National Security Act (South Korea)

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The National Security Law (Kukka Poanbŏp 국가 보안법 / 國家 保安 法) of South Korea was enacted in 1948. It was the most important law for the implementation of the anti-communist government ideology, restricts freedom of expression and is still in force today despite numerous criticisms.

The law and its vague regulations have served from the outset to prosecute and detain or execute thousands of dissidents , writers, artists, academics, journalists, opposition politicians and students, publishers and booksellers .

content

According to its introduction, the law is intended to suppress any anticipated actions against the state that endanger national security , in order to protect the national security of the nation as well as the life and freedom of the people.

In the 1980 version it says:

Any person who takes advantage of an anti-state organization by endorsing, supporting, or taking sides with the acts of an anti-state organization, its members or any person acting on behalf of such an organization shall be punished with a prison sentence of up to seven years . A person who, in order to commit the said actions, produces, imports, reproduces, owns, transports, distributes, sells or acquires documents, graphic representations or similar means of expression, is to be punished with an equally high penalty according to the corresponding paragraphs.

The law also provides for prison sentences of up to five years for people who fail to report violations to the authorities.

The law has been used time and again by the South Korean regime to suppress and punish dissenting opinions, political publications, art and literature.

history

The law of December 1, 1948 was passed by the Syngman Rhee government immediately after the Y nachsu and Sunch'ŏn uprising, in which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ( ommission 진실 · 화해 를 위한 과거사 정리 위원회 ) killed between 439 and 2000 civilians.

It was a continuation of the Public Security Law ( 治安 維持 法 ) from the time of Japanese colonial rule over Korea and prohibited both communism and the recognition of North Korea as a political entity.

In the first year after it came into force, 188,621 people were arrested under this law, including 13 members of parliament.

The law was amended and tightened in December 1949, April 1950, December 1958 (as part of the repression of the so-called Political Wave 24 ( 2 · 4 정치 파동 )), June 1960 and September 1962.

Some of those convicted under the law served thirty to forty years prison terms , making them the longest-serving political prisoners in the world until their 1998 and 1999 releases .

In 1959, Cho Pong'am ( 조봉암 ), a member of the opposition who, as a candidate for Syngman Rhee in the 1956 presidential election, had received 30% of the vote, was sentenced by law and hanged. In 2011, an official from the Constitutional Court stated that this was Korea's first judicial murder .

After the military coup and the takeover of Park Chung-hee in 1961, the latter used the law to arrest and torture dissidents. In 1971, Kim Dae-jung ran as a candidate for opposition to the presidential election. In 1973 Park had him kidnapped in Tokyo and taken to Korea. The poet Kim Chi-ha was also sentenced to prison under the law in the 1970s.

After the next military coup in 1980 by Chun Doo-hwan , repression by law continued. Kim Dae-jung was sentenced to death (but not executed), and members of the opposition and journalists were persecuted under the law. In response to criticism of the Kwangju massacre , a new constitution was put in place and political parties were allowed, the 1961 law against communism was repealed, but the military dictatorship incorporated some passages from the anti-communism law into the national security law and continued to use the National Security Act for repression, including during the June 1987 battle .

Politics continued under Roh Tae Woo , who was elected in 1988. In 1989, an average of 3.3 dissidents per day were arrested under the National Security Act.

By 1986, according to the Justice Department, 230 political prisoners had been executed under the law. Thousands of political prisoners were tortured up until the 1990s and many were sentenced to long prison terms for confessions extracted under torture. There have been no death sentences under this law since 1986.

In 1990 the Constitutional Court ruled again that Paragraph 7 of the law - with restrictions - was also constitutional. As a result, the law was amended in 1991. An "anti-subversive organization" was now defined as an "association or group inside or outside the territory of the Republic of Korea," "formed with the purpose of infiltrating the government. assuming the role of government] or causing national unrest [or to disturb the state] «. According to the amendment, acts of approval, support, dissemination or sympathy for an organization hostile to the state are only punishable if these acts were "knowingly" committed in order to endanger the state. The article that defined all communist states as "anti-government organizations" was repealed.

As a result of the economic crisis and the political protests of 1997–1998, the regime tightened the pace again and introduced the law against students and workers who demonstrated against unemployment . In the first half of 1998, more than four hundred people were arrested under the law.

From 1998 to 2008 - under President Kim Dae-jung (who himself had been sentenced to prison under the law) and Roh Moo-hyun - the number of arrests and charges under the law dropped dramatically.

In 2001, US citizen Song Hak Sam was arrested under the law and jailed for two months for supporting the publisher of an allegedly pro-North Korean book. At the same time, seven members of a South Korean peace delegation who had traveled to North Korea were threatened with prison terms under the law, and Kang Jeong Koo, a sociology professor at Dongguk University ( 동국대 학교 ) in Seoul , was arrested after traveling to North Korea.

In September 2003, Song Du-yul , a German philosophy professor of Korean descent, was arrested while entering South Korea. In April 2004, he was sentenced to seven years in prison. After an international solidarity campaign, the Supreme Court suspended his sentence in July and Song was able to return to Germany in August.

In August 2004, the Korean National Human Rights Commission called the law a violation of freedom of thought , conscience and expression and called for its abolition. In the same month, however, the constitutional court ruled again that the law was constitutional. In September, President Roh Moo-hyun stated that the law had been used to eliminate the opposition and that he was in favor of abolishing the law. However, he could not achieve a majority for it in parliament. The Great National Party (now the Freedom Party of Korea ) was and is strictly against the repeal of the law, and representatives of the party argued not only that without the law, South Korea would become a "paradise for North Korean spies, " but that it would also contribute to the stability of South Korea. otherwise South Koreans would be free to express their support for North Korea.

