Fifteen Bukchon-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul is the address of the Constitutional Court. The courthouse building with a facade of white pillars is located diagonally across from Jaedong Elementary School, which I attended a long time ago. My old house, destroyed during the war, was only about 100 meters away.

Childhood memories are brought back whenever I stroll along the street from the Jaedong Intersection to Samcheong Park passing by the courthouse. This Bukchon-ro and two narrow roads running roughly parallel are connected by numerous alleyways creating the cobweb of Bukchon, or North Village, Seoul’s equivalent to Naramachi in the ancient Japanese city.

Changes have been fast here in recent years, as cafes, restaurants of ethnic varieties, accessories and clothes shops have literally mushroomed, attracting young tourists wearing rental hanbok dresses and wielding selfie sticks. When the Constitutional Court was founded under the 1987 amendment, the neighborhood with the traditional hanok houses rigidly preserved was one of the quietest parts of the capital city. The special court could not have found a better place for its lofty mission, far detached from the noisy legal business streets of Seocho District.

Suddenly, politics invaded Bukchon. History was made last Saturday when the area saw huge human waves swarming in from the main Jongno Street to make calls for or against punishing President Park. Judges of the Constitutional Court, who were in their offices on the weekend to examine the impeachment papers delivered by the National Assembly’s litigation team and the Blue House’s rebuttal, worked in ear-splitting noise throughout the afternoon.

They have an honorable job, but the task of deciding the fate of the president is not something to be envied. Most people seem to have a foregone conclusion that the court will “approve” the Assembly’s impeachment decision, which passed with a vote of 234 to 56 on Dec. 9. This premature belief must be the hardest hurdle the nine jurists at the Constitutional Court should negotiate in performing their duty.

They have to review the viability of the indictment made by the National Assembly and then decide whether proven offenses are serious enough to oust an elected president. It is a decision that needs both legal and political judgments. President Park has not given up and came up with complete denials of all the charges, ranging from bribery and abuse of power to breach of confidentiality.

When the Constitutional Court was established via a constitutional amendment in 1987, its drafters added some political flavor to this judicial institution by having the National Assembly name three of its total nine judges. The remaining six are appointed by the president, three of them via the recommendation of the chief justice.

In the previous and only case of presidential impeachment, trying Roh Moo-hyun for violating the obligation of political neutrality with his remarks openly rooting for parliamentary election candidates from his party, the process was much simpler. The then-opposition Hannara Party, a predecessor of the present Saenuri Party, allied with a renegade group of the ruling force and easily passed the impeachment motion.

Public repercussion was so strong against the opposition action that Roh’s ruling party won majority seats in the April 2004 poll. In May, the Constitutional Court ruled the presidential impeachment groundless and Roh was reinstated after less than two months of suspension.

At that time, the court’s scrutiny of the president’s behavior found little reason to deny the public of what they overwhelmingly wanted. Things are a lot more complicated now. Park Geun-hye’s involvement with Choi Soon-sil has left many ugly episodes which were exposed by the super inquisitive media, but her defense team seems determined to contest each charge with claims of triviality and lack of evidence.

In Seoul plazas, there are many times more denouncers of Park than her supporters, revealing the current political sentiment. Park loyalists, however, are gathering up strength as the suspended president has taken a positively self-exonerative stance. While the Constitutional Court delivers on the impeachment case for a maximum of six months, political situations will develop rapidly around parties all in a rush toward presidential election.

The Constitutional Court judges have to observe and consider political realities for no other reason than that presidential impeachment is a crux of politics. As long defined by academia, the constitution of a nation is the product of the people’s political decision; hence the Constitutional Court is destined to take care of political conflicts and its rulings cannot but pursue political settlement in the name of legal justice.

Several months after the Constitutional Court dismissed Roh’s impeachment, there was another historic decision by the top court that drove many to suspect its judges’ political pragmatism. On Oct. 21, 2004 the Constitutional Court ruled against Roh’s plan to establish an administrative capital away from Seoul with the novel logic that Seoul is the eternal capital city of Korea under its “unwritten constitution.”

For all the historical and socio-psychological grounds cited, critics believed the decision was made to counterbalance the court’s earlier ruling in favor of President Roh. In her minority opinion, Judge Jeon Hyo-suk said the fact that Seoul has been the capital for six centuries does not necessarily give it constitutional status under the “unwritten” or “customary” constitution.

No one in this republic can hurt the authority of the Constitutional Court. However loud the calls for Park’s ouster or her retention outside the courthouse may be, I do not think any of the nine judges would feel physical or mental coercion about his or her judgment. But what is feared, from past records, is their possible wandering between the roles as guardians of law and minders of politics.

Some politicians want a quick decision by the court and others prefer a protracted process depending on their presidential election strategies. Their game will be directly affected by the comparative strengths of the candle light forces and the Taegeukki demonstrators in the days ahead. The judges will have to ignore what will happen in Gwanghwamun and Bukchon over the following weeks and months, but can they?

If they are good judges, they should try to perceive the commonality behind the contending waves of demonstrations. It is the people’s wish for an end to the endless partisan conflicts and emergence of a trustworthy national leadership. The judges need to exercise political sensitivity as they are forced into walking a tightrope between law and politics.

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. – Ed.