촛불민주주의와 법제 개혁 - 중간 점검 -

Abstract

Candlelight Democracy emerged from the Candlelight Rally, a series of protests against President Park Geun-hye that occurred throughout South Korea from November 2016 to March 2017. 20 successive saturday night rallies that brought out over 16 million people from a population of 51 million culminated in success when the Constitutional Court Decision upheld the impeachment, removing her from the office of the President on 10 March 2017. President Moon, Jae-In, who had won the presidential election thereafter, vowed to re-establish the ‘Government of the People’ that truly realizes people’s sovereignty in institutions and everyday life. Having promised thorough reforms for a government for everyone, not just for the particular person in power, he set about to reduce the privileges of the ‘imperial president’, revamp an administrative system that had collapsed due to the privatization of state power, and carry out democratic reforms in law enforcement agencies. Among other reform goals, the law reform enjoyed relatively higher priority. The paper tries to inventory and review the accomplishments of the law reform, which comprises for example, the electoral system reform reflecting the people’s political will and voice, by introducing a mixed-member proportional representation system for parliamentary election and two-round system for presidential election on one hand, and reform of power Institutions like the Prosecution, Police, National Intelligence Service and the Judiciary on the other hand. While the latter goals were attained in spite of the harsh resistance of the opposition party, the former goals accomplished on the whole. The constitutional revision, another goal of highest priority ended up in a failure. The issues dealt with in this paper are Restoring People’s Sovereignty, Rooting Out Accumulated Ills and Reform of Electoral System, Reform of Power Institutions: Law Enforcement Authorities and Judiciary, Government Initiative for Constitutional Revision, Strengthening People’s Voice, Local Autonomy Reform. The paper tries to cast an interim appraisal in terms of the Law Reform and the Rule of Law, Remaining Barriers(Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?), Limited Chance of Reform and Populism vs. Constitutionalism. The sweeping victory of the Government Party in the 4･15 General Election in 2020 is expected to provide a favorable turn for the law reform politics. Inevitable tension between the law reform and the Rule of Law, however, might be an Achilles tendon to the Moon’s reform politics. Wasn’t it the infringement of the Rule of Law the root cause for the demise of the impeached president Park Geun-hye? Wrath of the People living in a country extremely hard to govern, strolls again in the public square.