헌법과 정치: 정치의 재구성을 위한 제언

The presidential election of 2012 has made Korean people seriously re-think about such achievements of so-called “1987regime” as democratization and industrialization of Korean society. The regime’s apparent achievement of procedural democratization has been spoiled by reactionary political factions which are deeply engaged in and connected with the past authoritarian ruling groups and greedy capital powers such as conglomerates and their agencies. The fruits of highly rapid economic growth has been exploited by a handful of capital powers. All the policy orientations that the 1987 regime had pursued, like the procedural democratization against authoritarian ruling, economic democracy against neo-liberalistic economy, and welfare state against development state, used to be the main foci of political quarrels in the election, the great part of which has been frustrated,disregarded, or ignored by the Park’s regime which was newly established by the 2012 election. Now, there’s a kind of impotent skepticism on the future of Korean people wandering over the civil society. The 1948 regime’s anti-communism ideology, which has never lost its political leverage since the era of the Japanese imperialist ruling, has revived to oppress every liberal and/or reformist voice from the civil society as well as from politics. It has been this ideology that has made the concept of “free and democratic basic order” of Korean Constitution such an empty concept that the executive can arbitrarily apply it to oppress its political opponents,accusing them of endangering the national security. The ideology has been mobilized to consolidate the neo-liberal exploitation of national economy and social welfare system as well. At that point,the ongoing process of juristocracy which has resulted from the world wide trend of “judicialization of politics” has cast serious problematics on the way to the consolidation of democracy in Korea. This essay tries to call law scholars’ attention to such situation, and press them to restore the 87 regime’s ideals toward democratization. A new political jurisprudence, with which the old-fashioned anti-communism, repressive statism, and exploitive neo-liberalism should be nullified, is highly required to be established by my fellow scholars with strong orientation to democratization of this country.