Lee Jae-myung, the left-wing candidate leading in the final polls before the June 3 election, said on Friday he wants to amend the national constitution to make it more difficult to declare martial law.
The election is being held to replace President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was impeached and removed from office after attempting to impose martial law in December.
“Our national prestige has fallen, but it happens. We have to make that impossible systematically,” Lee said of martial law in a YouTube talk show interview on Friday.
Lee denounced Yoon’s actions in December as an “insurrection” – a crime for which Yoon is currently on trial – and said “our country will collapse” if a comparable attempt to impose martial law should ever succeed.
In his Friday interview, Lee called for a special prosecutor to investigate other officials who were involved in the martial law declaration.
Yoon declared a state of “emergency martial law” on December 3 because he said his government had been subverted by “unscrupulous pro-Pyongyang anti-state forces that pillage the freedom and happiness of our people.”
Yoon was referring to Lee’s Democratic Party (DP), which he accused of “paralyzing the courts in the country by threatening the judges and impeaching prosecutors.” He also accused the opposition of seeking to paralyze his administration by slashing its budget.
Yoon’s supporters said one reason the DP wanted to cut the budget and paralyze the courts was to protect Lee, who had been convicted of violating election laws in November. His conviction was overturned in March, paving the way for his presidential campaign.
Several other corruption investigations are pending against Lee, and while none of them could be resolved quickly enough to bar him from seeking the presidency, they could prove awkward for his presidency if he wins.
Kim Moon-soo, the candidate from Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP), has also called for constitutional reforms, and some of his suggestions are similar to Lee’s.
Kim has been more aggressive about calling for an end to presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, which caused the process of impeaching and removing Yoon to drag on for months. Lee wants to make Parliament more powerful, giving it more oversight authority and subjecting more presidential appointees to parliamentary approval, while Kim wants greater transparency and tougher requirements for nominees.
Both Lee and Kim suggested amending the constitution to grant the president two possible terms of four years each, instead of the current five-year single term. Adopting the American system would ostensibly restrain the president by obliging the chief executive to run for re-election.
A recent Gallup Korea survey found 67 percent of the public favors amending the Constitution to limit presidential power.
Early voting in South Korea’s election took place on Thursday and Friday, producing record turnout. The last surveys taken before the legally-mandated polling blackout had Lee leading Kim by ten to 12 points, with third-party candidate Lee Jun-seok bringing up the rear at about ten percent.
Kim is doubtless hoping for a significant shift in voter opinion during the polling blackout period, which currently begins six days before the election, although it lasted for weeks before changes were made in 2005. Hankyoreh News threw some cold water on those hopes on Thursday by noting there has never before been a major difference between the final polls and the actual election results – although Kim’s late polling surge is one of the largest in presidential campaign history and Lee is running more than four points ahead of his party, which rarely happens in South Korea.
Kim’s last-ditch effort to woo Lee Jun-seok onto a fusion ticket failed on Wednesday, when the third-party candidate refused to even meet with Kim. Lee was not in his office when Kim came calling, and Kim spent the rest of the day looking for him. Kim said he would continue trying to build a combo ticket during the remaining days of the campaign, but Lee’s office said it would not agree to merge.
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