Institutional Change, the Judiciary, and Military Service in South Korea

Abstract: In 2018 the South Korean Supreme Court declared the Military Service Act unconstitutional and mandated that the National Assembly implement an alternative service for those who object to military service for moral or religious reasons. This ruling is a reversal from previous cases dealing with the same issue. Using theories of institutional change, this paper investigates the evolution of the judicial branch as well as military service to identify the causal mechanisms for the reversal. This paper uses thematic analysis of secondary literature to generate themes and applies those themes to legal arguments employed by the judiciary. The results suggest that incremental changes to judicial formal and informal rules produced the 2018 decision.