서울대 교수들 시국선언문

이명박 대통령과 현 정부는 국민적 화합을 위해 민주주의의 큰 틀을 지켜나가야 한다

우리 국민은 누구나 전직 대통령의 비극적인 죽음 앞에서 큰 아픔을 겪고 있다. 그러나 전국 각지에 길게 늘어선 조문 행렬은 단지 애도와 추모의 물결만은 아니었다. 국민 한 사람 한 사람이 착잡하기 이를 길 없는 심경으로 나라의 앞날을 가슴속 깊이 걱정하는 모습이었다.

서로 다른 정치적 입장을 넘어서서 각계각층의 온 국민이 하나 되어 전직 대통령의 국민장을 치러낸 것을 계기로 우리 모두는 새로운 길을 열고 있으며 또 열어야만 한다.

지난 수십 년간 온갖 희생을 치러가며 이루어낸 민주주의가 어려움에 빠진 현 시국에 대해 우리들은 깊이 염려하고 있다. 작년 ‘촛불집회’에 참여한 일반 시민들에게까지 소환장이 남발되었고 온라인상의 활발한 의견교환과 여론수렴이 가로막혔으며, 이미 개정이 예고된 집회 관련 법안들의 독소조항도 시민사회의 강한 비판에 부딪히고 있다.

현 정부가 출범한 이후 언론의 자유와 독립성 또한 훼손되었다. 주요 방송사가 바람직하지 못한 갈등을 겪는가 하면, 국회에서 폭력사태까지 초래한 미디어 관련 법안들은 원만한 민주적 논의절차를 거쳤다고 말하기 어렵다. 여야의 동의로 지난 3월 미디어발전 국민위원회가 국민적 합의 도출을 위해 출범했지만, 여당 측 위원들이 회의 공개나 국민여론 수렴을 반대함으로써 위원회는 표류하고 있다. 국민 다수가 언론법 처리 강행 방침을 부정적으로 인식하는 최근의 여론조사 결과를 굳이 상기하지 않더라도, 이런 흐름은 민주주의의 기반인 언론의 자유를 허물어뜨리는 일이라 아니할 수 없다.

그 뿐 아니다. 현직 대법관의 ‘촛불집회’ 재판 개입 사건에서 보듯이, 현 정권은 사법부의 권위와 독립성에 대한 국민적 신뢰에 상처를 입혔으며, 그에 따라 재판의 독립을 수호하려는 전국 법관들의 반발을 불러일으키고 있다. 국민여론에 따라 일단 포기했던 ‘한반도 대운하’는 ‘4대강 살리기’로 탈바꿈하여 되살아나고 있으며, 지난 십여 년 동안 대북정책이 거둔 성과도 큰 위험에 처했다. 특수고용직 노동자가 목숨을 끊고 비정규직 노동자가 기본권 보장을 요구할 때 집회의 강제 해산과 노동자 대량연행과 구속으로 맞서는 일 또한 구시대적 대처임이 분명하다. 　

문제는 정치노선의 차이나 이념의 대립이 아니라 기본적인 인권 존중과 민주적 원칙의 실천이다. 모든 국민의 삶을 넉넉히 포용하는 열린 정치를 구현하는 정부의 노력이 참으로 절실한 시점이다.

그러나 안타깝게도 전직 대통령 관련 검찰 수사 과정 또한 이전 정권에 대한 정치보복의 의혹을 불러일으키기에 충분한 것이었다. 검찰은 국가원수를 지낸 이를 소환조사까지 했음에도 불구하고 이후 3주가 지나도록 사건 처리 방침을 명확히 밝히지 못하고 추가 비리 의혹을 언론에 흘림으로써 전직 대통령과 가족에게 견디기 힘든 인격적 모독을 집요하게 가했다. 이는 엄정한 공직자 비리 수사라고 하기 곤란하며 상식에서 벗어난 것이었다.

되돌아보면 지난 1월 용산 철거민 농성에 대한 무모한 진압으로 빚어진 참사는 올해 벌어질 갖가지 퇴행적 사건을 예고했다. 용산 참사의 희생자들은 아직 장례도 치르지 못하고 있으며, 검찰이 수사기록 중 핵심적인 대목의 공개를 거부함으로써 재판도 정상적으로 진행되지 못하고 있다. 지난 5월 22일 서울 서부지법 민사12부가 ‘도시 및 주거환경 정비법’이 “세입자의 재산권, 주거권, 인간다운 생활을 할 권리를 침해한다”며 위헌법률심판을 제청한 사실에 주목하면서 현 정부의 근본적인 자기 성찰을 기대한다.

이명박 대통령과 현 정부가 전직 대통령에 대한 범국민적 애도 속에 주어진 국민적 화해의 소중한 기회를 잘 살리고 국민의 뜻에 부응하기를 우리는 간절히 희망하며, 다음의 구체적 요구사항을 제시한다.

1. 이명박 대통령은 국정의 최고 책임자다. 이 대통령이 스스로 나서서 국민 각계각층과 소통하고 연대하는 정치를 선언해야 한다. 더불어 현 정부와 집권 여당은 다른 정당과 시민사회단체를 진심으로 국정의 동반자로서 받아들여야 한다.

1. 현 정부는 민주사회의 기본권인 ‘표현의 자유’, ‘집회와 결사의 자유’, ‘언론의 자유’를 보장해야 한다.

1. 현 정부는 전직 대통령 관련 검찰 수사의 문제점을 인정하고 사죄해야 하며, 정적이나 사회적 약자에게만 엄격한 검찰 수사에 대한 근본적 반성과 개선이 이루어져야 한다.

1. 현 정부는 용산 참사의 피해자에 대해 국민적 화합에 걸맞은 해결책을 제시하고, 경제 위기 하에서 더 큰 어려움에 처한 비정규직 노동자 등 소외계층의 요구에 귀를 기울이고 그들의 기본권을 보장해야 한다.

이명박 대통령과 현 집권층이 우리 국민 모두의 가슴에서 타오르고 있는 민주적 요구에 대해 진지하고 성의있게 대응함으로써 지금의 어려운 상황을 국민적 화합과 연대를 바탕으로 한 민주주의의 큰 길로 나아가는 전환점으로 삼을 것을 간곡히 바란다.

　2009. 6. 3.


