Transitioning by Amendment: The 1987 Revision of Constitutional Norms and Institutions

Abstract

On the eve of summer 1987, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans gathered throughout the country’s streets to oppose the continuation of the Chun Doo-hwan regime, setting in motion the process of transitioning to democracy, which the incumbent leadership yielded to by announcing reforms. This chapter explores the subsequent context in which the Constitutional Court of Korea was created, as a result of a revision of the constitution that was negotiated by political elites from the authoritarian camp and the opposition party to the exclusion of the actors, demands, and alternative national imaginary of the popular democratization movement. Both this elite bargain and the compromises it produced are recorded in the text of the amended constitution in general, and in the making of the constitutional court in particular. Yet, the way in which the court was fashioned did not predetermine what it would become, leading the analysis to highlight the contingency of institutional design.