Impeachment, the media and the voters should judge right..The aftermath of Park Geun Hye's impeachment.

◆ [YTN Radio SHINYUL's news]
■ Broadcasting: FM 94.5 (17:00-19:00)

■ Air date: October 7, 2024 (Monday)
■ Proceedings: Shin Yul, Professor of Political Science and Diplomacy at Myongji University
■ Dialogue: Former National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo

* The text below may differ from the actual broadcast content, so please check the broadcast for more accurate information.

◇ Shin Yul, Professor of Political Science and Diplomacy at Myongji University (hereinafter Shin Yul): Shin Yul's News Jungs Part 2 begins. Kim Jin-pyo, former chairman of the National Assembly, is the one you will meet in the second part of the front interview today. You all know it so well, so if you have any questions, please text me at #0945 and I'll ask instead. As I said, you are in the studio of former National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo. Please come in.

★ Former Speaker of the National Assembly Kim Jin-pyo (hereinafter referred to as Kim Jin-pyo): Hello.

◇ Shin Yul: It seems like you've been busy all these years. Why are you so busy? What kind of research institute did you just open?

★ Kim Jin-pyo: Yes. I just started the Global Innovation Research Institute last June. There was an NGO called Global Together, mainly in the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the Ministry of Health and Welfare, who majored in development administration, development, finance, and health care, retire now, so it's a waste to just accumulate their experience, so the most difficult thing for us to do now is to support developing countries with ODA budgets. However, this is increasing rapidly, and Korea is moving to a shrinking society due to the seriousness of low birth rates. There is a concern that if we manage this incorrectly, we will go to an annihilation society, not a reduced society as many people worry. Then, to prevent this, there are many countries in the Middle East that ask for our help, such as Cambodia or Vietnam, with the budget that we support for professional manpower in each field that is still insufficient. But instead of bringing 3D workers to the country as they are now, we need to train people with the highest educational backgrounds, who have graduated from college and high school, to take young, healthy, and competent workers so that we can prevent our economy from shrinking and falling again. I'm going to do something like that.

◇ Shin-ryul: So, since the low birth rate problem cannot be solved right now, high-quality human resources in Korea must be removed or insufficient must be filled with urgent priority anyway. That's what you mean, right?

★ Kim Jin-pyo: And this also has to change immigration laws to fundamentally solve it. Since I retired from politics, I think I'm a little distant so that political juniors who are in charge of real politics and bureaucrats who implement policies with these people can work in the right direction and work with more faith and enthusiasm. I'm thinking of helping the politicians and bureaucrats a little bit now.

◇ Shin Yul: Now that the chairman is saying that, I'm asking you because you were the chairman of the National Assembly just before, so you're now a junior political student, of course, Woo Won-sik. If you give me some advice, I think it's going to be hard right now. Even if I look at it.

★ Kim Jin-pyo: At the end of my term as chairman of the National Assembly, an anchor of a broadcast asked me that question, so I asked him to summarize it in four characters.

◇ Sin Yul: I'm fine with opening it.

★ Kim Jin-pyo: So I summarized it in four letters, and it's actually a constitutional institution when lawmakers of constitutional institutions are most proud of themselves. Since the constitution has set the composition of the National Assembly and the method of electing members of the National Assembly, isn't it such a constitutional institution? If each person says, "Act like a constitutional institution," 200,000 people chose it. Then, the person who picked him must represent exactly who he or she will represent. Currently, politics is less than 5% of the total 200,000 people, regardless of whether they are members of the party that nominated him or not. About 3% is usually less than 1%. And especially, there's a so-called fandom that the current lawmakers care about the most. The fandom of Taegeukgi or Dog Daughter is less than 0.001%. But why don't they represent the various difficulties of the region or the difficulties of the class of the people who elected them to look at the fandom and the party? So politics is too far removed from the foundation of representative democracy. So, the way our politics goes right is that constitutional institutions should go like constitutional institutions. I think it is my job to play such a role so that each member of the National Assembly represents the people properly.

◇ Shin Yul: The chairman is talking about the fandom, but in fact, for example, Trump of the United States is now a candidate. During the last presidential election, didn't Trump's fandom eventually force the U.S. Congress into the building and one person die? But I think the current political crisis is very different from the cause of the crisis in the past. What do you think?

★ Kim Jin-pyo: It's different. So, as you said, democracy is called cell phone democracy. But that's why the fandom is formed.

◇ Shin Yul: Yes.

