Since the establishment of the Constitution in 1948, the Republic of Korea had gone through various constitutional adjudication systems. However, Korea had failed to run these systems efficiently and normatively as the right means of protecting the Constitutional order. Then the current Constitution, revised in 1987, introduced the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court is currently recognized as an indispensable component to protect people’s basic rights and to realize ‘rule of law’ and constitutionalism. The Constitutional Court has jurisdictions regarding constitutional review such as the adjudication on constitutionality of statutes, on impeachment, on dissolution of a political party, on competence dispute between government institutions or local and federal organs, and on constitutional complaint. This constitutional adjudication system has developed its own distinct characteristics which differ from that of Germany and the United States, namely the two prominent models of constitutional adjudication. From its birth until now, the Constitutional Court has judged around 37,080 cases and 1,709 cases (4.6%) among these were decided to be unconstitutional. Most of the cases are either on the constitutionality of statutes or on the constitutional complaints. Meanwhile, the two most important and unprecedented cases of the Constitutional Court would be the dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party in 2014 and the impeachment of the incumbent President in 2017. Despite aforementioned attainments, the Constitutional Court of Korea has further tasks to fulfill. The Constitutional Court needs to practice its authorities within the limits of the Constitution, respect diversity, strengthen its independence, protect democratic legitimacy and harmonize its decisions with the Supreme Court.
Hyowon LEE (Sat,) studied this question.