The prerogative of mercy is the right and power of a state president who wins a direct national election and has the democratic legitimacy. It is the exceptional ruling act of the president which can relieve the tension between the ideas of laws and law order caused by the course of justice and the severity of law. The pardon power is stipulated in the Article 79 of the Constitution.

On looking back upon the constitutional history of Korea, since its first amnesty in September 1948 pardons in Korea have been carried out more than one hundred times until May, 2013. Media has strongly criticized inadequacies of selecting person for pardon whenever the pardon has been issued in Korea. Under the circumstances, partial amendments of Amnesty Act passed in February 2012 in which the gist of the bills were the formation of the Amnesty Commission to ensure the fairness and objectivity of pardons. Since then 9 propositions to prohibit and limit the pardoning power have been submitted to the National Assembly from January to May 2013. The legislative hearing on the amendment of Amnesty Act was held for the first time in the constitutional history of Korea on 22 April 2013.
Therefore, the Korean Institute of Criminology has conducted research on the problems and improvement directions of pardoning power. In particular, the study emphasizes the establishment of basic direction for essence of the pardon power and its possibility of restrictions.
Conventional research on pardoning power has concentrated on historical background of amnesty and theoretical justification on essence of pardon. On the other hand, this research specifically points out the problems and fairness of the person for pardon based on empirical research materials at that time of exercising the right to pardon. Moreover, case study has been conducted on the exercise of the pardoning power of each country in the 2000s. The research finds out laws of each country and socialcultural attitudes of exerting pardoning power. In particular, the research focuses on concrete cases of exercising pardoning power in the UK, the country of existing monarchy, the US, the country of having strong civic consciousness and Japan, the country of having similar political background and environment to Korea. The exercise of pardoning power by President Bill Clinton at the end of his term was very similar to the situation of Korea and the study considers concretely the movement of constitutional and political circles of the US about it.

It is expected that this research based on specific case study can suggest a fair and reasonable alternative to the way of exercising the pardon power of Korea. Furthermore, it is anticipated that this research can contribute to legislation with its valuable materials.