GNP sets agenda it would pursue

The Grand National Party said Friday that if it becomes the ruling party, it will raise the defense budget to 3 percent of the gross domestic product to boost the nation's military capacity.

The party's Reform Committee, generally identified with its conservative wing, outlined the increase in what amounts to a blueprint book of the national agenda for an incoming administration.

"The current defense expenditure remains at 2.7 percent of the gross domestic product, which is only about half the expenditures made during the period from the 1970s through the 1980s," the committee chairman, Kim Yong-hwan, asserted.

The book describes the party's policy platform on North Korea as follows:

"Regardless of the direction that inter-Korean relations take in the future, we will maintain the concept of 'main enemy' in the Defense White Paper to clearly set out our defense policy." The party's presidential nominee, Lee Hoi-chang, has called for "reciprocity" rather than a "sunshine" policy toward North Korea.

The party said that it would cut by two months the mandatory 26-month military service. Also, the draft system would be operated flexibly so that draftees would be able write down their preferences for areas and types of service.

The party further called for a change in the constitution.

"Under the current single-five year presidential tenure, with the National Assembly elections coming in between, there is room for revision," Mr. Kim said. He proposed that the constitution, which has been amended on nine occasions over the course of five decades in Korea's modern government system, should make the electoral terms of the president and legislature concurrent. "The constitutional amendment should not only include changing the government power structure but put forth as a national vision as well," he said.

Mr. Kim said that the party, if in power, would maintain a standardized recruitment system for public high schools, but would give autonomy to private high schools in the selection of students.

by Lee Sang-il