　민주주의의 후퇴를 우려하는 서울대학교 교수 일동


　서명자 명단 (2009년 6월 3일)

　가나다 순 정리 (동명이인은 마지막에 나열하고 단과대 표시)

　강우성 강진호 계승혁 고철환 구명철 구인회 권태억 김길중 김도균 김빛내리 김상종 김세균 김영민 김용익 김월회 김유용 김인걸 김장주 김재범 김종욱 김종일 김진수 김춘수 김현균 김혜란 김효명 남동신 류재명 모경환 문중양 민은경 박경숙 박동열 박명규 박배균 박태균 박현섭 박흥식 박희병 방민호 배은경 배철현 백도명 변현태 봉준수 성노현 손영주 송석윤 신광현 신종호 심봉섭 안광석 안삼환 양동휴 양현아 오명석 오석배 오순희 오용록 우희종 유용태 윤순진 윤여창 윤여탁 윤제용 이강재 이건수 이경우 이병민 이성중 이성헌 이애주 이인호 이일하 이창숙 이철범 이현숙 이형목 임호준 임홍배 장덕진 장승일 전종익 전태원 정근식 정용욱 정원규 정향진 조국 조영남 조현설 조형택 조흥식 최갑수 최권행 최무영 최영찬 최윤영 한상진 한숭희 한영혜 한인섭 한정숙 허원기 홍기선 홍성욱 홍승권 홍재성 홍진호 황상익

　김명환(인문대) 김민수(미대) 김정욱(환경대학원) 김현진(인문대) 이건우(인문대) 이근(국제대학원) 이동수(환경대학원) 이상훈(사회대) 이용환(농생대) 이준호(자연대) 장진성(인문대) 전경수(사회대) 최병선(사회대) 최진영(사회대)

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　이상 124명

Amnesty International Sees S. Korea’s Human Rights Backpedaling

Riot police used excessive force when dispersing largely peaceful protesters demonstrating against US beef imports. Large numbers of irregular migrants were deported amid reports of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment during arrest. There was heightened concern about freedoms of expression, assembly and association of protesters, unionists and journalists. No executions took place but 58 people remained on death row. The Special Bill to Abolish the Death Penalty lapsed in March.

Excessive use of force
Candlelight protests against the resumption of US beef imports attracted tens of thousands of people and took place almost daily from May to early July. During the largely peaceful protests some police beat protesters with shields and batons, fired water cannons at close range and denied medical care to protesters in detention. Protesters suffered injuries such as broken bones, concussion, temporary blindness and punctured eardrums.

"Police imprisoned at least 408 conscientious objectors, mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses..."

Migrants’ rights
In September, the government announced its intention to deport approximately half of irregular migrant workers, an estimated 220,000 people, by 2012. There was a growing number of cases of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of migrant workers during arrests in the ongoing crackdown.

In November, about 280 immigration officials and police raided factories and dormitories in Maseok, Gyeonggi province, where at least 110 regular and irregular migrant workers were indiscriminately apprehended en masse. One female migrant worker was not permitted to go to the toilet, but was instead forced to urinate in public. One male migrant worker broke his leg when he tried to escape, after which he was handcuffed and made to wait five hours before being allowed to go to hospital.
In May, the government deported Torna Limbu, a Nepalese national, and Abdus Sabur, a Bangladeshi national, president and vice-president respectively of the Seoul-Gyeonggi-Incheon Migrants’ Trade Union (MTU), despite a call from the National Human Rights Commission for a stay of deportation until it could investigate allegations of beatings by immigration officials during their arrests. There were concerns that the two men were targeted specifically because of their union activities.
Freedom of expression, assembly and association
Labour movement
According to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, irregular employment protests occurred at more than 30 different factories. Security forces used excessive force against striking irregular workers, who were protesting because they received less pay than regular workers for equal work. They also faced losing their jobs after two years so that their employers could avoid regularizing their status in line with the 2007 Contract Based Employment Law.

Media independence
The chief executives and presidents of the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), Korean Broadcasting Advertising Corporation, Arirang TV, Sky Life and Yonhap Television Network (YTN) were replaced by supporters of the government.

Protests against the appointment of the new YTN president Ku Bon-hong, a former aide to President Lee Myung-bak, resulted in Ku Bon-hong suing 12 trade union journalists and firing six journalists for “interfering with business”.
Conscientious objectors
Police imprisoned at least 408 conscientious objectors, mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses, for refusing compulsory military service. This significant drop in numbers compared to the 733 imprisoned in 2007 was largely because cases were not heard ahead of plans to introduce an alternative to military service in 2009. However, in December the Ministry of Defence put the plans on hold due to lack of public support.

Lee Gil-joon, a conscripted riot police officer was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for failure to return to duty and disobeying orders because he opposed using violence to disperse demonstrators during the candlelight protests.
Arbitrary arrests and detentions – National Security Law

2008 celebration event on the World Day Against DP,10 Oct.© Amnesty International2008 marked 60 years since the National Security Law (NSL) was introduced. As of December, there were at least nine detained individuals charged under the vague provisions of the NSL.

On 26 August, police arrested seven activists from the Socialist Workers League of Korea, including a university professor, Oh Se-chul, for violating article three (forming anti-state groups) and article seven (praising or sympathizing with anti-state groups) of the NSL. Seoul Central District Court rejected the arrest warrants submitted by the prosecutor’s office on grounds of insufficient evidence. On 14 October, police re-submitted the arrest warrant for Professor Oh, but it was again rejected by the court due to lack of evidence.
Refugees and asylum-seekers
A total of 364 applications for refugee status were submitted in 2008. Thirty-six people were granted refugee status and 22 were given humanitarian protection. Seventy-nine applications were rejected. Serious concerns were raised about the lack of resources in immigration offices as the backlog of asylum claims reached over 1,200 cases.

Violence against women and girls
In January, President-elect Lee Myung-bak said he would not call on Japan to apologize for its wartime atrocities.

In October, the South Korean parliament passed a resolution calling for justice for the survivors of Japan’s military sexual slavery system during World War II.

Death penalty
South Korea’s unofficial moratorium on executions continued. Fifty-eight prisoners were on death row at the end of the year. The Special Bill to Abolish the Death Penalty lapsed in March. Two new bills on the abolition of the death penalty were introduced in the National Assembly.

See more for the AI Reports on the policing the candlelight protests by the Korean government. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA25/008/2008/en

Amnesty Sees S. Korea’s Human Rights Backpedaling

By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter

South Korea has been backpedaling on human rights regarding expression of opinion, assembly and association under the Lee Myung-bak administration, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

The world's largest human rights watchdog urged the government to remove all measures restricting such rights to maintain Seoul's leadership in human rights protection in the Asia-Pacific region.

``Some policies and measures restricting human rights have commonly been found in prior administrations. However, our concern over, in particular, the right of expression, assembly and association under the current government is higher than ever before,'' said Go Eun-tae, chairman of Amnesty International's Seoul bureau, at a press conference. ``We reached this conclusion after reviewing our past human rights reports.''

It expressed grave concern over the increasing use of force by police in cracking down on demonstrators.

``In recent rallies, police recklessly assaulted and detained non-violent demonstrators and even innocent civilians. Some were injured. But police have not taken any responsibility for that,'' said Kim Hee-jin, director of the human rights group. ``It seems that police have lost their sense of responsibility.''

Kim denounced the police's recent decision to prohibit civic groups with records of hosting unauthorized rallies from taking any collective action. ``It's an arbitrary decision and apparently infringes upon people's freedom of expression, protected under the Constitution,'' Kim said.

