hankyoreh

National Assembly speaker Chung Sye-kyun

75% of South Koreans support dispersing the authority of the president and strengthening the authority of local governments, a new survey shows.

In a survey of public attitudes toward Constitutional reform carried out by Korea Research between July 12 and 13 on 1,000 adults around the country, 75.4% of respondents supported Constitutional reform. The survey, which was commissioned by the office of National Assembly speaker Chung Sye-kyun and released on July 16 (the 69th anniversary of the adoption of South Korea’s Constitution), had a reliability of 95% and a margin of error of ±3.1 points. 14.5% of respondents were opposed to Constitutional reform, while 10.1% were not sure or did not respond.

The most preferred approach to Constitutional reform was dispersing presidential authority or strengthening institutional checks on that authority, chosen by 79.8% of respondents. 79.6% of respondents also thought that the central government’s authority and funding should be dispersed to local governments. This confirms that there is a public consensus about the need to share the authority that is concentrated in the president and the central government.

When asked about the new type of government that should result from Constitutional reform, the greatest number of respondents (46%) preferred a “mixed government” that would split authority between a president elected by the public and a prime minister selected by the National Assembly.

The next most popular choice was a presidential system, chosen by 38.2%, while a parliamentary system was relatively unpopular, with 13% of support. 67% of respondents supported the idea of adding a runoff to presidential elections. When asked about ways to reform the election district system, which would have to be discussed along with Constitutional reform, 67.9% of respondents expressed their support for reforming the system so as to increase the proportionality between the rate of support for parties and the number of seats they hold in the National Assembly.

An overwhelming majority of respondents (93.9%) said it’s necessary to strengthen basic rights, including the right to life, the right to safety, the right to health, environmental rights, and the right of gender equality, while 72% also supported adding the principle of “equal wages for work of equivalent value” to the Constitution.

By Kim Tae-gyu, staff reporter

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