is itself in violation of Article 72 of the Constitution and not in
conformity with the president's obligation to realize and protect the
Constitution.
12. As Article 65(1) of the Constitution provides 'as the President,
... exercises his or her official duties' and thereby limits the
grounds for impeachment to the exercise of the 'official duties,' the
above provision, as construed, mandates that only those acts of
violation of law performed by the President while holding the office
of the President may constitute the grounds for impeachment. The
alleged grounds for impeachment concerning the unlawful political
funds that involved the Sun & Moon corporation and the respondent's
presidential election camp are based on facts that arose before the
respondent was elected and sworn in on February 25, 2003 as the
President. Therefore, such alleged grounds are clearly irrelevant to
the respondent's exercise of his official duties as President and do
not constitute grounds for impeachment. With respect to the misconducts of the President's close associates and aides that took place
subsequent to the respondent's assumption of the office of President,
none of the evidence submitted to the bench throughout the entire
proceedings in this case supports any finding that the respondent
instructed or abetted the acts of Choi Do-sul and others including
receiving unlawful funds or was otherwise illegally involved in such
acts. Therefore, the alleged grounds for impeachment based on the
above facts are without merit.
13. Article 69 of the Constitution provides for the President's
'obligation to faithfully perform the official duties,' as it provides
for the obligation of the President to take the oath of office.
Although the 'obligation to faithfully perform the official duties' of
the President is a constitutional obligation, this obligation, by its
own nature, is, unlike the 'obligation to protect the Constitution,'
not the one the performance of which can be normatively enforced.
As such, as a matter of principle, this obligation cannot be a subject
matter for a judicial adjudication.
As Article 65(1) of the Constitution limits the ground for
impeachment to the 'violation of the Constitution or statutes' and
the impeachment adjudication process at the Constitutional Court is
solely to determine the existence or the nonexistence of a ground
for impeachment from a legal standpoint, the ground for impeachment
alleged by the petitioner in this case concerning the respondent's
faithfulness of the performance of the official duties such as the
political incapability or the mistake in policy decisions, cannot in
and by itself constitute a ground for impeachment and therefore it
is not a subject matter for an impeachment adjudication.
14. Article 53(1) of the Constitutional Court Act provides that,
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