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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. It is true that the Republic of Korea’s Constitution is armed with Article 8-④ that opens the door to “dissolve” political parties that “contravene constitutionally mandated liberal democratic values,” she has never called this constitutional provision into action in her life of 65 years. What is more, the Republic of Korea, while she is mandated to “punish those organizing anti-state organizations” under the National Security Law, is without any legal ground to crack down upon “anti-state organizations” themselves. As a consequence, while there are four “social organizations” having been declared “anti-state” by Supreme Court rulings, they continue to remain undissolved through today. In addition, the constitutionally provided presidential amnesties and rehabilitation have continued to be abused to the extent that not only many of those declared “guilty” on “anti-state” charges by the Supreme Court were included among those who were beneficiaries of the presidential clemencies but also many of them were found having been able to manage political comebacks to the point of gaining National Assembly seats. The opposition Democratic Party is not in a position to be immune from the responsibility for allowing people like Lee Seok Ki to make an entry into the legislature through the formation of an “opposition coalition” for the general election for the 19th National Assembly held on April 11 last year with the UPP in spite of the fact that the public suspicion of the UPP’s “pro-North Korean” leaning was already rampant. All told, the case of Lee Seok Ki raises the need to not only bring him and his self-styled ragtag “revolutioary activists” to justice but also to fix the obvious reality that the liberal democracy in this country needs a major overhaul to equip it with an effective defense against threats from within as well as without.
