Every year on July 17, South Korea marks Constitution Day, or Jeheonjeol (제헌절), commemorating the promulgation of the country’s first Constitution in 1948. In recent years, however, I have found myself thinking about this day somewhat differently.
On the night of December 3, 2024, then-President Yoon Suk Yeol declared emergency martial law. Military and police forces were deployed to the National Assembly and other locations, but within hours lawmakers voted unanimously, 190–0 among those present, to demand that the martial law be lifted. An impeachment followed, and on April 4, 2025, the Constitutional Court unanimously removed Yoon from office after finding that his actions related to the martial law declaration violated the Constitution and statutes in ways serious enough to justify dismissal.
For people abroad watching the news, the sequence may have seemed extraordinary. A president declared martial law, lawmakers moved quickly to demand that it be lifted, citizens gathered in the streets, and within a few months the president was removed through a constitutional process.
But when I look further back into modern Korean history, I do not see the episode as completely separate from the past. South Korea’s Constitution did not begin as a perfect democratic rulebook and remain untouched ever since. There were periods when political leaders changed constitutional rules to strengthen or prolong their own power, and there were other periods when citizens pushed the political system in the opposite direction.
That is the history through which I want to look at the Constitution of South Korea.
South Korea’s Constitution Was Political From the Beginning
South Korea’s Constituent Assembly was formed after the May 10, 1948 election and began drafting the Constitution for the new government. During the drafting process, a system with strong parliamentary characteristics was initially discussed, but Syngman Rhee strongly favored a presidential system, and the final Constitution moved in that direction.
The Constitution was passed by the Assembly on July 12 and promulgated on July 17, 1948. The president and vice president were initially elected by the National Assembly rather than directly by the public, while the document also established basic rights and the institutional framework for the legislature, executive, judiciary, local government, and economic order.
South Korea’s constitutional history did not simply emerge from nowhere in 1948. The preamble of the 1948 Constitution referred to the establishment of the Republic of Korea through the March First Movement and spoke of rebuilding an independent democratic state. The current Constitution also explicitly states that the Republic inherits the legal tradition of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea established after the March First Movement.
This is also why I personally see 1919 as an important constitutional and historical starting point for the Republic rather than treating 1948 as the moment when the idea of the Republic suddenly appeared. I discuss that question separately in my article on the Korea founding year debate.
What interests me most about the drafting process is that constitutional ideals and real political interests were intertwined from the beginning. A constitution is supposed to establish power but also limit it, yet the question of who would hold executive power and how much authority that office should have was already part of the politics surrounding the first Constitution.
There is nothing unusual about political negotiation being part of constitution-making. Every constitution reflects compromises made in a particular historical moment. The deeper problem came later, when the political needs of presidents repeatedly took priority over constitutional restraints.
When Presidents Changed the Constitution to Preserve Power
The first constitutional amendment came in 1952 during the Korean War, when Busan was serving as the temporary capital. At the time, the president was elected by the National Assembly, and Syngman Rhee faced uncertainty about whether he could win another term under that system. He pushed for direct presidential elections, and the conflict escalated into the Busan Political Crisis, which involved martial law and the detention of opposition lawmakers before the amendment was eventually passed.
An even more troubling episode came in 1954 with what Koreans call the Sasaoip Amendment, usually translated as the “rounding-off amendment.” The proposed amendment exempted the first president from the existing restriction on consecutive terms. It initially failed by one vote, but Rhee’s Liberal Party later argued that because two-thirds of 203 lawmakers was 135.333…, the number should effectively be treated as 135 rather than 136, and the amendment was declared passed. The National Institute of Korean History records both the initial defeat and the subsequent use of this rounding argument.
A constitution should be the highest rule limiting the people who exercise political power. Looking at these amendments, however, I see almost the reverse: constitutional rules were changed to meet the political needs of the president. To me, that is one of the most troubling parts of South Korea’s early constitutional history.
The pattern did not end with Rhee. In 1969, President Park Chung-hee secured a constitutional amendment that allowed him to seek a third term. In 1972, the Yushin Constitution went much further: direct presidential elections were abolished, the president was selected through the National Conference for Unification, the presidential term was extended to six years, and there was no limit on reelection.