She said South Korea's freedom of the press was also in jeopardy as the government has tried to muzzle media outlets critical of the administration by replacing their chief executives with supporters of President Lee.

Earlier this year, chief executives and presidents of the Korea Broadcasting System (KBS), Arirang TV, and Yonhap Television Network (YTN) were replaced by President Lee's supporters.

In replacing YTN's top job, 12 trade union journalists and six YTN journalists were sued or fired for their protests against the appointment of Ku Bon-hong as YTN president.

It added that freedom of expression in cyberspace was also under attack.

``The arrest of blogger Minerva proves it,'' Kim said. ``Even though he was acquitted at trial, we are concerning about similar cases in the future.''

Internet blogger Park Dae-sung, better known as Minerva, was indicted on charges of causing financial loss to the government by spreading unconfirmed information online.

pss@koreatimes.co.kr



Professors Demand No Rollback on Democracy
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/06/117_46122.html
By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter

For the first time in more than five years, professors are moving to issue a statement to press for furthering democracy.

About 100 professors of Seoul National University will issue a joint statement today to denounce the Lee Myung-bak administration for what they call backtracking on democratic rights.

They will urge the Lee administration to change the framework of its policies as ``democracy has reached a point where it cannot become worse.'' They condemned the administration's ``excessive suppression of the media and the oppression of public voices.''

It is the first such announcement in five years since they publicly opposed a lawmakers move to impeach former President Roh Moo-hyun in 2004.

It was quite common during the authoritarian Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan administrations in the 1970s and early 1980s for professors, opinion leaders and religious leaders to press for democracy.

The announcement will mainly be a request to the government to ``respect full democracy,'' including permission for public political gatherings and guaranteeing the ``independence of the press from political or chaebol'' influence.

Prof. Lee Joon-ho noted that the Lee administration has been indifferent about pressing the issues necessary for national harmony.

``During the past liberal administrations of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, we enjoyed freedom of expression. But we don't anymore,'' he said. ``Of course it is a bit of a scary situation. The prosecution has even hauled away critical TV program directors. Now we can no longer tolerate the arbitrary questioning,'' Lee said.

Lee says that the present administration needs to make changes to its policies that may run counter to a fuller democracy.

Police blocked Seoul Plaza to prevent illegal gatherings and have torn down memorial alter to the late former President Roh installed in central Seoul, a move which drew immense public criticism.

The professor said there are more professors critical of the administration's policy on democracy and human rights. ``Even some conservative people told me that it is the time to make some changes,'' he said.

Professors at other universities are likely to issue the same statement to press the government not to backpedal on the country's hard fought-for democracy.

bjs@koreatimes.co.kr

The power of presidential restraint

It is kind of hard to comprehend what he exactly wanted to point out here; was it that Truman made a good decision not to use nukes to end the Korean War and instead made it "a forgotten war" and set a nuke-restraint international convention; or it wasn't a good decision not to use it, since it didn't quite contribute the "US War Economy"?


By James Carroll | June 1, 2009

KOREA saved us - but you wouldn't think so today. Pyongyang's second nuclear test, followed by multiple rocket launches, and its repudiation of a decades-old armistice with South Korea are generating international consternation. The Obama administration's important nuclear reduction initiatives may be undercut, together with its hopes for blunting Iran's nuclear ambition. China, Taiwan, and Japan all face unexpected pressures. South Korea's "sunshine policy" of seeking accommodations with North Korea is all but dead - along with its main architect, former president Roh Moo Hyun, who committed suicide last week.

In America, the Korean War is sometimes referred to as "the forgotten war," but these events show that the most forgotten thing of all is that the war never ended. That a civil war on a peninsula in Northeast Asia so ensnared the United States - with more than 30,000 GI's stuck in its amber to this day - is now commonly taken as a Cold War mistake. The mirror-image mistake a decade later was US intervention in a second civil war on an Asian peninsula - Vietnam.

The critique of Korea is familiar. Only months before North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea in June 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had declared Korea to be outside "the defense perimeter" of US national security, yet he led the charge to join the conflict. Pentagon leaders warned against "a land war in Asia," but President Truman followed Acheson. The United States, under cover of the United Nations, went to war, scuttling once and for all the post-World War II movement to demilitarize America. Instead, the US defense budget jumped from $13 billion in 1951 to $50 billion in 1953; the US nuclear arsenal grew from 300 bombs in 1950 to 1,300 bombs in 1953. Welcoming the "permanent war economy," Acheson said, "Korea saved us." Cold War critics have decried this turn in history ever since.

But there is another, less noted - more authentic - way that Korea saved us. At first, General Douglas MacArthur led a brilliant offensive against the North Koreans, driving them back across the parallel and ever closer to the Yalu River, the Chinese border. Then China stunned MacArthur, in November 1950, by sending hundreds of thousands of its soldiers across the river - a "Chicom" rout of Yanks.

MacArthur retreated down much of the peninsula, warning Washington of a coming American Dunkirk, a desperate evacuation of troops by sea. MacArthur demanded that Truman authorize use of atomic weapons in battle. The Air Force chief of staff, General Hoyt Vandenberg, proposed a preemptive nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. Truman later wrote, "I could not bring myself to order the slaughter of 25,000,000 non-combatants . . . I just could not make the order for a Third World War." Truman said no to MacArthur, the beginning of the famous dispute that would lead to the general's dismissal the following April.

American troops valiantly hung on, finally clawing their way back up to the 38th parallel. Truman chose to abandon victory rather than order total war. The resulting stalemate defines the problem between North and South Korea to this day. But in the forgotten war, Truman's refusal to order the use of atomic weapons is, except to a handful of historians, the forgotten decision. Its impact has been as permanent as it has been underappreciated, for the effect of Truman's rejection of the atomic bomb at that moment of extremity - America facing the worst defeat in its history - was to establish a taboo against nuclear use that has lasted all these years. That the president who ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when it was militarily dubious to do so, was the one to reject the atomic bombing of enemy forces in Korea, when it seemed militarily essential to do so, made the point. Because Washington did not use atomic weapons when, with relatively little danger to itself, it could have, other nuclear powers joined in regarding the use of these weapons as beyond the pale. If Truman had chosen otherwise, whether "successfully" or not, there can be little doubt that nuclear weapons would have been used again, and probably again, until . . .

This unsung story of presidential restraint has profound relevance for the present crisis.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

Circle of Life

Hear my stories over the last weekend.

Saturday started with attending the wedding of one of my friends. Fooled by his luring persuasion, I truly expected to encounter unresistable bunch of hunks at the wedding. Puhhhzzz,, I've seen better. At the wedding, I called a friend who also was supposed to show but not; to everyone's surprise, she said her mom is critically ill with leukemia and she is with her at an emergency room. So, soon after the wedding, I went to see her at her apartment. She seemed calm and in control; so I relieved.