★ Kim Jin-pyo: But in order to create a consensus, many people cannot do it with complicated things, so if you simplify it to one or two, it becomes radical, and then people or groups who disagree with the argument or have opposing thoughts are demonized, and this characteristic is worse in our case.

◇ Sin-ryul: It's very severe.

★ Kim Jin-pyo: It's getting worse. That's why I have to prevent the harmful effects of this fandom politics. Because this is in direct conflict with representative democracy. It's there to say that the principle of representative democracy, that's why I use the word "constitutional institution," is the direction of our politics to make the constitutional institution act like a constitutional institution.

◇ Shin-yul: I'm sorry, but to be honest, when you were the chairman, the hard fandom attacked you a lot.

★ Kim Jin-pyo: When I became the speaker of the National Assembly, I declared that I would leave politics for the last time as the speaker of the National Assembly, so there is no reason to care about fandom or people like this.

◇ Shin Yul: But if you get attacked, you don't feel good.

★ Kim Jin-pyo: That's not good, but I point out what the fandom has done wrong and how our society approaches such a complex problem in such a single-celled way. It's just that everything is one-on-one, and it's just that everyone evaluates the whole organization, political party, or argument, and there are things that anyone is good at and can't do, and there are things that they have to take advantage of. Then, the representatives of the National Assembly asked us to put our heads together and discuss an issue in a way that is beneficial to the people's livelihood at the level of the people's eyes, so that we can select them, give them a lot of salary, and support the party's operating expenses almost 100 percent to 70 billion won a year to select a good person. Each political party, but they're not doing their part.

◇ Shin Yul: The chairman just mentioned his salary, but if you calculate the salary of the National Assembly members, Korea receives four times the per capita GDP. The U.S. and the U.K. are twice as big. Don't you think you need to shave it off?

★ Kim Jin-pyo: It's necessary now. That's up to the National Assembly.Ma, however, now I think the U.S. and the U.K. need to change the name of the payment if we want to have discussions with experts with good politics and assistants to gather various public opinions and things in each field and do this. Individual lawmakers don't spend much more than we do, but instead, they run aides and the cost of policy development comes with huge budget support. So, when analyzing this in the media, we need to look at it comprehensively, but if we look at the money that each lawmaker spends on running the National Assembly, we don't have much of it for the so-called living expenses of lawmakers. However, if you collect all of them and include all the allowances, if you compare them incorrectly, you have different glasses, rather than comparing 10 of us and 10 of the U.S. lawmakers.

◇ Sin Yul: And actually the 21st National Assembly when you were chairman. In fact, the 22nd National Assembly continues to repeat this because the Democratic Party of Korea passed it alone in the National Assembly, and the president vetoed it, and it has become completely commonplace now. Is there any way to break this vicious cycle?

★ Kim Jin-pyo: First of all, I talked about this a lot when I was the speaker of the National Assembly, but what's wrong with the politics now is that the Kim Gun-hee Special Prosecutor Act and the Coporal Chae Special Prosecutor Act are trying to catch fault with the incumbent president and the president if we look at the contents of this and the opposition party's attack. The ruling party shouldn't judge like this. So I'll do my best to block it. So when it comes to this issue, however, there are aspects that must be done in the Biphon Special Prosecutors Act or the Special Prosecutor Kim Gun-hee Act, and if any conflict becomes a political issue, why not solve it in the political circle in any way to take the next step? That's why I fought the same way with the Itaewon Special Act in the past.

◇ Sin Yul: That's right. But we agreed then.

★ Kim Jin-pyo: So I made an arbitration plan and made an arbitration plan by conceding the ruling party and the opposition party, so it took a long time, but I still passed it last May. It's the same way. Now, if the Special Prosecutor's Office Act on Special Prosecutor Kim Gun-hee is the root cause of the political dispute, it should be solved in this way. However, the principle of solving now is that the Democratic Party of Korea and the people's power should reflect on each of them, and if you analyze it in detail, five out of ten opinions are common. Usually, the class only needs to agree on something common first, then fail first, and then discuss the next step again. But our politics now is the politics of oroning. In the old days of military dictatorship, it was the definition of oronasing. Because if you don't, you'll lose everything, but that's not it now. Then, we have to do step-by-step politics, but we hang all the bills or this on this one of the pending political issues and if you listen to this, okay, accept it, and if you don't listen to this, everything is not possible. This is for whom? That's why we have to abandon this politics. Now, we have to go step by step to become an advanced country. And I think the media should also change its reporting attitude. During the inspection, Kim Gun-hee will do the inspection. That's how the media is reporting right now. In addition, conservative media on the power of the people should not report in such a way that Lee Jae-myung is conducting a special prosecution. Because I watched the National Assembly broadcast in detail this morning, and there is a very constructive audit of each committee. Then why aren't you reporting anything like that?

