The Aborted Constitutional Amendment of the '87 System: Institutional Impossibility and the Opportunity for an Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Monopoly Turn

Markdown

1. Facts: May 7, 2026 – Constitutional Amendment Vote Fails to Materialize

On the afternoon of May 7, 2026, the constitutional amendment bill led by National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik was declared invalid at the plenary session due to a collective boycott by the People Power Party (PPP). The bill required the approval of at least 191 votes—two-thirds of the 286 sitting members—but the PPP's decision to boycott under party lines collapsed the quorum itself.

The main contents of the amendment bill were as follows:

  • Immediately require National Assembly approval when the president declares a state of emergency martial law; if not approved within 48 hours or if the Assembly votes to lift it, the martial law's effect terminates immediately
  • Enshrine the spirit of the Busan-Masan Democratic Uprising and the May 18 Democratization Movement in the preamble of the Constitution
  • Stipulate balanced national development as a state duty

Six parliamentary parties (Democratic Party of Korea, Motherland Innovation Party, Progressive Party, Reform Party, Basic Income Party, and Social Democratic Party) along with independent lawmakers—totaling 187 members—jointly proposed the bill. Speaker Woo directly criticized the PPP, stating, "Preventing participation in a vote in the name of party line is tyranny of a political party," and announced a revote at 2:00 PM on May 8, but passage is virtually impossible.

2. Class Character of the Amendment Bill: Reform Within the '87 System, Its Inherent Limits

2.1. Class Character of the Proposing Forces

The six parties that jointly proposed this amendment bill have no fundamental differences in their class foundation. The Democratic Party, Motherland Innovation Party, Reform Party, Basic Income Party, Social Democratic Party, and Progressive Party all accept the '87 system as an institutional framework and advocate for "the expansion of democracy" within it. While the Progressive Party and Social Democratic Party partially raise labor rights and social rights, they did not include the anti-imperialist and anti-monopoly agenda of dismantling chaebol monopolies and withdrawing U.S. forces from Korea in the amendment bill. The "cross-party" nature of the 187 co-sponsors is precisely the result of excluding these fundamental issues.

Lenin already pointed this out in 1918: "Even the most democratic state has no constitution that lacks loopholes or reservation clauses guaranteeing the possibility of deploying troops against workers, declaring martial law, and so on" ( The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky ). This amendment bill remains a limited defensive measure of strengthening control over martial law, without questioning the class rule structure that makes martial law possible.

2.2. The Anti-Democratic Origins of the '87 System

The 1987 constitutional system was a product of an incomplete compromise between the mass explosion of the Great Worker Struggle and the military-fascist forces. The workers' struggles for survival and democratization demands erupted through the June Uprising but were funneled into the compromise of Roh Tae-woo's June 29 Declaration, leaving core elements of the military fascist regime uneradicated. The National Security Law survived, and the Act on Assembly and Demonstrations was reorganized as a mechanism for controlling the populace.

The '87 system is a deformed structure that has not even completed bourgeois democracy. In this system, where fascism and bourgeois democracy form an antagonistic balance, constitutional amendment has never succeeded once (Uprising, 2025). Thirty-nine years of failure is not coincidence but structural necessity.

2.3. Limitations of the Amendment Bill's Content

The amendment bill is condensed into three points: (1) strengthening procedures for controlling martial law, (2) enshrining symbols of democratization movements in the Constitution, and (3) making balanced regional development a state duty. None of these touches the structure of capital's domination.

  • Complete absence of an anti-imperialist agenda: Not a single line mentions the U.S. Forces Korea, the ROK-U.S. Alliance, or wartime operational control. South Korea's Constitution was built on the legacy of the U.S. military government, and that dependency persists to this day.
  • Absence of an anti-monopoly agenda: There is no mention of dismantling chaebol, substantive mechanisms for economic democratization (banning circular equity investment, separate disclosure system, effective regulation of holding companies, etc.).
  • Absence of labor rights: Strengthening the three basic labor rights, prohibiting discrimination against non-regular workers, protecting platform workers, and guaranteeing the right to strike are not included. According to KG Data, platform workers in South Korea currently do not even have their right to organize recognized under the Constitution.
  • Uncritical perpetuation of the division system: The "territory" clause (Article 3) stipulates the entire Korean Peninsula including the northern area, but there is no content regarding unification or a peace regime with the North. The amendment bill confines itself to institutional reform only for the South.

3. Analysis of Political Forces

3.1. People Power Party: Impossible to Oppose Content → Neutralize Procedure

The PPP's tactic is clear. Constructing a substantive argument against strengthening martial law control or enshrining the May 18 spirit would be political suicide. So they chose the frame of a "tactical constitutional amendment." Party leader Jang Dong-hyuk used the rhetoric of a "build-up amendment for term extension," reducing the necessity of constitutional amendment itself to a personal political strategy of President Lee Jae-myung.

