자유민주주의의 위기

• 영문명: Crisis of Liberal Democracy and Lee Seok Ki Treason Case
• 발행기관: 신아시아연구소(구 신아세아질서연구회)
• 저자명: 이동복(李東馥)(LEE Dong Bok)
• 간행물 정보: 『신아세아』新亞細亞 第20卷 第3號, 7~15쪽, 전체 9쪽
• 주제분류: 사회과학 > 정치외교학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2013.09.30

영문 초록

The Attempted insurgency plot allegedly masterminded by United Progressive Party (UPP) member of the National Assembly Lee Seok Ki and his ragtag group of self-styled left-leaning, pro-North Korean “revolutionary activists” provide us with two sober reminders: First, 65 years after the division of the country, North Korea is still busy engaged in the planting of the seeds of a revolutionary take-over of South Korea as part of its un-ending pursuit of a unification achieved on its own terms. Second, obviously hardly recognized by themselves, the bulk of South Koreans are forget-minded about the reality that the liberal democracy that has led South Korea on its path toward the prosperity and political freedom of today is pregnant with the built-in weakness that can undermine itself internally by means of democracy itself. It is by no means a news that the liberal democracy has such a critical weakness. It was Germans who physically experienced that weakness of a liberal democracy when they saw, in 1932∼1933, Adolf Hitler’s Nazis Party turn the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich first by winning a parliamentary election and then by seizing the legislative power from the Reichstag by ramming through a bill to that effect. It was an attempt by the founders of West Germany, when it came into being in 1949 in the wake of the end of World War II in 1945, to prevent the recurrence of an implosion of democracy when they wrote the concept of die wehrhafte Democratie (the defensive democracy), into their Basic Law, West German version of a constitution. In addition to equipping itself with such constitutional apparatuses as the Supreme Federal Constitutional Court (SFCC) armed with the right to dissolve unconstitutional political parties, the constitutional protection agencies, both federal and local, authorized to monitor, even allowing wire-tappings, activities of suspected unconstitutional activities and authorization of both federal and local governments to dissolve social associations suspected of unconstitutional activities, West Germany’s measures to defend its liberal democracy also included an executive order, entitled Extremistenbeschluss, issued by none other than Chancellor Willy Brandt, champion of the ‘ Ostpolitik’ as the leader of the SPD government, that made it mandatory for any would-be public employee to “publicly pledge in writing his/her loyalty to the liberal democratic values as embodied in the Basic Law.” The executive order was challenged by a broad range of progressively oriented West German public on charges of being unconstitutional, to which West Germany’s SFCC ruled it “constitutional” in May 1975. As a result, two West German radical political parties were dissolved by SFCC ruling, in addition to 371 social organizations dissolved by both federal and local governments on suspicion of unconstitutionality in the absence of court rulings to that effect, while, altogether, 3,5 million West Germans pledged their loyalties to the liberal democratic values in accordance with Willy Brandt’s executive order that still remains in effect in unified Germany, with 2,250 men/women having failed to be appointed as public employees because of their failure to have their loyalty pledges authenticated. While West Germany’s success not only in raising itself to its phenomenal economic recovery dubbed as the “Miracle on the Rhine” that accompanied its growth as a leading democracy in West Europe eventually leading to unification of Germany achieved through West’s absorption of East in 1990 owed a great deal to West Germany’s success in developing a “defensive democracy,” it looks loudly clear that the case of Lee Seok Ki is a testimonial to the fact that, although she boasts of her economic success called the “Miracle on the Han River,” the Republic of Korea has developed a fatal weakness in defending its democracy against threats from within.

목차

[English Abstract]