Shouldn’t this be the moment for judges to submit a collective resignation?

Even on a holiday shaken by news of the United States attacking Iran, the Democratic Party pushed through the so-called “Supreme Court Justice Expansion Act” in a plenary session of the National Assembly.

The Democratic Party took the lead and completed the passage of what amount to the “three judicial destruction bills”—the crime of legal distortion, constitutional appeals against court judgments, and the expansion of Supreme Court justices.

Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae publicly opposed the bills, stating they were unconstitutional. Chief judges nationwide convened an emergency meeting and formally warned that the measures undermine the separation of powers. None of it mattered. The bills were rammed through regardless.

With the People Power Party weakened by Jang Dong-hyuk’s blunders, it attempted resistance through a filibuster, but it was futile.

As the Democratic Party unilaterally railroaded legislation that dismantles judicial independence, the presidential office said nothing.

Steven Levitsky’s book, published in Korea as How Democracies Collapse, documents how dictators in Latin America and Eastern Europe destroyed democracy. The book’s original English title is How Democracies Die. Not “how democracies collapse,” but how they die.

I asked several figures—including a former Chief Justice and Prime Minister, as well as Professor Cha Jin-ah—whether the three judicial bills hastily passed by the Democratic Party merely cause discomfort, or whether they kill democracy in Korea. The answers were unanimous: this is a destruction of the separation of powers, and it has “killed South Korean democracy.”

The Democratic Party is a symbolic name rooted in the victorious struggle against the dictatorships of Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan—a party that once led Korea toward democracy.

That very party has now destroyed the judiciary, killed democracy, and opened the path to authoritarian rule.

Jeong Cheong-rae, Choo Mi-ae, and Kim Yong-min led the charge.

On the 26th, 27th, and 28th, they passed one judicial revision bill each, and then demanded the resignation of Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae. Having pushed all three bills through, they plan to intensify pressure for the Chief Justice’s ouster starting in March.

The Democratic Party impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol, accusing him of destroying the Constitution through martial law, and succeeded in removing him through the Constitutional Court.

Now, the same party has brazenly committed constitutional violations by passing the three judicial bills.

The crime of legal distortion stipulates that judges or prosecutors who intentionally misapply the law can be sentenced to up to ten years in prison. Proponents claim the idea was borrowed from Germany.

But Korea’s criminal code already punishes abuse of authority and dereliction of duty. Germany lacks such provisions, which is why it introduced the crime of legal distortion to fill a legal vacuum.

In Korea, existing laws are sufficient. This new statute therefore raises suspicions that it is meant to punish judges who issue politically inconvenient rulings. The penalties are also twice as severe as those for dereliction of duty.

For these reasons, the law violates the constitutional principle of proportionality. Moreover, “legal distortion” is an elastic concept—earrings if you hang it on the ear, a nose ring if you hang it on the nose—violating the constitutional principle of legal clarity. It is unconstitutional.

The constitutional appeal against court judgments is also unconstitutional. Korea’s constitutional system establishes the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court as parallel institutions of equal standing. Allowing Supreme Court rulings to be retried by the Constitutional Court as if it were a higher court violates that structure.

Even now, tens of thousands of cases are backlogged in both courts. Constitutional appeals will worsen congestion, ultimately delaying the protection of human rights. Litigation costs will snowball in the process, deepening inequality between rich and poor.

As for the number of Supreme Court justices, the Constitution delegates it to legislation. The current number is 14; the amendment raises it to 26.

Under Donald Trump’s second term, it is widely known that he has wielded power arbitrarily across the world.

Major European countries such as the UK, France, and Germany, along with Japan, India, Brazil, and South Korea, were battered by Trump’s club of reciprocal tariffs. Trembling, they pledged massive investments in the United States—$600 billion, $550 billion, and in Korea’s case, $350 billion.

The weapon that placed the world under his feet, with tariff rates ranging from 15 to 50 percent, was the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

Using this law, Trump extracted as much as $170 billion in taxes from countries including South Korea last year.

What brought Trump’s tariff autocracy to a halt in one stroke was a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. There are nine justices, six of them conservatives, yet they ruled that Trump’s actions were unacceptable—that such measures require congressional approval.

Now imagine how this would play out in Korean politics.

Wouldn’t the ruling be appealed to a Democratic Party–packed Constitutional Court as a fourth instance, nullifying the Supreme Court’s decision, followed by impeachment and removal of the Chief Justice?

Is that democracy?

Trump’s Republican Party has not even suggested that it would approve reciprocal tariffs if brought before Congress. If such a bill were submitted, it would likely be voted down—because the separation of powers was violated.

In U.S. history, there were two attempts by presidents to expand the Supreme Court to pack it with justices aligned with their party, precisely because such a court was “annoying.” During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt tried in 1937 to expand the Court from nine to fifteen justices. Joe Biden floated a plan to expand it to thirteen, but quietly shelved the idea amid criticism that he was “trying to become a dictator.”

In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez expanded the Supreme Court from 20 to 32 justices. Hungary increased its number from eight to fifteen. These moves enabled dictatorship and left ugly precedents in world political history.

If Korea expands its Supreme Court from 14 to 26 justices, that is an 85 percent increase—far greater than Venezuela’s 60 percent expansion. Of the 26 justices, it is said that 22 could be appointed by the Lee Jae-myung administration.

Why such an extreme move is being made has been well covered by the media, so I will not repeat it here.

Legal professionals argue that the moment such judiciary-destroying laws—severe enough to kill democracy—are passed, there should at least be a mass resignation of rank-and-file judges. Yet despite deep internal divisions, not even a single judges’ conference was convened. The most that happened was Court Administration Director Park Young-jae announcing his intention to step down. University law professors have not even issued a statement. We are told there will be a meeting of chief judges next week. We shall see.

During the three days in which the three judicial destruction bills were passed, President Lee Jae-myung made no comment. Instead, he posted on social media that “after retirement, 99 percent of my assets will return to the stock market,” and that he would even sell his “only apartment in Daejang-dong.” Cho Kuk, himself a constitutional law scholar, has also fallen silent.

The opposition People Power Party should demand that the president exercise his veto against these bills, which deform the very essence of democracy—far more important than stocks or real estate. If that fails, it should seek constitutional review.

The Constitutional Court, too, must leave its mark in history by making a judgment on this grave matter.

#JudicialIndependence #SeparationOfPowers #DemocracyAtRisk