SEOUL \u2013 South Korean lawmakers are moving to ensure the nation never again has a president as powerful as Park Geun-hye.
A bipartisan parliamentary committee began meeting in January to rewrite the constitution for the first time since 1987, when mass protests forced a military junta to adopt a direct presidential vote. In recent months, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans have hit the streets to call for Park\u2019s removal over an influence-peddling scandal that led to her impeachment.
Suggestions to the committee have included everything from a British-style parliamentary government to France\u2019s system, where the president handles foreign affairs and the prime minister deals with domestic issues. The panel aims to release a proposal in a few months, which would need support from two-thirds of the 300-member National Assembly and then face a national referendum.
\u201cProposals vary, but the idea is the same: divide the powers of the president,\u201d said Chun Jung-bae, a former justice minister and People\u2019s Party lawmaker who sits on the committee. \u201cWe live in an extraordinary time, and the task of that time is to end the winner-takes-it-all system.\u201d
The move to revise the constitution is part of efforts to curtail the cozy ties between the president and family-run conglomerates that dominate Asia\u2019s fourth-biggest economy. That could affect the economy, which is already weakening over the discord as consumer confidence falls near an eight-year low.
\u201cDecision-making and policy implementation would become slower in lieu of a single person with overwhelming power to push forward agendas,\u201d said Jang Sang-hwan, who teaches economics at Gyeongsang National University. \u201cThat means more debate among lawmakers but more responsible crafting of policies in the long run.\u201d
South Korean presidents have traditionally flexed their muscles with parliament, a legacy of the dictatorship that ran the country until the 1980s. They could influence which party members ran as lawmakers, appoint prosecutors, propose and veto legislation, sign agreements with foreign nations and appoint senior officials without parliamentary consent.
Park was impeached on Dec. 9 after prosecutors charged her friend Choi Soon-sil with abuse of power for allegedly pressuring companies into donating to her foundations. She has been suspended from power while the Constitutional Court deliberates on whether to approve the motion, which would trigger an election. Even if she survives the impeachment bid, Park would leave office after her single five-year term expires in February 2018.
Almost every presidential candidate has pledged to make the executive more transparent and accountable. Both front-runner Moon Jae-in and former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have promised to share power with others if they succeed Park and have pushed for the end of a rule limiting the president to a single five-year term.
\u201cThe right way to improve the power structure for our times is to have a presidential office that shares its power,\u201d Ban said at a news conference in Seoul on Tuesday, offering to accept a shorter presidential term. He also called for presidential and parliamentary elections to be held simultaneously from 2020.
Moon said he would move the presidential office from the Blue House \u2014 South Korea\u2019s traditional seat of power, similar to the White House \u2014 to a lower-profile government building. He also said he would make his around-the-clock whereabouts public to reduce the secrecy surrounding executive power.
Polls show a majority of voters want to see the constitution revised one way or another. Some 65 percent of respondents in a December survey by Korea Research supported overhauling the presidential office.
Still, doing so won\u2019t be easy. Candidates often speak in favor of reducing presidential powers but ignore the issue once elections end.
The same is true with suggestions to give more power to regions even though South Korea\u2019s highly centralized decision-making process has \u201cenhanced perceptions of a seemingly monarchical \u2018court politics\u2019 in the Blue House,\u201d said David Fedman, who teaches Korean history at the University of California, Irvine.
\u201cSouth Korea is no stranger to crises, which usually have the effect of re-concentrating power at the center,\u201d Fedman said.
For now, the committee is looking to stop the cycle of malfeasance among top leaders. Before Park, former Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo were convicted after they stepped down for taking hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from companies; Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung apologized for corruption scandals involving their sons.
\u201cThe Park scandal has shown how easily presidential powers can be abused and how desperately we need to limit those powers,\u201d said Lee Un-ju, an opposition Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker and member of the committee. \u201cThe big challenge is how to divide the power so more people can use it.\u201d<\/p>\n