Constitution Day abandoned

Yeom Jae-ho

The author, a former president of Korea University, is the president of Taejae University.

A nation is built on people’s consensus on a new governance system. Whether through a revolution or liberation from a colonial rule, the foundation of a state is its constitution. During the monarchy, a king could rule his country with absolute power without a national consensus, but in the modern system, a state is founded on the constitution.

After achieving independence from Britain, the founding fathers of the United States adopted the presidential system — and the separation of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches — all based on the Constitution. They created an entirely new governance system where the president — not the monarch as in the past — governs the country for a certain period of time after being entrusted with the governing power by voters in elections.

Korea is no exception. After three years under the U.S. military government following its liberation in 1945 from the Japanese colonial rule, our founding fathers launched the so-called Constitutional Assembly on May 31, 1948 through elections and enacted the Constitution two months later. The Constitution drafted by Prof. Yu Chin-o of Korea University borrowed the “democratic republic system” from the Constitution of the provisional government and used it as Article 1 of the Constitution, which declared “The Republic of Korea shall be a democratic republic,” followed by Article 2, which states, “The sovereignty of the Republic of Korea shall reside in the people, and all state authority shall emanate from the people.” The two articles are the basic frame of the Republic of Korea today.

The Constitution was passed in a vote in the National Assembly on July 12, 1948, and was signed and promulgated by founding President Syngman Rhee on July 17 and went into effect that day. After about a month, the Republic of Korea was founded.

National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo, center, invites heads of major political parties and representatives of the government, the judiciary and the Constitutional Court to his room in the legislature to celebrate Constitution Day on July 17, 2022. [KIM SANG-SEON]

But unfortunately, Constitution Day on July 17 is not a national holiday in Korea even though Independence Movement Day (March 1), Liberation Day (Aug. 15), National Foundation Day (Oct. 3) and Hangul Day (Oct. 9) are all holidays. After the Roh Moo-hyun administration excluded Constitution Day from the list of national holidays, citing the increase in rest days after the introduction of the five-day workweek, the following Lee Myung-bak administration implemented it. But the values of the Constitution to create a new country cannot be treated lightly. Korea does not have a state religion, but recognizes Buddha’s birthday and Christmas as national holidays. I can hardly understand the government’s decision to exclude Constitution Day from the list simply because the country came to have more rest days than before. It is deplorable that a number of students in primary, middle and high schools across the country just do not know what Constitution Day is, since it is not a holiday.

In Norway, people celebrate their own Constitution Day on May 17 with parades and festivals across the country. India, Poland, Denmark, Spain and Ukraine are the same. Japanese people also celebrate Constitutional Memorial Day on May 3 to show their respect for the Peace Constitution. Our president takes an oath to defend the Constitution in an inauguration ceremony, as do lawmakers.

If the conservative administration really removed Constitution Day from the list of national holidays to help companies make more profits by reducing holidays, it constitutes a brazen dismissal of Constitutional values. It is very worrisome if the liberal administration indeed excluded the day from national holidays just because of its deep-rooted doubt about the legitimacy of the First Republic led by the founding president. Luckily, several lawmakers from the conservative and liberal parties proposed a bill to designate Constitution Day as a national holiday again. I would pin my hope on their submission of the bill.

I see another encouraging sign. The conservative Yoon Suk Yeol administration has set up a broad committee to build a presidential memorial for the founding president. In the committee, sons of five former presidents, liberal or conservative, decided to serve as advisors to the memorial construction project. Many veteran politicians from both fronts — including Han Hwa-gap, president of the Korea Peace Foundation — have joined in the project. Legendary actor Shin Young-kyun, a former lawmaker and head of an arts and culture foundation, even promised to contribute his 3.3-acre land by the Han River for the construction after finding out that the memorial for our first president could not proceed due to a continuing ideological battle between the two political groups.

While watching the procedure of a Constitutional amendment in 1952 in Korea, a British journalist famously wrote, “Expecting democracy to bloom in Korea was like expecting a rose to bloom in a trash can.” But Koreans fought against the military dictatorship’s attempt to revise the Constitution to extend his rule indefinitely and achieved the world’s 10th largest economy. If anyone wants to dishonor the founding of the proud nation and the values of our Constitution by highlighting the bad side of the country to the young generation, it should be stopped.

The chaos and confusion shortly after the independence — and the merits and demerits of former presidents — must be judged by history, not short-lived administrations. I cannot forget the lines in an essay by late poet Kim So-un, who wrote, “My mother may be a leper, but I will not replace her with Cleopatra.” We must keep in mind that the democratization and economic development of Korea could begin with the founding of the nation based on the Constitution.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.