현행 헌법의 의원내각제적 요소에 대한 평가

Abstract

Chin-O Yu, the architect of South Korea's form of government, reserved some constituent parts of the parliamentary system and named them “the elements from the parliamentary system” in the face of the miscarriage of his plan for introducing the parliamentary constitution. He expected the presidential system to be operated like the parliamentary system for the future. But the constitutional reality was diametrically opposed. The prime minister system which is the core element of the parliamentary government has been misused as a bulletproof cabinet supporting a authoritative president. Because of many unsolved problems of the presidential system in South Korea, there have been some attempts to pay attention to the reserved elements of the parliamentary system and revalue them for developing the appropriate form of government. However, even if some elements which are foreign to a specific model of the presidential system exist and they are called “the elements from parliamentary system”, there is no guarantee that running the government like the parliamentary system will be possible. From a objective point of view, without Chin-O Yu's layout, in the present Constitution there are only a few elements which can be revalued as the elements from the parliamentary system. They should be reevaluated as the means of separation of powers. The presidential system, although it has the principle of division, allows the mutual control between the government and the parliament. The name of “the elements from the parliamentary system” should be discarded, and the element's value as checks and balances should be reestablished. It is desirable that the elements which have a negative effect on the presidential system be removed. Today, the root problem of an imperial president can be attributed to not the structure of the presidential system or the constitutional authority of the president but the surrounding system (e.g. the party system and the electoral system), the peripheral institution (e.g. the court, the prosecutor's office and the media) or the political culture. Without solving this fundamental matter, there is little point in the alteration of the form of government or the rational management of government.