| Being important political and economic entities in northeast Asia,China and Korea are crucial neighbors to each other.It’s been 25 years since the two countries first established diplomatic relations in 1992.Through years of developing,the two countries have got fruitful results in political,economic and cultural interactions,especially after China-Korea Free Trade Agreement was signed in 2015.However,thanks to the depl oy of US THAAD(Terminal High Altitude Area Defense)system in Korea in 2016,China-Korea relations suddenly went cold.In such context,knowing more about Korean political regime will help us better understand what’s behind its moves and better response to incidents like THAAD.Since the foundation of the Republic of Korea in 1948,Korea has been making amendments to the constitution.There have been 9 constitutional amendments till now,and the last amendment was made in 1987.In 1987,the Sixth Republic Constitution was voted through,and that was seen as mark of Korean democratization.It’s written in the constitution that president should not hold presidency for more than one term.Although the new constitution makes sure there will never be dictatorship in the country,there were more new problems revealed by the new constitution.The new problems led to proposals of constitution amendments.Korean presidents Kim Young-sam,Roh Moo-hyun,Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye have put forwa rded proposals on constitutional changes,due to the fact that one-term presidency makes the presidents unable to effectively carry out long-term national plans.We can find from the political phenomenon after Korean democratization that there is kind of discontinuity in Korean policy ever since then.Korea has been experiencing big changes in diplomatic,economic and other important policies since democratization.Chinese scholars have got very rich results in Korean diplomacy,eco nomy and politics.They have been doing good in researches on Korean regime and the process of constitutional amendments.However,there is little research considering the presidency after democratization,especially the problems caused by the new type of presidency-the only research is 1 imited in the illustration of problems.There is barely no scholar who has elaborated on the discontinuity of state policies and the new presidency.This paper seeks to analyze the features of the current Korean presidency,and then to analyze why there is discontinuity of policies under this presidency regime.To do that analysis,this paper will firstly take a retrospect on the beginning of Korean presidency,the history of constitutional amendments and the proposals brought forward by the presidents after the 1987 constitution;then this paper will further illustrate the discontinuity of policies in economy,relation with North Korea and diplomacy;At last,this paper will try to figure out what’s that under the current presidency regime caused the discontinuity of policies in Korea. |