The Yushin Constitution is an important reminder that the mere existence of a constitution does not guarantee democracy. An authoritarian government can also operate under a document called a constitution. What matters is whether that document genuinely limits state power and protects the freedoms and rights of the people.
The Constitution was changed again under Chun Doo-hwan in 1980. The system was not identical to the Yushin arrangement, and the president was limited to a single seven-year term, but the president was still chosen indirectly rather than by a direct popular vote. In only a few decades, South Korea repeatedly changed the method of choosing its president, presidential terms, and the balance of political power.
When Citizens Began to Change the Political System
South Korea’s constitutional history is not only a history of political leaders rewriting rules from above. There were also moments when public resistance pushed the country in the opposite direction.
After the fraudulent March 15 election in 1960, the April Revolution forced Syngman Rhee from power. A subsequent constitutional amendment replaced the presidential system with a parliamentary cabinet system. That political order was short-lived, but the episode was significant because public resistance did more than replace a leader; it also produced institutional and constitutional change.
The larger turning point came in 1987. After years of authoritarian rule, protests demanding direct presidential elections and democratization expanded across the country during the June Democratic Struggle. Political leaders eventually agreed on constitutional reform, and the new Constitution was approved in an October 27 referendum with a turnout of 78.2 percent and support from 93.1 percent of valid votes.
I see 1987 as one of the most important turning points in South Korean constitutional history. Earlier democratic movements had also changed Korean politics, but the 1987 Constitution established much of the democratic framework South Korea still uses today, including direct presidential elections and the single five-year presidential term.
That does not mean I think the 1987 Constitution is perfect. Critics have long argued that too much power remains concentrated in the presidency, while others question whether a single five-year term provides enough political accountability or continuity for long-term policy.
Even so, the historical direction of the 1987 Constitution was noticeably different from several earlier amendments. It was not written to extend the tenure of a particular president. It emerged under intense public pressure for democratization and forced the political establishment to respond.
What Was the 1987 Constitution Trying to Prevent?
To understand why a South Korean president today is limited to one five-year term, it helps to remember the history that came before it. Koreans had already experienced presidents changing constitutional rules in order to remain in power, and the strict single-term presidency was one response to that experience.
The 1987 Constitution also restored direct presidential elections and the National Assembly’s power to conduct state audits. The president’s former power to dissolve the National Assembly disappeared, fundamental rights were strengthened, and the Constitutional Court was established in its current form. The National Archives describes the Ninth Amendment as not only the restoration of direct presidential elections but also an expansion of fundamental rights and procedural limits on government power.
The Constitutional Court reviews the constitutionality of laws, hears constitutional complaints and jurisdictional disputes, considers dissolution of political parties, and decides impeachment cases involving high-ranking officials.
But I do not think democracy can be protected by constitutional clauses alone. Even a carefully designed constitution can remain little more than words on paper if political leaders, public officials, institutions, and citizens do not respect its principles.
The opposite is also true. Institutions inevitably have weaknesses, but when people and public bodies are willing to defend constitutional limits, those written rules acquire real power.
The 2024 Martial Law Crisis Put the Constitution to a Real Test
When President Yoon Suk Yeol declared emergency martial law on December 3, 2024, it was understandable that many Koreans immediately thought about earlier periods of military intervention and authoritarian rule. In modern Korean history, martial law is not merely an abstract legal term; it is connected to real periods when democratic rights were severely restricted.
Article 77 of the Constitution gives the president authority to declare martial law under specified emergency circumstances. But the same article also states that if a majority of all members of the National Assembly demands that martial law be lifted, the president must comply.
At 1:02 a.m. on December 4, the National Assembly passed a resolution demanding the lifting of martial law, with all 190 lawmakers present voting in favor. The martial law declaration was subsequently withdrawn.
Citizens also gathered around the National Assembly that night and continued to demonstrate in the following days. Large rallies both supporting and opposing impeachment became part of the political landscape, but among those demanding Yoon’s removal, the language of constitutional order and democracy was especially prominent.
