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Photo caption, The first summit meeting between President Yoon Seok-yeol and Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung will be held at the Yongsan Presidential Office on the afternoon of the 29th.
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The first summit meeting between President Yoon Seok-yeol and Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung will be held at the Yongsan Presidential Office on the afternoon of the 29th.
Discussions on various pending issues are expected at this summit, the first to be held two years after President Yoon took office. In addition to the meaning of the leaders’ meeting, we looked into the success or failure of cooperation between previous administrations.
How will the meeting between the President and CEO be accomplished?
In Yeongsu talks, the word ‘Yeongsu’ means leader. The original meaning of the Chinese characters is collar and sleeves, and since they are the most noticeable parts of clothing, leaders are compared to them. It means that the top leaders of a country or political organization meet with each other and discuss an agenda.
In Korea, it refers to a meeting between the president, the head of the executive branch, and the representative of the main opposition party in the legislative branch.
Since the time when the president was also the president of the ruling party, summit meetings have been held for the purpose of the president resolving state affairs with the cooperation of the opposition party.
Of course, the opposition party also pulls out the leader meeting card when seeking the government’s cooperation.
Representative Lee has been proposing a summit meeting with President Yoon since his inauguration as party leader, but President Yoon did not respond, saying that the order is for the representatives of the ruling and opposition parties to meet first. After giving the absolute majority of seats to the Democratic Party in the April 10 general election, President Yoon first proposed a summit between the two leaders, which was successful.
Hong Cheol-ho, Senior Secretary to the President for Political Affairs, held a briefing at the Yongsan Presidential Office on the afternoon of the 26th and announced that the meeting with the leader was confirmed after the third working-level meeting with the Democratic Party this morning.
He said, “In accordance with President Yoon’s wish to hear many stories from Representative Lee at this meeting and Representative Lee’s wish to meet quickly regardless of whether the agenda is agreed upon, the two sides will hold a chat in the President’s office at 2 pm on Monday the 29th. “We agreed to do it,” he said.
Chun Joon-ho, chief of staff to the Democratic Party leader, also told reporters on the same day, “We expect that this meeting will be a meeting in which we convey to President Yoon the public sentiment expressed in the general election without any addition or subtraction, and seek ways to restore people’s livelihood and change the tone of state administration as desired by the people.” .
This meeting is scheduled for one hour, and there will be three people each from the President’s Office and the Democratic Party attending.
In the President’s Office, Chief of Staff Jeong Jin-seok, Senior Secretary for Political Affairs Hong Cheol-ho, and Senior Public Relations Secretary Lee Do-woon will be present, while in the Democratic Party, Policy Committee Chairman Jin Seong-jun, Chief Spokesperson Park Sung-jun, and Chief of Staff Cheon Jun-ho will be present.
The agenda to be brought to the meeting table is ‘blank’
Image source: Government Record Photo Collection
Photo caption, President Chun Doo-hwan’s meeting with Unification Democratic Party leader Kim Young-sam held on June 24, 1987.
It was decided to proceed with this summit meeting without setting a separate agenda.
However, Representative Lee announced that he would request a livelihood recovery support fund of 250,000 won per person and an additional budget.
In addition, it is expected that political issues such as the Special Prosecutor Chae Sang-byeong Act of the Marine Corps will be discussed along with stories about the government-medical community conflict surrounding the issue of increasing the number of medical schools and the people’s livelihood due to high inflation.
In the case of President Yoon, it is expected that he will seek cooperation from the opposition party on the issue of confirming the successor Prime Minister and legislative issues related to various national affairs tasks.
Looking back at past talks
Previously, 25 summit meetings were held.
The Young-su summit began in 1965 with a meeting between President Park Chung-hee and Park Sun-cheon, a member of the People’s Party’s Supreme Council.
At the meeting, both sides agreed to convene an extraordinary session of the National Assembly to discuss the ratification of the Korea-Japan Agreement and the agreement to send troops to the Vietnam War.
President Park held a total of five meetings with leaders during her term, including a meeting with Kim Young-sam, president of the New Democratic Party, on May 21, 1975.
The meeting between President Chun Doo-hwan and Democratic Party Chairman Kim Young-sam on June 24, 1987 also became a major turning point in political affairs.
On June 24, 1987, when demands for democratization were at their peak, Kim Young-sam (YS), then president of the Unification Democratic Party, demanded the abolition of the April 13 Constitutional Declaration at a meeting with President Chun Doo-hwan. The former president sidestepped the issue by saying, “I have handed over all political responsibility to Democratic Justice Party leader Roh Tae-woo,” and YS declared a breakdown.
However, five days later, the ruling party’s June 29 declaration accepting the constitutional amendment to direct presidential election was issued. It became the starting point of procedural democracy.
Image source: Government Record Photo Collection
Photo caption, The scene of the summit meeting between President Kim Dae-jung (left) and Grand National Party leader Lee Hoi-chang (right) held on April 24, 2000.
President Kim Dae-jung met with then-Grand National Party leader Lee Hoi-chang several times in 2000 during the ruling and opposition party phase.
Although things did not end well for President Lee’s side, to the extent that there was a saying that they met seven times and were betrayed seven times, “seven times seven times, seven times,” there was bipartisan cooperation, such as resolving the conflict in the division of medicine and garnering support for the inter-Korean summit.
In the case of President Roh Moo-hyun, in 2005, after his impeachment trial was dismissed by the Constitutional Court, he proposed a grand coalition government to the opposition Grand National Party.
He called for a reform of the electoral system, which used to be a single-member constituency system, and offered to give him the right to appoint a cabinet, but the opposition party at the time found it difficult to accept. The talks ended in failure when then-Grand National Party leader Park Geun-hye refused.
During the Lee Myung-bak administration, three summit talks were held. In two meetings with Sohn Hak-gyu, leader of the United Democratic Party, pending issues such as the Korea-US FTA were discussed, but no results were achieved.
On the other hand, at the 2008 meeting with Democratic Party leader Chung Sye-kyun, seven agreements were announced, including revitalizing the economy.
During the Park Geun-hye administration, there were three-party meetings with representatives of the ruling and opposition parties, but there were no separate meetings between leaders.
The most recent summit was between President Moon Jae-in of the previous administration and Hong Joon-pyo, leader of the Liberty Korea Party.
It was held with the purpose of President Moon seeking cooperation and advice from the opposition party leader ahead of the inter-Korean summit.
At this meeting, Representative Hong expressed opinions such as ‘This should be a meeting to abolish North Korea’s nuclear weapons’ and ‘Measures to strengthen the ROK-US alliance are needed’, but did not receive the answers they both wanted.
