Lee Jae Myung promises to back amendment to Constitution

On 77th Constitution Day, president asks secretaries to review redesignation as public holiday

Hibiscus syriacus, also known locally as "mugunghwa" or rose of Sharon, the national flower of South Korea, blooms in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, Wednesday. (Yonhap)

Marking the 77th anniversary of South Korea's Constitution on Thursday, President Lee Jae Myung expressed his commitment to a new amendment to the Constitution, stressing that it must be "citizen-centered."

In a Facebook post, Lee said a newly amended Constitution, which would uphold the spirit of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising in May 1980 and encompass the greater fundamental rights of each citizen, the greater local autonomy and the curtailment of power through reforms, "must be a compass to lead the way of South Korea."

The liberal president also thanked the people for lawfully overcoming the political crisis that stemmed from former President Yoon Suk Yeol's martial law declaration in December.

South Korea last amended the Constitution about four decades ago, effective in 1987. It was the ninth amendment in the country since its foundation on Aug. 15, 1948.

Later on Thursday, Lee asked his secretaries to consider redesignating Constitution Day as a public holiday in a meeting he presided over at his office in Seoul.

Nearly two decades after South Korea removed Constitution Day, which falls on July 17 each year, from the list of public holidays, lawmakers have pushed to designate the day as a full public holiday to shed light on the role of the Constitution in safeguarding democracy.

Since Lee's inauguration on June 4, Reps. Kwak Sang-eon of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea and Kang Dae-sik of the main opposition People Power Party have each introduced revision bills aimed at adding Constitution Day to the list of public holidays, following its exclusion in 2008.

Kwak and nine other lawmakers of three liberal parties proposed the redesignation on June 13, suggesting it could "boost the domestic economy and guarantee people's right to rest," and at the same time uphold the spirit of the Constitution.

Kwak proposed a revision of the Act on Public Holidays to allow South Koreans to be granted the day off.

Of the five national celebration days designated in South Korea, Constitution Day is the only one that is not also designated as a public holiday.

On July 9, Kang and 10 other People Power Party members proposed a similar bill to revise the Act on Public Holidays, raising a need for Constitution Day to be redesignated.

South Korea promulgated its first Constitution on July 17, 1949, and the day was designated as a holiday in 1950. The conservative Lee Myung-bak administration, however, delisted the day as a public holiday in 2008, amid calls to recover national productivity alongside the introduction of a five-day workweek in 2004.

According to a recent report by the National Assembly Research Service, there have been 17 bills so far designed to reinstate Constitution Day as a public holiday since 2008.

Constitution Day "holds great symbolic significance" in that a need to safeguard constitutional values has been in the limelight, and it therefore deserves to be redesignated as a public holiday, added the report released Monday. It also called for a social consensus on the matter, given that the redesignation could have a significant socioeconomic impact on South Korea.