A legal Review of the Extinction of Political Parties: Focusing on the Registration and Cancellation of Political Parties Registration
Authors:   Legal Research Institute of Chonnam National University, Kim Hyun Jai 
Published: December 2022

Political parties need to be distinguished from general political associations or social organizations. However, the Constitution does not have explicit regulations on the concept of political parties. Any political party can be said to be a formal concept with only two elements as conceptual signs: participating in the formation of the people's political will such as elections and having a voluntary organization of the people. Article 8 (1) of the Constitution guarantees the freedom to establish political parties and a multi-party system, and the Party Act should contain content that realizes and embodies such freedom, but on the contrary, it should not contain content that controls and suppresses such freedom. In light of the fact that both authoritarianism and authoritarianism can be recognized under the law, the registration system itself, which requires the National Election Commission to register as the competent authority by examining only formal requirements for organizations with substantive requirements as parties under the party law, cannot be considered unconstitutional. However, demanding more than 5 cities and provinces and more than 1,000 members as legal requirements for registration of political parties is an excessive restriction and burden on new or small parties compared to existing large parties. According to the Political Parties Act, just before the revision of the Political Parties Act in 2004, the district party required only 1/10 of the local constituencies and the number of members of more than 30 per district, so the total number of party members was only 720. However, with the revision of the Political Parties Act in 2004, a total of more than 5,000 party members are now needed, which can be evaluated as a reform, not an improvement. Furthermore, due to the requirements of more than five districts under the Political Parties Act, it is difficult to establish regional political parties at the small and medium-sized regional level that can be closer to the metropolitan area, so it needs to be revised. The reason for cancellation of party registration also needs to be improved within a short period of four years. In addition, the cancellation of registration due to the weak results of participating in the election leads to the abandonment of participation in the parliamentary election itself due to concerns over the cancellation of registration in the case of new and minor parties. And by depriving the public of the opportunity to grow into a more solid political party in the process of continuing party activities, there is a concern that it will block the political cohesion of minority opinions and undermine political diversity and openness of the political activities. Therefore, it is necessary to simply completely abolish it according to the decision of the Constitutional Court. Furthermore, it would be reasonable to allow the party to hold the remaining property due to the cancellation of registration in case the party reacquires the registration requirements in the future, rather than forcing it collectively by law.