Researches on legal positivism in Korea had begun by the introduction of the theory of Hans Kelsen in the 1950s. But legal positivism was not the main stream of the research of Korean legal philosophy and had been misunderstood as upholding the bad law in Korean society. Meanwhile, W. B. John and H. S. Shim had made researches on their own ideas about legal positivism and had gotten excellent results in Korea. After the 1990s, the classical texts in legal positivism including Hart`s and Kelsen`s were translated and variety of new theories about legal positivism were introduced to Korean legal academy.