On December 14, the National Assembly passed the impeachment motion against Yoon, suspending his presidential authority while the case went to the Constitutional Court. On April 4, 2025, the Constitutional Court unanimously upheld Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and removed him from office. The Court concluded that the substantive requirements for emergency martial law had not been met and that Yoon had violated the Constitution and statutes through the declaration and subsequent deployment of military and police forces.
I do not look at this episode and conclude that South Korean democracy is flawless. The fact that a president actually declared emergency martial law in this way shows how seriously a democracy can still be tested.
What mattered to me was what happened next. Lawmakers voted to demand that martial law be lifted, citizens publicly expressed their opposition, and the final decision on removal from office went through the impeachment procedure established by the Constitution.
South Korea has already experienced periods when constitutional rules were bent or rewritten by those in power and when military authority overwhelmed democratic politics. Seen against that history, the response in 2024 and 2025 showed a country behaving very differently from some of its authoritarian past.
I Think the Constitution Must Be Able to Grow With Its Democracy
None of this means that I believe the 1987 Constitution should now be treated as a finished document that must remain unchanged forever. It was an important achievement of South Korea’s democratization, but almost four decades have passed since it was written, and Korean society has changed enormously.
The Korea of 1987 did not face today’s digital society, artificial intelligence, demographic decline and rapid aging in their present forms. Regional depopulation, the concentration of population and resources in the Seoul metropolitan area, new questions about fundamental rights, the distribution of presidential power, and the structure of presidential terms are all being discussed in a society very different from the one that wrote the current Constitution.
The 2024 martial law crisis created another question. The existing Constitution gave the National Assembly the authority to demand the lifting of martial law, and that safeguard did work. But the episode also renewed debate over whether additional constitutional restrictions should be placed on a president’s ability to declare martial law.
In April 2026, 187 lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Party and five smaller parties jointly proposed a constitutional amendment. The proposal included stronger controls over declarations of martial law, recognition in the preamble of the democratic legacy of the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement and other pro-democracy struggles, and stronger constitutional language on balanced regional development. The main opposition People Power Party did not join the proposal.
That proposal did not lead to a constitutional referendum alongside the June 2026 local elections, but the broader debate did not disappear. In July, National Assembly Speaker Cho Jeong-sik said he intended to establish a bipartisan special committee and pursue constitutional reform before the current Assembly’s term ends in 2028. In August, President Lee Jae Myung again expressed support for discussing a four-year presidency allowing two terms, while also arguing that reform should strengthen the National Assembly, local autonomy, and fundamental rights and should be pursued through bipartisan agreement.
There is no single agreed answer to what the next Constitution should look like. A four-year renewable presidency, further limits on presidential power, decentralization, additional basic rights, stronger parliamentary authority, and changes to the electoral system all raise their own questions. Constitutional reform should therefore not become a shortcut for one government or one political party to install the system it happens to prefer.
I believe South Korea has reached an important moment to think seriously about its Constitution again. That does not mean discarding the 1987 Constitution as an outdated relic. It means examining what that Constitution successfully protected, what the events of 2024 revealed that it could not fully prevent, and what kind of rules a more mature democracy now needs.
People change as they gain experience and grow older. Democracies and nations also change as they confront new problems, learn from failures, and develop new expectations about rights and political power. I believe a constitution should be capable of developing with the society it governs.
South Korea’s Constitution has already changed many times. Some amendments were driven by leaders trying to preserve their own power, while others came because citizens demanded democracy and political reform. If South Korea eventually adopts a tenth constitutional amendment, I hope it will not be another amendment designed around the political future of one powerful individual, but one that reflects what a more mature Korean democracy wants its country to become.
About the Author 🇰🇷
I live in South Korea and write about the small details of Korean life and culture that I experience and observe firsthand.
English is my second language, so I sometimes use tools such as Gemini and Google Translate to help with translation and editing. The experiences, observations, opinions, and cultural perspectives in my articles are my own, and I personally review and edit every article before publishing it.
My goal with Korea Core Info is simple: to share everyday Korea from a local perspective and help international readers discover things they might not always find in a typical travel guide.
I hope my stories and guides help you understand Korea a little better — not just as a place to visit, but as a place where people live their everyday lives.