Then, on Sunday morning, I got a call from THE friend saying her mom passed away; I felt blown up by a storm; but amazingly her voice was still so serene, so I also calmed down. Passing on my condolesence, I said how sorry I am as well as how sudden it was to face her mom's death; she certainly didn't expect a day before when I talked to her in front of her apartment.

Learning the saddened news, I thought it's better to share it with other friends, just to split some burden on my friend. Then, one of our mutual friend called. He said he unlikely attends her mom's funeral since his wife is in labor.

Within a span of 48 hours, I realized once again; the circle of life. People breed, die, and are born again. We are born capable of finding joys in the saddest events and passing on our genes to survive; we've been doing it for tens of thousands of years; why shouldn't we do now?

I, once again, give my great condolecense to my friend's loss.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the sun
There's more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round

It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life

It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life

Paying Tribute to Korea's Democracy

Joined the endless queue of people awaited for paying tribute to now the deceased former president of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun. After standing on the pedestrian road approximately three hours, finally the temporarily set altar appeared through the crowd. Strange mixture of emotions whipped around the people; overwhelming grief was interrupted by an occasional complaints towards surrounding riot police forces, and so did the tension rise. Strange enough, there were also a drop of festive mood; street musicians playing instruments of which sound deeply surmerged into saddened hearts of thousands of the crowd, tired from the hours of standing in a hot Indian summer night, fighting mosquitoes. Volunteers were busy cleaning up the area, maintaining an order, and delivering a cup of cold water, Kimbap and chrysanthemuns to the crowd. As the darkness came, people gradually lit up candles. The scene was peaceful and even beautiful to observe. Still though, on the way home, complaints politically charged and directly aiming at the crowd pierced through the air. Tension existed so did chances to communicate.


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May 26, 2009
South Korea’s President Faces Dual Crises
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea faced double crises on Monday as a North Korean nuclear test caught his government off-guard and he struggled to soothe political rancor over the suicide of his predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun.

In one of the biggest outpourings of national grief in years, the central and provincial governments and religious and civic groups opened 300 mourning centers across the country on Monday. Long lines of Cabinet ministers and ordinary citizens streamed into the centers to pay respects to Mr. Roh. About 180,000 mourners have journeyed to Mr. Roh’s rural home village of Bongha on the south coast alone.

The country’s major Web sites have posted a black-and-white photo of Mr. Roh and created special sections to permit hundreds of thousands of citizens to post their condolences.

The former president jumped off a cliff on Saturday as prosecutors investigated allegations that he and his family took $6.4 million from a businessman.

Many South Koreans said they believe that Mr. Roh, whether guilty or not, was driven to end his life because of relentless pressure from a politically motivated investigation orchestrated by the government of President Lee.

“He is the victim of the vicious circle of an incumbent president strengthening his political hand by relentlessly shaming and trampling on his predecessor in our country,” Yang Chun-shik, a 35-year-old office worker, said Monday, reflecting a common view shared by mourners interviewed Sunday and Monday.

Mr. Lee must decide whether to accept the Roh family’s wish to hold his funeral on Friday in central Seoul. That would certainly draw a huge crowd and could turn into an anti-government protest similar to demonstrations that crippled Mr. Lee’s government for weeks last summer.

In a sign of simmering tension, Mr. Roh’s supporters continued to turn away ruling-party lawmakers who travelled to Bongha to pay tribute.

As he struggled over how to prevent Mr. Roh’s funeral from developing into another crisis, Mr. Lee also faced the news Monday that North Korea had conducted its second nuclear test.

Earlier Monday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had expressed “profound condolences” to Mr. Roh’s widow, Kwon Yang-sook, but gave the Seoul government no hint of the nuclear test.

Mr. Roh, who sought reconciliation with North Korea while in office from 2003 to 2008, traveled to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in 2007 for a landmark summit with Mr. Kim. But inter-Korean ties chilled dramatically after Mr. Lee took office in February 2008, promising a tougher policy on the North.

Recriminations and Regrets Follow Suicide of South Korean President Roh

May 25, 2009
By MARTIN FACKLER
SEOUL, South Korea — As South Koreans laid white chrysanthemums at makeshift memorials for their former president, Roh Moo-hyun, many said Sunday that the once-popular champion of clean government had been driven to suicide by more than humiliating bribery allegations.

They directed much of their ire at the prosecutors and conservative media who relentlessly pursued the accusations of corruption against Mr. Roh and his family. Many accused the current president, Lee Myung-bak, of orchestrating the investigation, a move that could become a political liability for him.

Others expressed deeper misgivings that Mr. Roh was a victim of the legacies of South Korea’s authoritarian past — most notably the near ritual of incumbent presidents presiding over investigations of their predecessors.

“It has become a bad political habit for presidents in South Korea to try to gain support by punishing the former president,” said Kang Won-taek, a politics professor at Seoul’s Soongsil University. “What happened to Roh Moo-hyun shows that it is time to break this habit.”

The tendency to define a presidency by the failings of the one that came before took root as the country struggled to redefine itself in the early 1990s as a young democracy after years of dictatorships. Many Koreans were exhilarated as the first democratically elected governments punished the men who had resisted democracy for so long.

The sight of former President Chun Doo-hwan — a military ruler blamed for a crackdown of pre-democracy protesters that ended in 200 deaths — being paraded in a prison jumpsuit proved cathartic for the nation.

But political experts, and even many average Koreans, say that their nation’s struggle to shed its authoritarian past was never finished, and that investigation of Mr. Roh highlighted at least two other legacies: a powerful presidency and a justice system with few checks and balances, especially on its prosecutors.

At least so far, the subject of Mr. Roh’s culpability has been put aside, overwhelmed by the shock and sadness over his dramatic death on Saturday, when he threw himself off a cliff. In the weeks before that, he acknowledged that a businessman who supported him had given more than $6 million to his wife and son and his brother’s son-in-law while he was in office, but he denied that they were bribes. He said he did not know about the transactions until he left office.

The money for his wife had been used to pay for his son’s tuition at Stanford University, among other things, according to a top aide. In a country where education is key to social status, Mr. Roh, a self-educated lawyer, never won full respect from many people, despite having become a lawyer and the leader of a powerful economy.

Much of the outpouring of public anger since Mr. Roh’s death has focused on the murky ties between the Blue House, as the president’s office is called, and the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, which led the investigation into Mr. Roh and other former presidents. These suspicions are also a hangover from the pre-democracy days, when prosecutors were seen as military henchmen, using the legal system to attack their political opponents.

“The prosecutors have become the most omnipotent force in Korean society today,” said Moon Chung-in, a political scientist at Yonsei University in Seoul and former adviser to Mr. Roh. “Their strength is a legacy of dictatorship that still affects us.”

Mr. Moon said that Mr. Roh actually ended up strengthening the power of prosecutors by weakening one check on their power: the National Intelligence Service, the South Korean spy service used by military rulers against South Korea’s citizens. Mr. Roh appointed a former human rights lawyer as its director and curtailed many of its internal surveillance activities.

