PPP divided over Lee's term limit proposal

President Lee Jae Myung's push to rewrite Korea's once-only presidential term limit is breaking the opposition People Power Party's (PPP) united front. While the PPP's leadership calls the plan Lee's ploy for re-election dictatorship, several senior lawmakers say they would join talks on the conditions of the proposal.

Lee set out his position in a post on X on Friday evening, 14 months into his term. He called for replacing the single five-year presidential term with a four-year term that allows re-election, either consecutive or nonconsecutive, so that voters can deliver a midterm verdict on a president.

The Constitution already blocks a sitting president from benefiting. It limits a president to a single five-year term and states that an amendment extending the term or permitting re-election cannot apply to the president in office when the amendment is proposed. PPP leaders are nonetheless demanding a separate political pledge from Lee.

Kim Tae-ho, a four-term PPP lawmaker who played golf with Lee in early July and says the two discussed the amendment, is the exception in his party.

"One round of golf with the president cannot change politics, but it can open the door to dialogue," Kim wrote on Facebook on Sunday. "If President Lee clearly says he will not seek consecutive terms, the opposition should actively take part in constitutional reform discussions. If there is something that can move Korean politics even one step forward, I will talk with anyone."

Kim had set out four conditions a day earlier: Lee renounce seeking consecutive terms; the amendment decentralize presidential power; the two parties agree on the changes; and Lee shorten his current term.

However, the party leadership is not moving. Jang Dong-hyeok, who has led the PPP since August last year, took a firm opposite stance.

"I reject a constitutional amendment to enable re-election and dictatorship," Jang wrote on Facebook on Sunday. At a rally at Olympic Park in Songpa District, southern Seoul, on Saturday, he pressed the point further.

"A four-year, two-term system means President Lee himself wants to stay in office after his current term ends. If that is not the case, why can he not simply say, 'I will shorten my term, return as an ordinary citizen and stand trial'?"

Lee had addressed that point in Friday's post.

"If shortening the presidential term is necessary for an amendment, I can accept that," he wrote. "That thinking has not changed." He first took the position during his 2022 presidential campaign.

Running underneath the objections is a suspicion in the party that Lee has moved on the amendment this early to defuse the criminal cases against him.

"The reason for trying to change the current system is the president's trials," PPP Rep. Kim Yong-tae wrote on Sunday. "If he stands trial during his term, or immediately after shortening his term, constitutional reform can be pursued through bipartisan agreement."

Two more lawmakers weighed in over the weekend, one of them a member Lee had tried to reach directly.

"If the president and ruling party want to discuss constitutional reform, they must first stop all actions that shake the rule of law," Rep. Choi Hyung-du wrote on Facebook on Saturday. Choi said he had been invited to a golf meeting with Lee but did not attend. Na Kyung-won, a five-term lawmaker, called the plan a trick to extend Lee's own power.

However, the PPP was in fact the first to put a four-year, two-term amendment on the table.

After former President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached in April last year for declaring martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, the party proposed the change ahead of the snap election, and its candidate, Kim Moon-soo, ran on it. The position reversed once Lee took office.

"How can we support constitutional reform when the president has abolished the prosecution service and even increased the number of Supreme Court justices to eliminate his own legal risks?" a senior PPP lawmaker from the Gyeongsang region said.

The PPP opposed a single-issue amendment in May, led by then-Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik, that would have written the spirit of the May 18 Democratization Movement into the preamble. Its opposition killed what would have been the first amendment to the Constitution in 39 years.

A constitutional amendment needs the support of at least two-thirds of all sitting Assembly members to clear the National Assembly. If every lawmaker outside the PPP voted for one, at least 10 of the PPP's 109 members would still have to join their opposition.

"President Lee and the Democratic Party will move in earnest to win over PPP lawmakers using the amendment," said a first-term lawmaker from the greater Seoul area.

Lee played golf in June with Joo Ho-young and Park Duk-hyum, the current and a former deputy speaker of the National Assembly, and with Kim Tae-ho in early July. Shin Sung-bum and Choi were invited to meetings that did not take place. Some PPP leadership figures received invitations from the Blue House and declined.

"If the line blocking constitutional revision collapses, we will lose the ability to check the government and the party itself could be devastated," a PPP leadership figure said.

BY KIM GYU-TAE, RYU HYO-RIM [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]