'The Republic of Korea is a democratic republic' — who first wrote those words? [Walkspot]

Constitution Day is back as a public holiday after a long absence.

It marks the day South Korea's first constitution was proclaimed.

And the draft of that constitution

survives in an unexpected place —

Korea University Museum.

The man who wrote that draft

was Yu Jin-o: legal scholar, educator and politician.

He was the defining elite intellectual

of the liberation era,

the author of the founding constitutional draft,

the first head of the Ministry of Government Legislation,

president of Korea University,

and an opposition party politician.

But his record carries a dark shadow too.

During the Japanese colonial period,

he left behind conduct that historians

have classified as pro-Japanese collaboration,

and in his later years he served

as an advisory council member

under the Chun Doo-hwan government.

Yu Jin-o is a figure who can be

neither easily celebrated

nor easily erased.

The opening line of the constitution

we take so completely for granted —

"The Republic of Korea is a democratic republic."

The sentence that gave rise to it,

"Joseon is a democratic republic,"

was also there, in the draft he wrote.

The founding constitutional draft is the artifact

that most fully captures

the complexity of modern Korean history.

History does not always divide neatly

into clear-cut heroes and villains.

A history that can be neither easily celebrated

nor easily erased.

To be continued...