[Fact Check] Was the 40-Year Age Limit for Presidential Candidates Nonexistent Before the Park Chung-hee Administration?

Article 67 of the Constitution Limits Presidential Candidacy to Those Aged 40 and Above... 20s and 30s Not Eligible to Run
Age Restriction Introduced During Park Chung-hee Government? Also Stipulated in the 1952 Presidential and Vice Presidential Election Law

[Asia Economy Reporter Ryu Jung-min] Controversy over the ‘age restriction law for presidential elections’ is intensifying again. The focus is on the background of allowing only those aged 40 and above to run for president and when such a legal provision was established. The so-called ‘President 40-year-old age restriction law’ has been a subject of debate every time the presidential election approaches.

Article 67, Paragraph 4 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea states, “A person eligible to be elected as president must have the right to be elected as a member of the National Assembly and must have reached the age of 40 as of the election day.” This means that Korean citizens aged 40 or older on the day of the presidential election are qualified to run for president.

Politicians in their 20s and 30s, no matter how capable or popular, cannot run for president. Kang Min-jin, leader of the Youth Justice Party, pointed out this issue at a press conference on the 30th of last month.

Leader Kang said, “The constitutional provision that prohibits presidential candidacy for those under 40 is discriminatory and unfair. This unfair and unreasonable provision was created by Park Chung-hee,” adding, “At that time, Park Chung-hee was in his 40s, and the constitution he changed played a significant role in preventing competitors in their 30s from running for president.”

This suggests that former President Park Chung-hee created an unreasonable provision to exclude young competitors in their 30s.

Former leader of the Democratic Party, Lee Nak-yeon, also wrote on Facebook on the 4th, “According to Article 67 of our constitution, only citizens aged 40 or older can be presidential candidates. This provision was first introduced during the 5th constitutional amendment led by the military regime in 1962. At that time, the military regime used age as a weapon to take away young people’s opportunities to run for president.”

Article 64, Paragraph 2 of the constitution, fully revised on December 26, 1962, states, “A person eligible to be elected as president must have the right to be elected as a member of the National Assembly, have continuously resided in the country for more than five years as of the election day, and have reached the age of 40.”

It is difficult to definitively say whether former President Park pressured to include this provision in the constitution. However, it is a fact that the 40-year-old presidential candidacy regulation was included during the constitutional amendment process after Park took power in 1961.

Then, was there no legal age restriction for presidential candidates before former President Park’s administration? The answer lies in the ‘Presidential and Vice-Presidential Election Act’ enacted before Park’s rule (1961). Article 2 of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Election Act, enacted on July 18, 1952, states, “A citizen who has had a domicile in the country for more than three years and is aged 40 or older has the right to be elected.”

This means that even in the early 1950s, there was a legal provision allowing only those aged 40 or older to run for president. Korea is not the only country that sets age restrictions for presidential candidacy. Regardless of the appropriateness of such legal provisions, many countries have age restriction rules.

For example, the United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5, states, “No person shall be eligible to the office of President who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.”

The claim that there was no age restriction law of 40 years for presidential candidacy before the Park Chung-hee government was judged to be “not true” based on Korea’s constitution and the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Election Act.