President Moon Jae-in speaks during a luncheon with members of a special advisory committee on constitutional reform, at Cheong Wa Dae on March 13. (Cheong Wa Dae)

By Sohn JiAe

Across society, there have been outcries over the current Constitution, established in 1987, that, over the past three decades, people claim has become too outdated to handle all the changes facing politics, the economy, society and Korean norms and standards in general. 

In light of this, the Moon Jae-in administration put forth a bill on March 26 to amend the Constitution, which, as it stand today, cannot mirror the significant changes that have occurred across society. 

In particular, the constitutional changes proposed include expanding peoples’ basic rights, given the nation’s improved human rights conditions, and, also, given the number of non-Korean residents in the country, which has reached around 2 million. 

The constitutional amendment says that, "In consideration of the level of human rights expected of Korea by the international community, and the opening of an era when two million foreign nationals reside in Korea, the natural basic rights that should be universally guaranteed, regardless of nationality, including respect for human dignity, the right to pursue happiness, the right to equality, the right to life, personal liberty, privacy, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, the basic right to information and freedom to learn and to access the arts, the subject of human rights should be expanded from ‘citizens’ to ‘people.’” 

Nonetheless, in regard to other social rights, such as freedom of occupation, the right to property, equal rights to receive an education, the right to work and to receive social security, as well as certain freedoms and rights related to the national economy and to national security, the wording remains confined to "citizens," it stated. 

The basic rights of workers have been significantly improved, too, for the sake of their fair treatment, the narrowing of the socio-economic divide and for sustainable growth. The duty to endeavor to ensure equal pay for work of equal value has been imposed across the nation, while an obligation has been newly added for the government to implement policies to stabilize employment and work-life balance. “All these changes have been designed to upgrade the rights of workers to international levels and to lay the foundation for socio-economic democratization,” the Constitution says. 

Newly created basic rights include the right to life for people to live safely, the basic right to information to live in an era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the obligation given to the country to endeavor to remedy sex- and disability-based discrimination. 

The revisions should be passed by the National Assembly by May 24, a deadline under the Constitution that requires a bill to be passed within 60 days after it was put forth, and then be put to a national referendum. 

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