The Role of the Judiciary in the Presidential Impeachment Process in Korea

Abstract

In the U.S. constitutional thinking, the standard view is that the judiciary’s role in the presidential impeachment process is and should be limited.  However, this seemingly natural and necessary nature of presidential impeachments quickly proves illusory once one looks outside the United States.  This chapter is about the role of the judiciary in the impeachment process in South Korea, an important counter-example to the U.S. model.  Korea has gone through two presidential impeachments, one in 2004 and one in 2016 and 2017.  The first impeached president was reinstated, and the second impeached president was removed.  In both instances, the Constitutional Court of Korea had the final say on the fate of the impeached president.  This chapter introduces the basic legal structure governing presidential impeachments in Korea, discusses the political background and the unfolding of each impeachment process, and concludes by drawing some generally applicable observations about the significance of judicial involvement in presidential impeachments.