국민참여개헌의 당위성과 방법론

It has been 30 years since the last constitutional revision and a new revision is now before our eyes. The National Assembly organized a special committee and has started to prepare the bill for constitutional revision, and president Moon Jae-In as he had previously expressed in his campaign pledge, took a firm stand regarding the revision. The possibility that a referendum regarding the bill of constitutional revision will be held in next year’s regional election has risen. Regarding the procedure and methods of the upcoming constitutional revision, there is a national consensus that the new revision should reflect the public’s intention as much as possible, unlike previous revisions. However, the problem is that there is currently no definite methodology to enable a public participation in constitutional revision and only fragmentary ideas are being suggested. A public ‘participation’ in constitutional revision is literally a revision in which the people directly participates in the process. Such type of revision was introduced from the criticism that previous revisions in which the politicians made the bills and the citizens only made the final decision by showing their approval or disapproval by holding a referendum was insufficient in reflecting the public’s intentions. The key issue is the method of public ‘participation’. Listing numerous alternatives for every single provision and holding a referendum for each one is unrealistic and undesirable. Yet, having the National Assembly, the elected officials that the citizens have chosen to represent themselves to handle everything will make the new constitutional revision no different from previous ones. Due to this issue, there has been a suggestion to create a separate citizen assembly. However, since the citizen assembly fails to guarantee representativeness or democratic legitimacy, as well as the professionalism to handle the constitutional revision, it is unlikely for the citizen assembly to succeed. This article takes such problematic situations as a premise and has seriously searched for the most feasible alternative that best suits the current situation. First, in order to clarify the justifiability of public participation in constitutional revision, this article confirmed that the people are the principal subjects of constitutional revision. On this premise, the article reviewed the public’s role in past revisions and confirmed the imperativeness of public participation in constitutional revision by overviewing whether the people’s opinions were reflected sufficiently. Regarding the detailed methodology of public participation in consti- tutional revision, the article overviews the usage of electronic democracy, gathering public opinions through polls, and creating a citizen assembly. After creating a citizen assembly, there lies the issue of dividing to roles between the National Assembly, citizen assembly, and the people. Such alternatives need to undergo numerous discussions and revisions. In addition, the article presents some standards that can lead to successful public participation in constitutional revision.