Lee Jae-myung floats ending single-term limit for presidency
Democratic Party candidate shifts stance on Constitutional reform; avoids questions about seeking reelection
Rep. Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party of Korea's presidential candidate, pledged Sunday to amend the Constitution to permit presidents to serve two terms, with the length of a single term cut from the current five years to four.
Lee also proposed memorializing the 1980 pro-democracy movement in Gwangju in the Constitution, to "remember the people who gave their lives to fight dictatorship and defend democracy."
Lee said the Constitution needed to be rewritten to be a "sturdier bastion of democracy," and that "the spirit of Gwangju must be written into (its) text."
Lee, who was in Gwangju on Sunday to mark the anniversary of the May 18 Gwangju Democratic Uprising, made these announcements in a post on his Facebook page, as he had with other policy pledges.
In response to a reporter's question asking whether Lee would be permitted to run again under his proposed amendment, Lee avoided a straight answer, saying the Constitution, as it is written now, bars a sitting president from seeking another term.
"Implementing a four-year presidential term and allowing a second run would let people give a 'halfway evaluation' on the administration's performance," Lee said.
Lee offered former President Yoon Suk Yeol's short-lived martial law imposition as his rationale for changing the presidential term to "increase checks and balances on the office of the president."
On top of abolishing the single-term limit, Lee said he would place a cap on how many times a president can exercise his veto powers over bills passed by the National Assembly.
In particular, presidents should not be able to veto bills related to corruption suspicions surrounding them and their families, Lee added.
To "reform" the country's investigative agencies, Lee said he would take away the prosecution service's authority to request arrest warrants from the court.
The Democratic party candidate almost had an arrest warrant out after him when he was the party's leader in 2023, and is currently mired in five ongoing criminal trials that would, in principle, continue through his time in office if elected as president.
Lee, whose Democratic Party controls the majority in the National Assembly with 170 out of 300 seats, said he would expand parliamentary powers, and let the National Assembly pick the nominees for prime minister. The next general election for the Assembly is in 2028.
Sunday's proposal marks a U-turn from his earlier stance on amending the Constitution. Lee had downplayed the need for one during the Democratic Party primary. "I don't think changing the Constitution is something that we should be discussing now," Lee said at an April 28 televised debate with other primary challengers.
Lee's call for making a two-term presidency constitutionally permissible fueled speculations that the Democratic Party candidate may try to secure a second term himself, should he win.
"Lee has to make it clear before the people that he would rule out pursuing another term by amending the Constitution if he is elected president," Rep. Na Kyung-won of the People Power Party said in a statement Sunday.
"Lee suddenly advocating consecutive presidential terms has autocrats like Russia's Vladimir Putin written all over it. This may be a dangerous sign of his ambitions to rule long term," Na said.
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