CONCLUDING REMARKS

No attempt to summarize the preceding explanations and descriptions is necessary here. However, I would like to briefly contextualize where the Korean Constitutional Adjudication System is today, especially in terms of political and constitutional implications.

The dynamic political changes in recent Korea represent a dramatically ambivalent image of judicial activism. Since the launch of the Roh Moo-hyun government in 2003, the fourth since the establishment of the 1987 constitu­tion, a bigger political spotlight has been given to the court than ever before. In the Roh Government, Koreans witnessed the growing influence of the court on matters which were once considered purely political.

Let me offer two examples. Firstly, the first impeachment trial against the President in the history of Korean constitutional democracy resulted in the curtailment of presidential power by the Constitutional Court even though impeachment itself was ultimately rejected. Secondly, the Special Act for the Construction of the New Administrative Capital supporting the most ambi­tious agendum of Roh government was struck down on the ground that it violated a kind of unwritten constitution that Seoul is the capital city of the Republic of Korea. What may be called �judicialization’ or a movement towards �juristocracy’ (Hirschl 2004; Koopmans 2003) in Korea invokes strong political antagonism against the court.

This change provides an opportunity to rethink the problem of constitu­tional justices’ role perception. The political and social outcomes of judicial activism depend upon the nature of rights or values to which justices show their commitment. On the one hand, if they concern themselves more with individuals’ political freedoms than other public concern, e.g. national secu­rity, judicial activism may contribute to constitutional engineering of liberal society.

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Judicialization is an ambivalent phenomenon. On the one hand, it can control the abuse of political powers in the direction of protecting human rights and other constitutional values and thus enhance constitutionalism. On the other hand, however, it can distort democratic visions enshrined in our constitution by replacing constitutional values and decisions with those of a small group of unaccountable judges. The ambivalence of judicialization persuades us to take a middle route. The judiciary is entitled to review politi­cal decisions but only on certain conditions and in a self-contained manner. Such conditions include democratic constitution of the judicial powers, prudential exercise of judicial powers based upon persuasive reasoning and rationales, and the reservation of the public sphere for the judicial powers. The author believes that if jurists with judicial powers go hand in hand with us under this strategy, our constitutional democracy will be upgraded in the near future.

The democratization and development of constitutionalism in Korea over the last decade is remarkable. Koreans deserve to be proud of achieving such a high level of constitutional democracy in such a short time. However, it is also true that there are a number of problems Korean people still have to manage to solve in the course of consolidating constitutionalism. When and how such problems can be solved is not clear but one clear thing is that Korean people’s sincere belief in democracy and constitutionalism would be the basic require­ment to overcome all such inroads as they have successfully done so far.