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University of Cambridge

In Search of the Constitution: How the Constitution Generated the Public Power in South Korea (1963-1979)

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

This study challenges the positivist view of the Korean Constitution, which sees it merely as an assemblage of rules and statutes defining its citizens’ status and setting out codes of conduct for the government, or mapping the government’s institutional arrangements. Prevalent in Korean constitutional thought and practice, this view wholly fails to capture what it implies for how the polity governs or is governed. Because it assumes that the state and its constitutional law came into being prior to any structure of political entitlement, Korean constitutional scholarship has focused only its textual meaning and assessing the relative weight of individual statutes or articles of the Constitution. This has narrowed scholarly inquiry into the political significance of the Constitution into a dispute over the source of sovereignty. The dissertation aims to (re)discover the political nature of the Korean constitution with the 1962 and 1972 constitutions.

Degree

thesis:*
Name dc:type.qualificationname
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
Doctoral
Grantor dc:publisher.institution
University of Cambridge
Year dc:date.issued
2019

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Yi , Kyung Min
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Dunn , John

Subjects

dc:subject × 9

Rights

dc:rights
Language dc:language
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
DOI dc:identifier.doi
https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.44658
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/297604

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Cambridge University
Base URL
api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Yi , Kyung Min. In Search of the Constitution: How the Constitution Generated the Public Power in South Korea (1963-1979). Doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2019. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.44658