Mr. Roh also tried to rein in the prosecutors, but with less success. Though he weakened links between prosecutors and the Blue House, he failed to pass some of their powers to the police or create grand juries to oversee investigations.

In 2003, his first year in office, Mr. Roh also held a widely watched public debate with 10 prosecutors in which he called the prosecutors office a “powerful organization” that the Justice Ministry had “failed to rein in.”

Mr. Roh also came to office with promises to break the cycle of corruption that has plagued South Korean presidents, and made them vulnerable to investigation. He also vowed to curtail the powers of South Korea’s presidency and sever its links with the country’s “chaebol,” or big-business conglomerates.

Mr. Roh’s death unleashed a renewed wave of sympathy for a former president who had alienated many supporters by signing a free-trade agreement with the United States and seeming to bungle economic policy.

Many of the thousands who turned out at makeshift altars in front of an ancient palace in central Seoul seemed to feel that Mr. Roh had paid too high a price for a relatively petty infraction.

Many noted that Mr. Chun and his successor as president, Roh Tae-woo, were found guilty of accepting hundreds of millions of dollars of bribes while in office. Sons of the first two civilian presidents of the era, Kim Young-san and Kim Dae-jung, were also imprisoned for pocketing millions of dollars from large companies.

The mourners lashed out at the prosecutors and the conservative media who had relentlessly pursued accusations of corruption for the past year, after Mr. Roh had left office. Most also accused the sitting president, Mr. Lee, of guiding or at least encouraging the investigations. In Mr. Roh’s native village, Bongha, his supporters trampled a funeral wreath sent by the president.

“President Roh was not just another corrupt president. He was different,” said Lee Dong-joon, 31, an insurance planner. “But Lee Myung-bak is acting the same as the dictators. Our democracy has been set back 30 years.”

The former president, who had prided himself on being above South Korea’s corruption, could no longer eat or focus on his favorite pastime of late-night reading, said aides. In his suicide note, Mr. Roh apologized for disappointing supporters.

Political scientists said the suicide could cause a backlash against President Lee or even the prosecutors. Mr. Moon, the former Roh adviser, said the National Assembly might formally investigate the prosecutors, and the apparent press leaks of questionable allegations, which increased the pressure on Mr. Roh.

“Let’s see if this breaks the cycle of political vendettas” against former presidents, Mr. Moon said. “But we won’t know for sure if the vendettas are over until 2012, when Lee Myung-bak steps down.” Some supporters who gathered in Seoul said they thought the opposite would happen: that Mr. Roh’s suicide almost guaranteed that the current president would also face similar attacks once he leaves office.

South Korea on Edge After Ex-President's Suicide

Woken up in a Saturday morning by a shocking news of a former leader's death, people in this country still find difficult to realize he is truly gone. We are still in awe and speechless for the great loss we have. The whole country is turned into an enormous mourning place, where no one is able to find words to describe the deepest sorrow of loosing a leader who they elected with their own hands and also now about to bury. State of awe continues, Korea is submerged with the silence.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 25, 2009

By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL — Thousands of South Koreans — some holding the hands of children, some shouting anti-government slogans, all carrying white chrysanthemums — flocked to central Seoul on Sunday to bid farewell to former President Roh Moo-hyun, who committed suicide Saturday.

In a country where even the most prominent political leaders have faced corruption charges in recent decades, Mr. Roh, 62, was the first to end his own life while under investigation. For both his supporters and detractors, his suicide served as a painful reminder of how difficult it remained to break the chain of graft in South Korean society.

“We are sorry we failed to protect you,” read many of the numerous yellow ribbons near the ancient Deoksu Palace in Seoul, hung by people who believed Mr. Roh was the victim of political vendetta from his successor, President Lee Myung-bak. “We will remember you forever. History will know that you were the cleanest president we ever had,” others said.

Before dawn Saturday, Mr. Roh switched on his computer and typed a suicide note — his last comment on a corruption scandal that threatened to undo his proudest legacy: his record as an upstanding political leader.

“Don’t be too sad,” Mr. Roh said in the note, meant for his wife and two children. “Life and death are all parts of nature. Don’t be sorry. Don’t blame anyone. Accept it as fate.”

An hour and a half later, as the sun rose through a cloudy sky, Mr. Roh climbed a hill overlooking his native village of Bongha, on the south coast, and jumped off a cliff.

On Sunday, South Koreans across the country lined up — for hours under drizzling rain in some places — to pay respect at temporary mourning altars set up in the retirement village of Bongha.

Central Seoul was thick with police officers in full riot gear, a sign that Mr. Roh, even after death, remained a volatile figure.

On Sunday, the government and Mr. Roh’s family agreed to hold a state “people’s funeral” Friday.

But tension also simmered as Mr. Roh’s suicide threatened to deepen a political divide. His supporters trampled on a funeral wreath donated by his successor, President Lee Myung-bak, and turned away his deputy, Prime Minister Han Seung-soo, who came to pay tribute at Bongha.

Past midnight Sunday, young people holding candles still stood in lines hundreds of meters long and snaking around the Deoksu Palace. People signed a petition calling on Parliament to impeach Mr. Lee for “murder.” Police buses surrounding the mourning site were plastered with paper messages denouncing Mr. Lee and prosecutors.

In his last months, Mr. Roh, who was president from 2003 to 2008, had seen his personal achievements clouded by accusations of corruption and many of his political accomplishments undone.

The corruption charges faced by Mr. Roh’s family were minor compared with those that had discredited some of his predecessors, who had collected massive sums from the nation’s top conglomerates. But prosecutors, long accused of taking orders from whomever is in power, aggressively went after Mr. Roh, leaking details of their investigation to the media. Mr. Roh killed himself a day before his wife, Kwon Yang-sook, was expected to be summoned for questioning for a second time.

“He was driven to kill himself for taking some money from a long-time supporter, while those who robbed big businesses of truckloads of cash are still alive without shame,” said Choi Chul-kyu, a 48-year-old mourner holding a candle, referring to former conservative political leaders convicted of bribery. “How am I going to explain this to my children? How am I going to explain the fact that every president in this country has wanted to squash his predecessor?”

But those who were close to Mr. Roh said the charges were especially painful because he had made his name as a “clean” politician, refusing to follow in the path of his predecessors; every former South Korean president since the 1980s has faced corruption accusations or gone to prison on such charges after his term was over.

In recent weeks, Mr. Roh acknowledged that a little-known businessman who supported him had given more than $6 million to his wife and son and his brother’s son-in-law while he was in office, but he denied the payments were bribes. He said that he did not know about the transactions until he left office and that the money for his wife went to pay a debt.

While in office, Mr. Roh survived an impeachment and even confessed to being “sick and tired of being president.” But masked by such frankness and feistiness was a sensitive leader who took criticism personally, engaged in a vicious, prolonged battle with the nation’s conservative media, and appeared to consider real-life politics, which haunted him even in retirement, too messy for his character and too much to take.

