, and to avoid justice for his own scandals and administrative ineptitude.
With his botched self-coup, Yoon took to whole new level Schlesinger’s concern over “a conception of presidential power so spacious and peremptory as to imply a radical transformation of the traditional polity.”
South Koreans learned the hard way that there’s plenty of room for a single president to blight the country’s workings, or in Yoon’s case, to tweak everything to his taste and subvert democracy overnight. That’s because South Korea’s Constitution and statutes vest too much power in the presidency.
Decades of military dictatorship left the legacy of a powerful executive. The president monopolizes administrative decisions. They have the final say over the appointment of some 10,000 government employees. As per the constitution, only the posts of prime minister and the head of the Board of Audit and Inspection require the legislature’s confirmation following the president’s nomination. (Compare this to some 1,300 jobs needing Senate confirmation in the United States.)
The president effectively controls the prosecutor’s office, the police, the intelligence service, and the tax service, giving rise to lopsided sanctions and selective justice. National Assembly efforts to monitor and oversee the administrative arms face structural deficiencies.
The president alone exercises budgetary power over some $400 billion, while presidential decrees and regulations trump local government ordinances. Additionally, the central government monopolizes funding over the rest of the country. The president’s tentacles also reach deep into civic life through their appointment of heads of national universities, the communication commission, the civil rights commission, trade and finance organs, among others.
In essence, everything trickles down from the president.
When so many jobs and so much money depend on the presidential office, the South Korean polity and agencies have developed a peculiar tendency to formulate policy outside of the official framework of separation of powers and institutional independence. They read between the lines to stay in favor with the executive, which lends another dimension to the presidential power in the unofficial, private realm of decision-making. In reality, ministers are figureheads, and bureaucrats put out their feelers to the presidential office and the president’s secretaries in a distorted chain of command. And self-evidently, the ruling political party listens to the president, not their constituents, let alone the public at large.
Even in the legislative arena, presidential power is enormous. In most cases, a presidential veto is enough to kill any bill; the two-third parliamentary majority required to override a veto is rarely achieved. To top it all, the president’s prerogative to declare martial law or lesser emergency orders can only be revoked after the event by a majority vote in the legislature. There’s no mechanism to check these prerogatives before the event.
For the past two-and-a-half years, South Koreans have seen the essence and peril of this imperial presidency: the executive and the military being stuffed with the president’s lackeys, the administration’s clumsy handling of major issues, the president’s unauthorized acquaintances meddling in national affairs, and press freedom plunging. During all of this, the legislature had little ability to fight back, all of which fueled public exasperation and the opposition Democratic Party (DP)’s string of impeachment motions (one of the few mechanisms by which the legislature can check the executive branch). This in turn stoked Yoon’s fury, which manifested terribly in the attempted self-coup.
Small wonder that after these events, calls are growing for constitutional amendment to redesign South Korea’s presidency and ruling system. In Gallup’s March poll, 64 percent of South Koreans said they want a shorter four-year presidential tenure. As it stands, South Korea’s presidency is a single five-year-term. It has raised two problems. First, voters have to wait too long until they can pass judgment on the president. Second, the prospect of no second term enables the president to behave without accountability. The need for sound performance and decent approval ratings disappears.
As for reforming the government system, a lot of suggestions have been bandied about. A parliamentary system resembling that of the United Kingdom has gained traction. The head of government and the Cabinet would derive from members of the political party or a coalition of parties that controls the legislature. The legislature could pass a vote of no confidence, upon which the government would have to resign and reorganize, or trigger a general election.
Another proposed model comes from Finland’s dual executive system. The president would be in charge of foreign policy and national defense, while the prime minister handles domestic policy. One convincing mechanism of diluting presidential power would be to have an elected president set the nation’s long-term plans and exercise rights to veto bills and dismiss the National Assembly, and to have a prime minister appointed by the legislature run state affairs.
For now, there is consensus on the need for a system where the legislature could have more authority over statutory instruments, budget, and government auditing. Establishing an independent constitutional organ to manage the judicial and prosecutorial personnel has also received bipartisan support.
However, those leading the polls for South Korea’s next president, such as Lee Jae-myung, the DP leader, and Kim Moon-soo, the labor minister, balk at broaching constitutional reform. Understandably so; the more likely someone is to become president, the less appealing limiting presidential power looks.
Other presidential wannabes – especially from the ruling People Power Party – are calling for a special clause to limit just the next presidential term to three years. Their pretext is to save on money by aligning presidential elections with general elections. The real reason is to hamper Lee, as he’s most likely to become the next president.
They are also demanding a reform to presidential privilege against prosecution so that it applies only to actions committed during a presidential term. Again, this request has Lee in mind, as he has a few trials pending over his head. Under the current law, Lee would avoid indictment on any of these pending cases once elected as president.
Lee countered that “now should be the time to overcome Yoon’s treason” and argued that discussing constitutional reform at the moment only benefits the PPP. Indeed, hectic discourse on constitutional reform somewhat exculpates Yoon’s personal role in the political disaster. It also shifts the limelight from Yoon’s and the PPP’s blemishes by redirecting the focus to Lee’s criminal baggage and fomenting fearmongering as to how Lee would behave as president without constitutional amendment.
As for Kim, getting embroiled in the minutiae of constitutional sticking points could cost him the lead among the PPP contenders, since voters’ preferences and opinions vastly differ on this issue. And of course, there’s no practical reason to agree to a shortened three-year term as a strong candidate.
In yet another irony, Yoon implored the Constitutional Court in late February to reinstate him so that he could “amend the constitution without worrying about the remainder of my term.” The fact that only the person with nothing to lose can talk comfortably about constitutional amendment says a lot about how tortuous and risky it is.
