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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 18KB | 336 lines

<text> <title> South Korea (Republic Of Korea) </title> <article> <hdr> Human Rights Watch World Report 1992 Asia Watch: South Korea (Republic of Korea) </hdr> <body> Human Rights Developments In his 1991 New Year's Day message to the nation, South Korean President Roh Tae-woo declared, "Before the century is over, we must complete the task of building a fully democratic nation vibrant with freedom and diversity." ("Roh Calls for Reunification before 2000," Korea Herald, January 1, 1991.) In March and June, local council elections were held throughout the country for the first time in thirty years. Voter turnout was low, and the majority of the seats were won by candidates belonging to the ruling Democratic Liberal Party (DLP). Aside from those elections, however, gains for freedom and diversity were notably lacking. On April 26, 1991, Kang Kyung-dae, a student demonstrator, was beaten to death by five riot policemen. Kang's death sparked the most serious political turmoil in South Korea since June 1987, when another student, Park Chong-chol, died in police custody after torture. From late April to June, the country was racked by large-scale protest demonstrations, as well as a series of suicides by students, activists and workers protesting the government's failure to enact democratic reforms. A coalition of students, workers and political activists, formed in the wake of Kang's death, demanded the resignation of all cabinet members and the repeal of a number of security-related laws. Partly in response to those demands, the home affairs minister, who is in charge of the police, resigned. The members of the riot police who were directly responsible for Kang's death were arrested. The prime minister also resigned from his post some weeks later. In late May, the DLP-controlled National Assembly enacted a liberalizing set of amendments to the National Security Law and amnestied a limited number of prisoners held under the law, most of whom had completed nearly ninety percent of their prison terms. When these conciliatory gestures failed to stop the demonstrations and suicides, the government reverted to repression. The authorities ordered a nationwide manhunt for organizers of the demonstrations. Reverend Moon Ik-hwan, a Presbyterian minister and prominent dissident leader who previously had been imprisoned for traveling to North Korea without government permission, had his parole revoked in June 1991 and was returned to jail for participating in anti-government rallies. The government tried to dismiss the protest suicides by alleging that they were orchestrated by dissident organizations. One political activist was even tried for allegedly having ghost-written the suicide note and aided and abetted the suicide of a fellow activist. The hard line seemed to work; in June, the political turmoil began to subside. Among the DLP-sponsored amendments to the National Security Law is a provision that the law "shall not be loosely interpreted or otherwise misapplied to unreasonably restrict the basic human rights of citizens." The law no longer forbids all contact with communist organizations or governments, but still requires that all contact with North Korea be sanctioned by the authorities. It also narrows the definition of a prohibited "anti-state organization" to one with a command-and-control system. Despite the amendments, about four hundred persons are still being held under the law. Some were jailed in 1991, both before and after the law was amended, solely for their peaceful political activities and views. These detainees include eleven members of the Seoul branch of the National Minjung (People's) Arts Movement, arrested in March for allegedly carrying out activities that benefit North Korea because of their pro-unification artwork; six members of the Seoul Social Science Institute, arrested in June for allegedly benefiting North Korea through publication and dissemination of articles and books advocating a socialist revolution; and twelve persons arrested in 1990 and 1991 for their alleged membership in the dissident organization Pan-National Alliance for the Reunification of Korea (Pomminnyon), including theologian Park Soon-kyung, who was accused of delivering a lecture at a Christian meeting in Japan in which she reportedly said that it is necessary for South Koreans to understand Juche, the North Korean ideology of self-reliance. Also still in custody despite the amendments are more than forty "non-converted" political prisoners--prisoners who refuse to write "conversion" statements recanting alleged communist or leftist views, regardless of whether they held them in the first place--some of whom have been incarcerated for between thirty and forty years for allegedly engaging in espionage or political agitation on behalf of North Korea. In 1991, five non-converted political prisoners were released due to old age and serious health problems. Prominent dissidents including Kim Keun-tae, recipient of the 1987 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, and Jang Myung-guk, a well-known labor activist, also remain imprisoned. Due in part to worker involvement in the tumultuous political events in April and May, there were fewer labor disputes in 1991 than in the previous year. However, labor unions were still limited in their rights to organize and bargain collectively. In February, about seventy members of the newly created Conference of Large Factory Trade Unions (Yondehuei) were rounded up as they were leaving an organizational meeting. Most were soon released but seven key members were formally arrested. At management's request, the police also intervened in labor disputes at Daewoo companies in March and arrested key union leaders on grounds ranging from "interference with normal operation of business"--a charge often used illegitimately to break strikes--to the commission of violent acts. The arrests, in turn, sparked further disputes. In April, some four thousand Daewoo workers walked off their jobs to protest the detention of two additional union leaders who were charged with staging work stoppages and sit-ins over the earlier arrests. (Yonhap, April 29, 1991, as reported in Federal Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), May 2, 1991.) In September, General Motors announced that it was severing its ties with Daewoo due to dissatisfaction with its management style and constant labor-management disputes. (Yonhap, September 7, 1991, as reported in FBIS, September 9, 1991.) Discord over editorial decisionmaking at the Catholic Church-owned Pyunghwa Broadcasting came to a head in 1991, resulting in the detention by the police of thirty-seven journalists and the dismissal of all but ten of them. The Korean Teachers and Educational Workers Union (Chunkyojo) lost a crucial Constitutional Court decision. In 1990, the Supreme Court had ruled that the ban on organizing by public school teachers was unconstitutional. In 1991, the Constitutional Court ruled that the ban on organizing by private school teachers did not violate the constitutional guarantees for workers' freedom of association. Nearly five thousand Chunkyojo members participated in a signature campaign demanding political reforms by the government. The Ministry of Education threatened them with retaliation. ("Ministry to minimize penalty on protesting teachers," Korea Herald, May 18, 1991.) In September, two teachers were fired and a third had her salary cut for three months for having participated in the campaign. ("2 teachers socked for signing statement in May," Korea Herald, September 19, 1991.) With South Korea's pending entry into the International Labor Organization (ILO), the Labor Ministry discussed amending the labor laws to allow unions to engage in political activities. It also established a special committee to revise labor-related laws, and proposed voiding the curre