시민적 덕성과 통치자의 덕성-이명박 정부 전반기의 한국 정치에 대한 평가-

This article tries to evaluate on the Korean politics under the President Lee Myung-Bak’s government during 2008-2010. In comparison with the legalistic approaches of other scholars in the field of Korean constitutional jurisprudence, the author develops a more political and dynamic understanding upon Liberal Democracy under the catch phrase of the normalization paradigm, which is indispensable for the analysis and evaluation of the constitutional politics in the Republic of Korea. The author summarizes the history of the Korean constitutional politics since 1948 as an accumulation of the legacy of the regime of 1952 as well as an repeated attempts to overcome and replace that regime. He thinks that the regime of 1952 has not been overcome and replaced yet in spite of many political changes after the last constitutional revision in 1987. In this context, he regards that the President Lee Myung-Bak’s government shares very similar constitutional mission with its predecessors such as the President Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-Hyun’s governments to overcome and replace the regime of 1952, even if it started from the support of more conservative wingers in Korean constitutional politics. However, the author evaluates that the President Lee Myung-Bak’s government was not so much successful in proving that its goal was also to overcome and replace the regime of 1952 to the Korean public at least in the constitutional politics during 2008-2010. This article finishes with some theoretical speculation about the importance of civic virtue and the ruler’ virtue in constitutional politics, because it is very clear that to make an sound relationship between virtue and vice will be the most crucial matter in Korean constitutional politics in near future.