“There was not a single quiet day while he was in office,” said Choi Jin, head of the Institute of Presidential Leadership. “Throughout his life, he always made extreme choices, playing an all-or-nothing game. His suicide was the last explosion in his fiery and volcanic career.”



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Google Korea Head Blasts Real-Name Requirement

Korea's Communication Privacy Law, is it beneficiary for whom?

By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

The head of Google's South Korean operations blasted the government's recent attempt to limit anonymity on the Web.

``Our business is based on thinking from the user's point of view, and we believe that the real-name requirements do not benefit users in any way and do not contribute to creating a vibrant Internet culture,'' said Lee Won-jin, the managing director of Google Korea in Seoul Wednesday.

``In any country, Google intends to respect the local law and do business within its boundaries. However, since the Internet renders geography irrelevant, it is sometimes difficult to define how far the law of a certain country should extend.

``For services that are not customized or launched particularly for Korean users, we believe it would be better to make our judgments based on moral principles, rather than local law.''

The country has obliged Internet users to make verifiable real-name registrations to post comments on Web sites with more than 100,000 daily visitors since April.

Google, which is reluctant to bend its principles only for Korea and set a precedent that might affect its business in other countries, chose to avoid the requirements by disabling users from uploading videos and comments on the Korean language site of YouTube (kr.youtube.com), its online video service.

However, since the changes are only applied to YouTube's Korean sites, users could easily upload content by setting their country preference to other countries.

This has clearly miffed the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, with KCC chairman Choi See-joong threatening a review of whether Google is violating the local law with its YouTube decision.

Choi's stance, apparently affected by the sentiment within Cheong Wa Dae and the ruling Grand National Party (GNP), differed from the initial response by lower-ranked KCC officials, who had been saying YouTube's Korean site wouldn't be subject to the real-name requirements if content uploading is blocked.

Lee, who said the company is talking with KCC officials, stressed that Google's decision to limit YouTube's Korean site represents its commitment to abide by local laws. Google had no discussions with KCC officials before making the YouTube decision, because ``we didn't think there was any need to do so,'' Lee said.

``YouTube is subject to Korean law, because we have launched a localized service,'' Lee said.

``I can't talk about what will happen with our future services, but if we are pressed to make another decision about real-name registration, I believe we will have no other option but to repeat what we did with YouTube.''

The Lee Myung-bak government has been looking at more ways to monitor the Internet, after being repeatedly attacked by bloggers, first for its controversial decision to resume U.S. beef imports and more recently for its supposed ineptitude in economic policies.

The latest attempt comes from the efforts by GNP lawmakers to rewrite the communication privacy law and allow authorities further power to observe and track Web browsing habits.

According to the bill, law enforcement authorities get expended surveillance power beyond fixed-line telephone calls and are enabled to intercept mobile phone and Internet communications, which include e-mail, chats and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) calls.

Lee revealed that the company received about 10 requests from Korean investigators last year to hand over the e-mail records of some Korean users of Gmail, Google's e-mail services.

However, Google refused to oblige, arguing that Gmail services are based on servers in the U.S. Despite the possible legal changes here, Lee said Gmail wouldn't become anymore vulnerable to surveillance.

``Gmail is not a service developed for Korean users, and a localized version wasn't launched either,'' Lee said.

``As in any country, we will decide our level of cooperation with local investigators following our judgment of the matter at hand, and considering both the Korean law and our principles.''

Google Korea doesn't operate any servers here for its local services, according to company officials, as even the server for its Korean digital map services is operated by a partner company.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr

Reverend Gustav Schultz Scholarship by UB Berkeley Korean Alumnae

UC Berkeley's Korean alumnae established a scholarship fund to pay a tribute to the deceased Reverend Gustav Schultz who served the University Lutheran Chapel congregation from 1969 to 1999. The Reverend Schultz led campaigns appealing international alliance concerning Korea's democritization in 1980s.

<버클리대 한인동문 美목사 추모 장학기금 설립>

(샌프란시스코=연합뉴스) 김성용 특파원 = 미국 서부의 명문 버클리 캘리포니아대(UC) 한국계 동문들과 재학생들이 1980년대 한국 민주화 운동 및 평화적 통일 운동에 기여해 온 것으로 알려진 미국인 목사 고(故) 구스타프 슐츠를 기리기 위한 기금을 설립했다.

9일 버클리대 홈페이지에 따르면 한국계 동문과 재학생들은 지난해 12월 `슐츠 목사 기념 장학기금'을 설립하기로 버클리대 측과 약정을 맺었으며 이르면 올해부터 국제 평화 활동에 공헌한 버클리대 학생에게 국적을 불문하고 장학금을 주기로 했다.

캘리포니아주 버클리에 위치한 `유니버시티 루터파 교회' 등에서 재직해 오다 2년 전 숨진 슐츠 목사는 1980년대 한국의 민주화 운동에 대한 국제적 지원을 호소하는 캠페인을 벌이고 김대중 전대통령에 대한 구명 운동에 참여해 주목받았다.

그는 한국 민주화 운동을 지원해 온 공로를 인정받아 1988년 김 전대통령 취임식에 직접 초청돼 참석했고 남북한 관계자들을 미국으로 함께 초청, 평화적 통일을 주제로 한 포럼을 주최하는 등 한반도 평화에 많은 관심을 기울였다.

슐츠 목사는 한반도 문제 뿐 아니라 남미 등지의 민주화 운동과 빈민 퇴치 운동에 기여한 공로로 버클리 평화상을 받기도 했다.

ksy@yna.co.kr

A new non-standing commissioner of the TRC, appointed by the current ROK president.

Below is the interview of Kyu-hyung KANG, a new non-standing commissioner of the ROK's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, opposing the abolition of death penalty with such absurd backing reasonings. Following the forcible downsize of the nation's human rights commission, the change of high positions in other human rights related governmental organizations implicates many.

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장면 1. 1961년 12월 예루살렘의 법정에서 열린 세기의 재판. ‘국가에 의한 살인’이라는 이유로 사형이 금지된 이스라엘에서 비밀경찰 모사드가 납치한 유대인 학살범 카를 아돌프 아이히만에게 사형이 선고됐다. 죄목은 반인륜범죄. 다음 해 교수형이 집행됐다.

장면 2. 1988년 미국 대통령 선거의 첫 TV토론. 유명 앵커 버나드 쇼는 사형 제도를 반대하는 민주당 대통령 후보 마이클 듀카키스 매사추세츠 주지사에게 도발적인 질문을 던졌다. “당신의 부인이 강간당하고 살해돼도 그 범인에 대한 사형을 반대하시렵니까?” 당황한 듀카키스는 답변을 제대로 못했다.

