Presidential candidates on Tuesday called for sweeping reforms in the political and public sectors that have received criticism from the general public for incompetence and obstructing national unity.
Ruling Saenuri Party presidential hopeful Park Geun-hye said in a meeting with party officials from Gwangju and the Jeolla region that if elected in the December election, she will take steps to impartially appoint public officials regardless of their place of birth.
"For South Korea to make the next leap forward, internal unity must be reached even if this process is arduous and no administration in the past has achieved it," the 60-year-old politician said. She said appointing government officials based solely on merit and not on where they were born will be adhered to under her administration.
In the past, many senior government posts were filled by candidates from the same region as the president, which triggered discontent and often led to those regions getting more assistance from the central government.
Park said, in particular, there is a need to strive for harmony between the eastern and western parts of the country.
The Gyeongsang region in the country's southeastern area has persistently supported conservative administrations and several military rulers in the past, while Jeolla on the southwestern side of the country has grown into a bastion of support for liberal politicians. The rivalry between the two sides has made a deep impact with many observers saying this divide has hurt normal political development.
In addition, the Saenuri candidate said every effort will be made to ensure balanced growth so no region is left out from sharing in the fruits of growth.
Moon Jae-in, the standard bearer for the main opposition Democratic United Party (DUP), who on Monday outlined the need to increase the number of proportional representative seats in parliament to reform the country's politics, called for wholesale reforms to the state prosecutors office also.
"State prosecutors have become henchmen for those in power and have used their powers to oppress the opposition party and (anti-government) civic group leaders while showing excessive leniency towards the privileged," he claimed.
He said structural reforms must be made along with changes to personnel to root out existing problems that have lowered the public's confidence and trust in the office.
The human rights lawyer-turned-politician said the powerful Central Investigative Department at the Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office, which handles most high profile cases should abolished or its powers curtailed.
He said there is a need to create a new agency that can handle crimes committed by senior public officials. Such an organization, he claimed, could reduce the power of the prosecutors office.
Independent presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo, meanwhile, said that in order to push forward meaningful political reforms, the country needs to reduce its number of lawmakers, cut state subsidies for political parties and abolish the system of maintaining a central party.
In a speech given at a local university, the founder of AhnLab, the country's largest anti-virus software firm, said by reducing the number of lawmakers, parliament can show it is willing to make painful changes and strive to improve efficiency. He added that while overall numbers need to be reduced, there is a need to increase proportional representatives who can represent more diverse social groups and the disadvantaged.
He said cutting subsidies to parties will permit more money to be used to help ordinary people and more funds to be allocated to develop state policies.
Ahn added that getting rid of or greatly reducing the size of central party organizations can bring about positive changes such as ending political factionalism, which has been blamed for holding back political advancement.
Weakening the central party system can also permit lawmakers to focus more on making and passing laws rather than engaging in non-constructive party politics, the presidential hopeful said.(Yonhap)