The purpose of this paper is to investigate the paradoxical pattern in which South Korean presidents enjoy imperial power early in their term, but became fragile and impotent as their term comes to an end.,Based on the previous literature on Korean presidentialism, this paper introduces and critically compares several competing theories on the Korean presidency and its defects.,This paper finds that for Korean presidents, imperial governance and fragility represent two sides of the same coin, like a Janus face. These two seemingly competing descriptions of the Korean presidency are not actually contradictory.,This paper investigates how Korean presidents are imperial with regard to constitutional design as well as political behavior, and presents a logic of transformation from an imperial president to a fragile one, focusing on party politics and election cycles.

中文翻译：

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贾努斯（Janus）面孔：韩国帝国主义但脆弱的总统职位

本文旨在研究韩国总统任期初期享有帝国权力，而任期结束时却变得脆弱而无能的悖论模式。本文发现，对于韩国总统来说，帝国统治和脆弱性代表了同一枚硬币的两个方面，就像贾努斯的面孔一样。这两个看似相互竞争的对朝鲜总统职位的描述实际上并不矛盾。本文研究了朝鲜总统在宪法设计和政治行为方面如何做到帝国主义，并提出了从帝国总统转变为脆弱总统的逻辑，