장면 3. 역시 1988년 선거전. 인기도에서 뒤지던 공화당 대통령 후보 조지 부시 측은 매사추세츠 주의 무기수인 흉악범 윌리 호턴이 인도적 취지에서 휴가를 나온 사이 몇 차례의 강간, 무장 강도를 저지른 사실을 간파하고 ‘민주당 대통령 후보 듀카키스, 부통령 후보 호턴’이라는 선거 구호를 만들어 사용했다. 듀카키스는 이러한 휴가 제도의 지지자였다. 이 선거전에서 부시는 무난한 승리를 거뒀는데 그 이유 중 하나가 ‘범죄에 온정적인 듀카키스’라는 이미지였다.

재작년 정기국회 때 국회의원 상당수가 사형제 폐지안을 발의했고 국가인권위원회도 폐지 쪽으로 의견을 모아 가고 있다. 여기에 대해 법무부는 작년 중순 사형제 폐지안을 반박하는 검토 보고서를 제출했다. 그러나 21일 법무부는 돌연 사형제 폐지를 긍정적으로 검토하겠다고 밝히면서 국회에 계류 중인 사형폐지법안 심의를 지원해 나갈 방침이라 한다. 하지만 이 사안은 이렇게 쉽게 결정될 수 있는 문제가 아니다. 사형제를 반대하는 논리는 크게 네 가지로 집약되며 필자는 여기에 대해 상식적인 의문을 제기하려 한다.

첫째, ‘인도주의’적 측면. 사형은 잔인한 형벌이지만 사형수들이 범한 행위에 비해 결코 잔인한 것이 아니다. 인류는 예로부터 잘못된 행동에 대해 응분의 책임을 질 것을 요구해 왔다. 이러한 요구가 무시될 때 과연 사람들은 ‘정의로운 사회’에서 살고 있다는 생각이 들 것인가. 이 경우도 어린이 성추행범의 인권을 옹호하는 사이 죽어 간 11세 허모 양 사건 같은 우를 범하고 있지는 않은지.

둘째, 사형제는 범죄 억제 효과가 없다. 죽음은 인간에게 가장 큰 공포 중 하나다. 범죄의 대가에서 죽음이 제외될 때 범죄 억지력은 약화될 수밖에 없다. 위에 언급한 호턴의 경우를 보자. 어차피 종신형을 살고 있고 사형선고가 불가능한 당시의 상황에서 그가 추가 범죄를 저지르는 것은 어쩌면 합리적인 선택일 수 있다. 또한 이 논리는 ‘교도소가 범죄의 온상 역할을 하고 교정 효과가 분명하지 않으므로 교도소를 없애자’고 주장하는 것과 다를 바가 없다.

셋째, 오심의 경우 돌이킬 방법이 없다. 인간의 판단이 완벽할 수 없고 재판관도 인간이기에 오심의 여지는 있다. 그렇다고 사형제를 없애는 것은 마치 잘못된 자동차 운전으로 매년 수많은 사람이 죽거나 다치기에 자동차 운행을 금지시키자는 얘기와 비슷하다. 법무부 보고서도 지적하듯이 현행 재판 제도하에서 사형수에 대한 오심 가능성은 거의 없다.





넷째, 정치적 목적으로 악용될 수 있다. 물론 과거 사형제도가 악용된 경우도 드물게나마 있었다. 그러나 이제 우리는 민주사회에 살고 있다. 정치적 이유의 사형선고 사례가 1980년 이후 없다는 것을 감안하면 이 주장 역시 설득력이 떨어진다.

현재 국민의 압도적 다수가 사형제 폐지를 반대하고 있다. 더 중요한 것은 사형제 폐지의 논리가 상식적인 수준에서 많은 사람들이 공감할 만한 타당성을 결여하고 있다는 것이다. 법무부가 올해 돌연 태도를 바꾼 연유도 수긍이 안 간다.

이에 필자는 두 가지 질문을 던지려 한다. 흉악범에 의해 아무 이유 없이 잔인하게 살해된 사람의 가족에게 “그 죄수가 처형돼서는 안 된다”라고 자신 있게 얘기할 수 있는가. 그리고 사형제도를 금지하는 이스라엘인들이 그들의 동포를 무참히 학살하는 데 일조했던 아이히만을 특별법을 통해 사형을 집행한 것이 잘못된 행동이라고 비난할 수 있는가. 만약 이 질문들에 대해 머뭇거릴 수밖에 없다면 이 문제는 좀 더 신중하게 생각해 봐야 할 것이다.

강규형 명지대 교수·현대사

Urgent Statement by the Human Rights Commission, ROK

ROK's Human Rights Commission has beeing facing the forced restructuring process by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, and released a public statement opposing it.

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행정안전부의 조직축소 강행 방침에 대한 국가인권위원회의 긴급 의견표명



- 09.3.23. 긴급 전원위원회 개최 결과 요약 -

- 국무총리와 행정안전부장관은 일방적인 국가인권위원회 조직축소 방침을 즉시 철회해야 한다.
- 국가인권위원회 조직개편의 시기, 절차, 범위는 인권위의 자율적 판단에 기초하여 독립성이 훼손되지 않도록 결정되어야 한다.
- 국가인권위원회는 행정안전부의 일방처리 방침에 반대하며, 현재 진행되고 있는 직제령 개정절차는 유보되어야 한다.
- 합리적인 사태해결을 위해 국가인권위원장과 국무총리 및 행정안전부장관의 긴급 면담이 이루어져야 한다.


국가인권위원회(위원장 안경환)는 국무총리와 행정안전부장관에게 국가인권위 조직축소 방침 철회를 강력히 요청하며, 합리적인 사태 해결을 위해 행정안전부가 신속히 직제령 개정절차를 유보할 것을 요청한다.

행정안전부는 지난해 12월 이래 국가인권위원회 조직 축소를 일방적으로 추진하고 있다. 이는 행정부가 독립기구인 국가인권위원회 조직의 근간을 뒤흔드는 행위로, 유엔의 파리원칙 등 국제인권규약과 국가인권위원회법에 명시된 ‘독립성’의 심각한 훼손이다. 행정안전부는 국가인권위원회법 제18조를 근거로 국가인권위원회 직제를 조정할 법적 권한을 갖고 있다고 주장한다. 그러나 그런 주장은 직제변경 권한 행사를 통해 국가인권위원회의 실질적 독립성을 침해하겠다는 것에 다름 아니다.

국가인권위원회의 독립성은 2001년 출범 당시부터 중요한 사안이었다. 국가인권위원회는 여야를 초월한 정당 및 시민사회의 총의에 따라 행정부가 임의로 관여할 수 없는 독립기관으로 탄생했다. 독립성은 지난 8년간 국가인권위원회가 본연의 기능을 차질 없이 수행할 수 있었던 원동력이었다. 공권력에 의한 인권침해가 전체 진정사건의 80% 이상을 차지하는 나라에서, 정부로부터의 정치적 독립은 국가인권위원회의 존립을 위한 필수적 조건일 수밖에 없었다.