The class meaning of this tactic is obvious. As the successor party to the Yoon Suk Yeol regime that declared the December 3 emergency martial law, the PPP precisely recognizes that strengthening martial law control is an institutional punishment of their own political origins. Approving the amendment would be self-denial regarding the December 3 martial law. Since they cannot oppose the content, they chose to neutralize the procedure itself. This demonstrates the fundamental corruption of parliamentarism within the '87 system.

3.2. Democratic Party and Lee Jae-myung: Instrumentalizing Constitutional Amendment for the Presidential Election

President Lee Jae-myung, during his presidential campaign, proposed "four-year single-term presidency with a runoff voting system" as a constitutional amendment agenda (Hankyoreh report, 2025). Compared to that ambitious plan, the current bill is drastically reduced in scope. Speaker Woo's statement that "only the most necessary content with the broadest social consensus was included" reflects a strategy of excluding power structure reform and opening the door to constitutional amendment through minimal consensus.

But even this minimalism collapsed before the PPP's boycott. The Democratic Party's constitutional amendment strategy faces a fundamental contradiction: while denying that the amendment is a subject of political strife, the only path to making it possible is a political breakthrough of "conscience votes" from PPP lawmakers. The amendment, presented as a matter of law and institutions, is in reality entirely subordinate to political dynamics within the Assembly.

3.3. Role of Progressive Parties

The Progressive Party and Social Democratic Party participated in the joint proposal of the amendment bill, but their independent demands (strengthening labor rights, enshrining social rights, etc.) were hardly reflected. By being incorporated into the Democratic Party-led discourse on constitutional amendment, these parties lost the opportunity to build independent class politics in the amendment phase. Although the Progressive Party's special committee on constitutional amendment presented a phased roadmap for 2026–2028 (KG Data), the failure of this bill has dismantled even that roadmap.

4. The Thesis of Institutional Impossibility: What the Failure of the Amendment Proves

4.1. The Institutional Dead End of the '87 System

The fact that even a minimal defensive amendment—strengthening control over martial law—is impossible demonstrates that the '87 system functions not as a corridor for reform but as a breakwater for conservatism. From the moment the energy of the 1987 Great Worker Struggle was blocked by compromise with the military-fascist forces, this system was designed to structurally preclude fundamental transformation.

Marx already wrote in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Programme that "even vulgar democracy does not doubt that the class struggle will finally be decided in the democratic republic, the last state form of bourgeois society." South Korea's '87 system mocks even this insight of vulgar democracy. Far from "deciding" the class struggle, it blocks even the minimal device to prevent the recurrence of anti-democratic violence like martial law.

4.2. A Bonapartist Moment

The December 3 emergency martial law is a Bonapartist moment inherent in South Korea's comprador-monopoly capitalist system. As Marx pointed out, Bonapartism is "the necessary state form in a country where the working class, highly developed in the cities but numerically inferior to the peasant smallholders in the countryside, has been defeated in a decisive revolutionary struggle by the capitalist class, the petty bourgeoisie, and the army" (letter to Engels, 1865). What the '87 system left in exchange for blocking the revolutionary potential of the working class is the survival of authoritarian state apparatuses linking the military, the prosecution, and the chaebol. Yoon's martial law was the logical culmination of this apparatus.

In such a structure, strengthening control over martial law through constitutional amendment is an attempt to block the result while leaving intact the cause (the class character of the state apparatus). This contradiction exploded in the form of the PPP's boycott.

4.3. The Fundamental Limits of Intra-Institutional Reform

In a comprador-monopoly capitalist system, the constitution is the legal form of class rule. In this system, intra-institutional reform is not excluded from the start but is attempted and then blocked in a cycle that reproduces the legitimacy of domination. The failure of the constitutional amendment is one scene in this cycle. The Democratic Party accumulates moral capital through the attempt at reform ("we tried to reform within the system"), and the PPP reconfirms its conservative legitimacy through the boycott ("we defended the system"). The only thing excluded from this cycle is the independent politics of the working class.

5. The DPRK Variable: The Division System and the Structural Limits of South Korean Reform

This amendment bill remains completely silent on the Korean Peninsula's division and unification issues. Article 3 of the Constitution (territory) was not subject to revision, and no provisions regarding inter-Korean relations or a peace regime were included. This silence is no accident. When any institutional reform in the South ignores the division structure, it cannot overcome the limits of a "half-baked reform."

North Korea amended its constitution through the 15th Supreme People's Assembly's first session in March 2026 (MBC report, May 6, 2026; analysis by Seoul National University professor Lee Jeong-cheol). Expressions related to "fatherland unification" were deleted, and a new territorial clause was added (stipulating the area north of the Military Demarcation Line as its territory). The expression "hostile two states" is not directly stated in the constitution but is maintained as a policy guideline.

This simultaneous constitutional revision in both South and North demonstrates the solidification of the division system. The South pursues "democratization" without mentioning unification; the North pursues "strengthening national sovereignty" while deleting the concept of the nation. Both sides are seeking their own stabilization within the division system.

