Lee pledges to seek constitutional revision for renewable, 4-year presidential term

Ruling party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung / Yonhap

Ruling party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung pledged Friday to pursue a constitutional revision if elected to change the current single, five-year presidential term to a renewable, four-year term.

Lee of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has talked about the idea before, saying he would gladly become the first president to shorten his term to four years.

On Friday, he made the plan official by submitting it as part of his top 10 campaign pledges to the National Election Commission, the election watchdog.

With regard to his economic pledges, Lee vowed to introduce an annual universal basic income of 1 million won ($834) within his term.

He said he would start the program, which has long been one of his pet projects, with an annual payment of 250,000 won.

Other pledges included improving financing and housing opportunities for young people in their 20s and 30s, raising exports to $1 trillion a year and income per capita to $50,000, and fully overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic. (Yonhap)