◇ Sin-ryul: There was a report like this that came out with someone's cabbage.

★ Kim Jin-pyo: No. . Since we only report fights, we only report provocative things, and then politics becomes more extreme in line with the broadcast that goes to the news at 9 p.m. So I think we need a media that conveys the concerns of people who actually solve a problem by thinking about the future of the country and thinking about the people's livelihood.

◇ Shin Yul: Okay. And actually, what's often said these days is impeachment, but I personally think that the very extraordinary constitutional means of impeachment is talked about too often, and what do you think about that? What about you, Mr. Speaker?

★ Kim Jin-pyo: As stipulated in the Constitution, the case is a major premise due to serious violations of the Constitution and laws. Then, isn't impeachment the final decision made by the Constitutional Court? The Constitutional Court is run by lawyers with quite a lot of experience, and if you talk about impeachment with something that is not obvious, the media and voters should make a right judgment. It's a political argument or something extreme, and one or two politicians can think that, but when a party thinks that, it's bound to be judged by the people. So, since we had the experience of stepping down due to the impeachment of President Park Geun Hye not too long ago, there must be some aftereffects from that. I think it's considerable. However, the impeachment that some members of the Democratic Party of Korea claim now means that they should be held accountable for the political responsibility. They don't know the constitutional provisions, so they conclude that important parts of the Constitution and the law are illegal and don't claim it. That's why the Democratic Party denies it.

◇ Shin Yul: And actually, I'd like to ask you about the constitutional amendment.

★ Kim Jin-pyo: Yes.

◇ Shin-ryul: This hasn't come out once or twice, but when it comes to chairman Woo Won-sik and chairman Woo, it's all about constitutional amendment. How is this possible? What do you think?

★ Kim Jin-pyo: Six people including me, including Chairman Woo Won-sik, have made a special committee on constitutional amendment and pushed for constitutional amendment, but all of them have failed. So when I took office, I insisted on this constitutional amendment, but it didn't work, so I investigated the cause of the problem in my own way. However, the constitutional amendment made Korea's constitution the most difficult to fix in the world. You need to get approval from more than 2,200 members of the current council. However, in order to get the approval of 200 lawmakers, at least 80 to 90 percent of the public opinion should approve, right? Until now, the focus of the discussion on constitutional amendment has been on how to transfer power from the president to the National Assembly or other constitutional legislation. Experts understand everything, and even if experts claim it, experts accept everything, but the general public does not. Even now, experts say whether to go to the presidential or parliamentary cabinet system, but 65% of the people still have the presidential system. So when I research these people's thoughts, it's like this. There are more problems with lawmakers who hand over the presidential authority to the National Assembly, and they can't do that because the country is ruined. Such amendments have these things, and since they promote the amendment as a whole for a long time, they have an approval rating of between 60% and 65%. The constitutional amendment must be made. However, about 30% of the people, especially those who are outside of politics, are holding out the idea that the constitutional amendment should not be made. So, let's revise the agenda that all people can agree on. Let's make a minimum amendment, for example, a provision that allows all previous governments to practice low birth rates. And if we push for this and reach an agreement, as the four-year Roh Moo Hyun president insisted, the five-year single-term system is so damaging that let's stop with this four-year double-term system.

◇ That's step by step, right?

★ Kim Jin-pyo: That's right. Germany has revised the Constitution 66 or 7 times since the establishment of the government in 48. Even after the two countries unified, they fixed it 37 times. But we haven't been able to fix it in 37 years. So, the Constitution also changes so rapidly, and 37 years ago, the Republic of Korea was in the early stages of developing countries, but now it has reached the threshold of advanced countries, right? Then the way of politics and the constitution should be changed. It's like telling a graduate student to dress him in middle school clothes and live as he is.

◇ [Voiceover] Right. The chairman may be busy, but please come out more often from now on. If you say such good things, it'll be really helpful for us. That's all for today's talk. Thank you.

★ Kim Jinpyo: Yes, thank you.

◇ Shin Yul: This has been Kim Jin-pyo, former chairman of the National Assembly.