However, the point where North Korea's two-state theory has a fundamental difference from the South's comprador-monopoly capitalism must be made clear. North Korea, as an anti-imperialist state capitalist system under a suryong (supreme leader) system, is the only regime on the Korean Peninsula not subsumed under the U.S.-led imperialist order. Because this South Korean amendment bill completely excluded the anti-imperialist agenda, it conceals the imperialist origins of the division.

Thus, attempts at South Korean institutional reform within the division system face a structural limit: a constitutional amendment that ignores unification or inter-Korean relations can only take place on the structural foundation of the Cold War, division, and anti-communism, and that foundation pre-limits the very scope of the amendment.

6. Tactical Proposals After the Failure: Making It an Opportunity for an Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Monopoly Turn

6.1. Popular Exposure of Institutional Impossibility

A propaganda campaign is needed that explains the failure of the constitutional amendment not as a mere "political failure" but as the structural dead end of the '87 system. The core message is:

"Even an amendment to prevent martial law has been blocked. The system cannot reform itself."

This message should not allow anger over the failed amendment to be channeled into the Democratic Party's "next opportunity" discourse but should transform it into a question about the system itself.

6.2. Expanding into a Crisis of Legitimacy for the '87 System

The failure of the amendment reveals that the '87 system is an exhausted system that can no longer produce any reform. In thirty-nine years, it has not succeeded in a single constitutional amendment. During that period, chaebol economic concentration deepened, labor precariousness expanded, and the ROK-U.S. alliance became further militarized.

The key is to connect this reality popularly: "A country where constitutional amendment fails—housing prices rise, jobs become unstable, and the risk of war grows." The incapacity of institutional politics and the instability of the popular masses' lives must be bound together in a single structural explanation.

6.3. The Necessity of an Independent Constitutional Vision

Our camp must not be subsumed into the bourgeois parties' "constitutional amendment versus compromise" dynamic but must raise an independent constitutional vision. Specific directions:

  • Anti-Imperialist Constitution: Stipulate the withdrawal of U.S. Forces Korea, dissolution of the ROK-U.S. Alliance, recovery of wartime operational control, and conclusion of a Korean Peninsula peace treaty.
  • Anti-Monopoly Constitution: Dissolve chaebol, separate ownership and control of chaebol founding families, and guarantee workers' participation in management.
  • Labor Constitution: Substantively guarantee the three basic labor rights, fully permit workers' political activities, and prohibit replacement workers during strikes.
  • Peace Constitution: Establish a South-North peace regime, a phased unification roadmap, and the principle of solidarity with the working class in the North.

It is clear that this vision is not immediately realizable. However, now that the dead end of intra-institutional reform is evident to the masses, an independent constitutional vision functions as a weapon of criticism and a reference point for alternatives.

6.4. Specific Propaganda Slogans

  1. "A country that cannot even amend its constitution to prevent martial law—the system is not the answer."
  2. "Thirty-nine years of the '87 system: zero constitutional amendments, chaebol multiplied tenfold."
  3. "The People Power Party blocks the amendment? The Democratic Party didn't even include anything to oppose."
  4. "Anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly constitutional transformation—beyond amendment, toward a founding constitution."
  5. "U.S. troops, chaebol, National Security Law—without touching these, it's not a constitutional amendment."

6.5. Organizational Tasks

The phase of the failed constitutional amendment must not be consumed as momentary news. The following organizational tasks are urgent:

  1. Produce and distribute popular educational materials on the total critique of the '87 system using the failed amendment as a catalyst.
  2. Organize discussion sessions on the failed amendment in trade unions, peasant organizations, and youth groups.
  3. Produce propaganda materials that translate the anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly constitutional vision into concrete policy language.
  4. Provide sustained follow-up analysis and commentary even after the revote on May 8.

7. Conclusion: The Constitutional Amendment Must Be Transformed into a Opportunity for Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Monopoly Struggle

This failure of the constitutional amendment is not an accidental event. It is a self-exposure of the system, proving that the constitutional order of comprador-monopoly capitalism structurally blocks any fundamental reform. The PPP's boycott was merely the executor of this exposure; the cause lies deeper.

Our task is to prevent anger over the failed amendment from being reclaimed by the Democratic Party's "next opportunity" discourse and to transform it into an opportunity for anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly struggle. The fact that the intra-institutional channel is blocked means that class mobilization and organization outside the institutions is the only path.

The '87 system is dead. Now it is time to clear away its corpse and imagine the constitution of the working class.

Date: May 7, 2026 Sources: National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik's X posts (May 4–7, 2026), Money Today, Yonhap News, Hankyoreh, Pressian, Kyunghyang Shinmun, MBC reports May 2026; Seoul National University professor Lee Jeong-cheol's analysis of North Korea's constitution (Ministry of Unification briefing May 6, 2026); Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918); Marx-Engels correspondence (1865); Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875); Uprising (2025) analysis of Korea; Bolshevik Group (2017) analysis; Institute for Democracy and Labor Studies & KG Data