[Ask The Era]The Problem Is the Presidential System

Two Presidents Impeached in a Decade
A Warning About How Democracy Is Run
Elections Dominated by the "Insurrection" Frame
Vanishing Cooperation, Deepening Manichaean Politics
Self-Reflection Without Constitutional Reform Breeds New Crises

"Sentence Yoon Suk Yeol to life imprisonment." This is the court ruling handed down 443 days after the December 3 Martial Law. With this, the judicial determination appears to have reached a conclusion for now, but the political and social repercussions are expected to continue. "Insurrection" has already become a massive political frame, and its trajectory will erupt once again in the June 3 local elections.

In a nationwide election where more than ten thousand candidates swarm to compete for several thousand posts, could there be an issue simpler and more powerful than this? In an election arena dominated by black-and-white thinking, where emotion and agitation overwhelm rational judgment, it is only natural that the side that seizes the issue gains the upper hand. The opposition party, instead of showing the grim resolve to turn the tide, is also playing a role by engaging in internal feuds over its stance on "insurrection."

The direct trigger of the crisis is clearly martial law. It was a "sloppy" measure that ended in just a few hours, yet the aftershocks led to the collapse of the administration and the reconfiguration of the national order. The instant reversal of positions between the person who was president and the person he had sought to imprison is a scene rarely witnessed in a modern democratic state. And this is happening in a country that belongs to the G20 and prides itself on one of the highest levels of enthusiasm for education in the world.

We already have the precedent of two presidential impeachments. Including impeachment motions, this is the third time. Even when one combs through the records, there have been fewer than 20 cases since World War II in which a nation’s top leader was actually removed from office through impeachment. Such examples are hard to find even in the United States, which has maintained a presidential system for 237 years, or in Western parliamentary democracies. The fact that Korea has gone through this twice in a decade is a grave warning. It is evidence not so much of the failure of particular individuals as of problems in our understanding of democracy and in the operation of our institutions. We must cast off this faulty yoke; how long will we go on blaming others?

The defining feature of Korean politics is extreme confrontation. Politics, which ought to ease conflict and foster compromise, instead functions as a device that amplifies conflict and division. In particular, presidential elections mobilize every possible means. Fifty million citizens are drawn into a vortex of fierce confrontation, to the point of resembling a psychological civil war. Once the election is over, the victors pay lip service to "unity" while monopolizing everything. The defeated side broods over political exclusion and loss, biding its time for revenge. This winner-takes-all structure is a major source of the factional confrontations that split the people apart.

This structure is repeated in the National Assembly. When the ruling party holds a majority, the legislature degenerates into a rubber stamp or errands center for the government; when the ruling party is in the minority and the opposition holds a majority, state affairs fall into paralysis. If yesterday’s reality was a legislature and an executive, the two pillars of the state, clashing and crossing each other at every turn, today’s reality is bills being rammed through like military operations, with opposing views blocked at the source. In a situation where the institutional foundation and political culture for cooperation are weak, majority rule is easily distorted into the logic of brute force. To seize and retain the presidency, the National Assembly has become a strategic battleground that must be won at all costs. If our conflict index ranks among the highest in the world despite the absence of ethnic or religious strife, the blame lies with flawed institutions that generate political conflict.

At the core of this lies Korea’s unique five-year single-term presidency. It is neither the Western-style parliamentary cabinet system nor the American-style presidential system of a federal state. A single election concentrates all power in one person, yet the mechanisms for checks and balances, supplementary safeguards, and procedures for holding that person to account are scant and inadequate. The term is too short to produce sustained results, yet long enough to wield power. In the early period, the administration is preoccupied with cutting ties with its predecessor; in the latter period, it sinks into lame-duck status as the next power structure begins to form. In practice, there are only about two years in which state affairs can be pursued in a stable manner. If a general election or local elections are held in the meantime, governance is once again swept up in populism.

This structure produces imperial power and impatient political behavior regardless of the personal character of the president. It drives leaders to fixate on short-term achievements rather than long-term visions, and in times of political crisis or, conversely, in times of political dominance, it makes them susceptible to the temptation of extreme choices. Martial law, emergency measures, and schemes to extend one’s rule can all be understood as belonging to the same category.

The decisive responsibility lies in the errors of individual judgment, but the deeper problem is a system in which the scope of concentrated power is excessively broad. In the rush to institutionalize the popular desire that "the president should be chosen by my own hand," there was a lack of careful reflection on how that power should be designed.

When the National Assembly, which is supposed to check the president, abandons its role, the popular will is distorted and the president exercises imperial authority. Bills that tighten the judiciary in deference to a president who fears future trials are swiftly passed in the Assembly. The number of Supreme Court justices is increased within a term to fill the Court with the president’s own people; with the introduction of a "distortion of law" crime that would hold judges accountable for "wrong" rulings, judges are compelled to read political signals rather than follow their conscience; and with moves toward a four- or five-tier appeal system that would send contested rulings back to the Constitutional Court, the very foundation of the separation of powers is shaken. Demands to withdraw indictments in cases involving the president are no different. This is not Nazi Germany under Hitler, who seized all three branches of power through an Enabling Act, but the self-portrait of today’s Republic of Korea.

Presidents who have enjoyed "imperial" powers have, without exception, met unhappy ends. The greater their powers, the more so. We have already witnessed behaviors that one would expect only in politically backward countries. A president’s misfortune does not end as a personal tragedy; it becomes a national misfortune. Even so, no president in power has possessed the boldness to push for a "virtuous" constitutional amendment that would voluntarily curtail his own authority. Talk of constitutional revision surfaces only when power has waned near the end of a term, but by then the political momentum is gone. This is how the Republic of Korea loses its future and slowly declines.

The question before us is now clear. Will we repeat the same tragedy yet again, or will we change the system? The crux is a "farewell to the imperial presidency." Unless we redesign our constitutional structure in a way that disperses power and strengthens accountability, conflict, confrontation, and tragedy will be unavoidable no matter who becomes president. The National Assembly must also be bound by institutional mechanisms that make it bear responsibilities commensurate with its powers.

The reason most democracies around the world have chosen power-sharing systems is that power concentrated in a single individual can, at any moment, put the entire nation at risk. If we dismiss the current crisis as nothing more than the failure of a particular politician, we are effectively booking another future crisis. The problem is not the person but the structure. Proposals to tinker only at the margins while leaving the core intact are naive and dangerous. To safeguard democracy, the structure of power must be properly and democratically distributed. When we finally part ways with the imperial presidency, the "emperor" will disappear, and in his place, a true leader will emerge who enjoys the people’s trust and affection for a long time.

Kim Hyong-o, former Speaker of the National Assembly