In May 2007, Kim Myeong-soo was arrested and, after two weeks of law, charged with selling and owning banned books, including works by Karl Marx and Edgar Snow , even though the same works were also available in state public libraries . Kim was initially acquitted, but sentenced to six months 'conditional and two years' unconditional imprisonment in February 2012 after the prosecutor was appealed in the second instance.

The government of Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) used the law to a greater extent to restrict the right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly . The number of indictments under the law increased from 32 in 2008 to 63 in 2011. The law is also used to limit discussions of North Korea on the Internet. The number of people prosecuted for pro-North Korean internet publications rose from 5 in 2008 to 51 in 2011 (through October), and the number of banned websites rose from 18 in 2009 to 178 in October 2011. The vague ones Clauses of the law are arbitrarily used against individuals and organizations believed to be opposing the government. The authorities have sentenced people on the basis of evidence provided by the secret service, the procurement of which was deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, they have mistreated prisoners and isolated from their relatives if they exercised their right to remain silent.

In August 2008 the government arrested seven Socialist Workers' Association activists. A court initially dismissed the prosecutor's requests for arrest warrants , ruling that the activists did not pose a substantial threat to national security. In August 2009, eight activists were charged under the law. In December 2011, the organization's founder, Oh Se-chul, was sentenced to two years of unconditional and three years of conditional imprisonment, and his co-defendants were also found guilty.

Kim Eun-hye was arrested in July 2009 and charged under the law in November 2009. She had traveled in 2004 with permission from the South Korean Unification Ministry. She has now been charged with spying for North Korea and sentenced to three and a half years in prison in October 2011. She was separated from her 19-month-old daughter while in detention. The appeal process began in December, and Kim was released in February 2012.

In August 2011, Choi Ho-hyeon was sentenced under the law for possessing literature used by an "anti-state organization" to two years 'unconditional and three years' conditional imprisonment.

In December 2011, several members of the All-Korean Association for the Reunification of Korea were sentenced to several years in prison, despite the Constitutional Court ruling in December of the previous year that the authorities obtained the evidence by illegally wiretapping telephone and internet communications and illegally opening his mail .

In September 2012, Park Jeong-geun was sentenced under the law to ten months 'unconditional and two years' conditional imprisonment for posting material from North Korean websites on Twitter , despite Park's satirical manipulation of the images to criticize the North Korean regime.

In September 2013 u. a. MP Lee Seok-ki (이석기) charged with planning acts of sabotage and a pro-North Korean uprising or coup under the law. In February 2014, he was sentenced to twelve months in prison. His party, the United Progressive Party , was the third largest party in parliament since the April 2012 elections with 13 out of 300 MPs. In December 2014, the Constitutional Court ruled that the United Progressive Party was to be dissolved and forbidden by law and that its elected members of parliament should be deprived of their mandate.

criticism

Legal experts accuse the South Korean regime of the national security law in blatant violation of international human rights standards , including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1976, which South Korea ratified .

literature

  • 閔 炳 老: 論説 韓国 の 国家 保安 法 の 過去 、 現在 、 そ し て 未来. 憲法 裁判 所 の 判決 に 対 す る 批判 的 考察. In: 比較 法学 Vol. 33 No. 1 pp. 105–163.
  • Diane Kraft: South Korea's National Security Law. A Tool of Oppression in an Insecure World. In: Wisconsin International Law Journal Vol. 24 No. 2 (2006), pp. 627-660.
  • The National Security Law. Curtailing Freedom of Expression and Association in the Name of Security in the Republic of Korea . Amnesty International , 2012.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Kraft 2006, pp. 631, 634; Amnesty International 2012, p. 14.
  2. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 628; Amnesty International 2012, p. 13.
  3. ↑ Kyo Ho Youm: South Korea. In: Sandra Coliver: Secrecy and Liberty. National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information. Martinus Nijhoff, 1999; Pp. 413-444, here p. 424.
  4. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 629 f.
  5. ↑ Kyo Ho Youm: South Korea. In: Sandra Coliver: Secrecy and Liberty. National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information. Martinus Nijhoff, 1999; Pp. 413-444, here p. 420.
  6. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 628; 439 civilians confirmed dead in Yeosu-Suncheon Uprising of 1948 New report by the Truth Commission places blame on Syngman Rhee and the Defense Ministry, advises government apology In: Hankyoreh , January 8, 2009.
  7. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 13.
  8. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 631.
  9. ↑ 閔 炳 老.
  10. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 14.
  11. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 631; Kim Mi-ju: Cho Bong-am unjustly executed: Supreme Court In: JoongAng Daily, January 21, 2011.
  12. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 631 f.
  13. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 632.
  14. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 632.
  15. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 632.
  16. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 633.
  17. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 14.
  18. ↑ Kyo Ho Youm: South Korea. In: Sandra Coliver: Secrecy and Liberty. National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information . Martinus Nijhoff, 1999; Pp. 413-444, here p. 420; South Korea's National Security Law In: The retrospective history of the Republic of Korea, 1953–1993 (Hartford Archives)
  19. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 633.
  20. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 14.
  21. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 633 f.
  22. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 15.
  23. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 634; Amnesty International 2012, p. 16.
  24. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 636 f.
  25. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 25 f.
  26. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, pp. 3, 28-29.
  27. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 32 f.
  28. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 30.
  29. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 34 f.
  30. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 36 f.
  31. ↑ Amnesty International 2012, p. 23 f.
  32. ^ South Korea 2015 Freedom House .
  33. ↑ Kraft 2006, p. 647 and passim.