Greetings from the President

For Public Law of Co-Existence, Co-Survivorship and Co-Prosperity


The Korean Public Law Association is rooted in the Korean Society of Law, when the Korean Public Law Association was first organized in 1957 as part of the Korean Society of Law under the leadership of Dr. Yoo Jin-Oh, one of the founders of the inaugural Constitution of the Republic of Korea. As reorganized in 1970 and incorporated in 1999, the Korean Public Law Association is Korea’s largest and most encompassing academic institution in law with a long history and tradition, serving as the umbrella institution for public law researchers and practitioners implementing the spirit of constitutional law and administrative law as the nation’s basic law and the law for the implementation of government, on the law and policy issues of Korea and beyond.

The entire community across the globe now faces such unprecedented changes with democratization, development in information technology, and globalization. The Korean society, while facing such changes also with turbulent political situations in East Asia and amplifying conflicts among different generations, regions and ideologies, has to meet and answer the challenge to effectively implement the requests of time of “integration” and “decentralization” to be pursued for a democratic republic.


The Korean Public Law Association declared with a concerted effort of its entire membership in 2020 the “new beginning of one hundred years of Korean public law scholarship”, to continue to meet the challenges of time of seeking the public law’s responses to such challenges and missions. The Korean Public Law Association will continue to make its best effort in this vein, by holding and supporting its regular conferences such as the KPLA annual conferences and other seminars and workshops to further activate academic forum to openly and publicly discuss core and current issues of constitutional and administrative law demanding timely responses. The Korean Public Law Association will also make the best of its effort so that such forum may function as the platform and the hub for viable alternatives in public law, by delivering and enabling the outcome of research and discussion to and for the society through diverse media and forms in responsive and resonating manners. 


Korea is currently at the center of attention of such a number of nations as the one that has established and implemented the global standard in many fields. As such, in the area of public law, from the phase in which Korea had to learn advanced scholarship of other nations, Korea moves to the phase where Korea’s own experience is newly theorized and institutionalized, thereby establishing in a generally applicable manner such theories and institutions with both domestic and global ramifications. In this vein, the Korean Public Law Association will not only continue to actively interact with academic institutions overseas through international conferences and other opportunities, but also will take initiatives in producing, searching and organizing the achievements and outcome of Korea’s public law scholarship including those concerning constitutional adjudication, to introduce such achievements and outcome to the global public law scholarship and community. The Korean Public Law Association will continue to make the best of effort to contribute to the human rights protection and democratic republican political and social order through research efforts in constitutional and administrative law utilizing various methodologies and also the implementation thereof, so that democratic rule of law and the culture and institutional environment therefor will continue to mature and develop where everyone may enjoy safety, liberty and happiness, for co-existence, co-survivorship and co-prosperity.

 

Jongcheol Kim, the 40th President of the Korean Public Law Association