국가인권위원회는 그동안 입법․행정․사법 등 3부 어디에도 속하지 않는 독립기구임에도, 범정부적 국가 시책에 동참할 뜻을 지속적으로 밝혀왔다. 국가인권위원회는 감사원의 조직체계 재정비 권고를 대승적으로 수용했고, 외부 전문기관에 의뢰해 국가인권위 조직과 인력 실태를 점검했으며, 행정안전부가 요구한 대국대과제 개편안에 대해서도 독립성이 침해되지 않는 범위에서 이행할 의지가 있음을 밝혀왔다.

그럼에도 행정안전부는 자체 조직진단 결과를 갖고 있다는 말만 되풀이할 뿐 어떠한 분석자료도 공개하지 않고 있다. 이는 책임있는 정부기관의 태도라 볼 수 없다. 행정안전부는 조속히 조직진단 결과를 제시하고 국가인권위원회와 함께 타당성 검증을 거쳐야 할 것이다.

행정안전부가 제시한 개편안은 국제적으로 공인된 국가인권기구의 3대 기능(조사, 정책, 교육홍보)을 무시하고 있다. 1개 본부에서 각각 수행하던 정책과 교육업무를 각 1개과 수준으로 축소해 업무 공백이 예견된다. 정책 업무가 마비된다면 국가인권정책 전반을 감시하고 견제하는 기능이 중단된다. 인권교육이 축소되면 사회 전체적으로 인권의식 향상을 도모할 수 있는 통로가 막힌다.

국가인권위원회 조직축소는 한국이 국제인권 분야에서 공들여 쌓아올린 성과를 일거에 허무는 것이다. 한국은 유엔사무총장을 배출하고, 유엔인권이사회 이사국에 재선된 나라다. 한국 국가인권위원회는 현재 ICC(국가인권기구 국제조정위원회) 부의장국이자 내년 초 의장국 합의추대가 유력한 국제사회의 역할 모델이다. 유엔 인권최고대표가 1년 사이 두 번이나 국가인권위원회 독립성 훼손을 우려해 긴급 서한을 발송한 까닭이 여기 있다. 국정과제로 인권외교 강화를 내걸고 국가브랜드위원회까지 만들어 국가의 품위를 높이고자 한다면, 국가인권위원회 조직축소는 마땅히 철회되어야 한다.

국가인권위원회는 그간 대화와 설득을 통해 조직개편 논쟁을 마무리하기 위해 노력해왔다. 국가인권위원회는 행정안전부가 그동안 각계의 의견 등을 반영해 노력을 기울여온 것에 대해 나름의 의미를 부여한다. 하지만 여전히 국가인권기구의 독립성에 대한 이해가 부족하다는 것이 우리의 판단이다. 실례로 지역사무소를 1년간 존치한 뒤 조직진단을 통해 존폐 여부를 다시 결정하겠다는 행정안전부의 방침은 지역사무소의 필요성 및 지역사회의 인권상황과 배치되는 주장이다.

행정안전부가 국가인권위원회에 조직개편 강행 처리를 통보한 지금의 상황을 우리는 매우 중대한 사태로 규정한다. 국가인권위원회의 독립성이 훼손될 경우, 대한민국의 국제적 위상에 심각한 타격이 불가피하다고 보기 때문이다. 국가인권위원장이 ICC 총회 참석까지 취소하며 긴급 전원위원회를 소집한 이유이기도 하다.

국가인권기구의 생명이라 할 독립성이 위기를 맞은 시점에서, 국가인권위원회는 국무총리와 행정안전부장관에게 요청한다. 국가인권위원회 인권위원들은 학계, 법조계, 시민사회 등 각자 다른 영역에서 활동해 왔으나 국가인권위원회의 독립성 침해에 대해서는 한 목소리로 우려를 표한다. 인권위원들은 국회, 대통령, 대법원장 등의 선출과 지명을 거쳐 임명됐다는 점에서, 오늘 전원위원회의 의견은 3부의 의견을 고루 반영한 독립적이고 중립적인 결정이다. 모쪼록 오늘 국가인권위원회의 결정이 인권위 조직축소라는 중차대한 문제를 풀어가는 잣대가 되기를 바란다. 아울러 이번 사태가 국가인권위원회의 독립적 위상을 다시금 명확히 확인하는 계기가 되기를 기대한다.

국가인권위원회는 독립기구의 위상이 훼손되고 있는 현 상황을 매우 유감스럽게 여기며, 향후 국가인권위원회 조직개편은 독립성이 훼손되지 않는 절차와 과정의 범위에서 추진돼야 한다는 점을 거듭 천명한다. 국가인권위원회의 독립성 침해라는 비상한 사태를 바라보는 국제사회의 우려가 더 이상 나오지 않도록 정부의 책임있는 대처를 주문한다. 또한 합리적인 사태해결을 위해 국가인권위원장과 국무총리 및 행정안전부 장관의 긴급 면담이 이루어져야 한다.
2009년 3월 23일
국가인권위원회

Don't Move On Yet

World Beat
by JOHN FEFFER | Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Let’s say that President Barack Obama appointed me as his Karl Rove. My advice: Don’t move on. The best way to tie the opposition on the right into a pretzel is to go after the Bush administration for all of its high crimes and misdemeanors. The radical right will fall back to defend its conduct for the last eight years. It will have less time and energy to battle the current agenda. The administration should embrace Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) Truth Commission, prosecute the Justice Department lawyers for their torture memos, rake the top Pentagon officials over the coals for war crimes in Iraq, and uncover as much dirt as possible on how the Bush administration subverted the constitution, undermined international law, and hijacked America.

Here’s the catch. Obama doesn’t want his own private Karl Rove. Rahm Emanuel may well be foul-mouthed, rude, and not above sending dead fish to his opponents, but he plays by the rules and works both sides of the aisle. He is Mr. Art of the Possible, just like Obama himself. The new president actually believes in bipartisanship — as opposed to simply mouthing the usual clichés about making nice. For Obama, bipartisanship is not just about trying to win votes from Republicans reluctant to provide them or offering cabinet posts to leading conservatives who say yes and then no. It’s about bridging the larger cultural divide in the country.

Obama is no patsy. He has practical reasons for his desire to move on. First of all, he’s sending more U.S. troops in Afghanistan — a poorly thought-out plan, argue Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributors Farrah Hassen and Phyllis Bennis — and any discussion of U.S. war crimes would complicate his mission. Moreover, any investigation of U.S. conduct in Iraq would run up against the uncomfortable truth that a large number of folks in Obama’s party favored the invasion. A Predator strike on the Republican opposition, in other words, would cause collateral damage on the Democrats.

This collective responsibility relates to the second problem: The legal case for war crimes isn’t a slam dunk. Unlike the Nuremberg trials against the Nazis, lawyers can’t make the argument that the government that authorized the invasion of Iraq was an illegitimate one. “The legislature and the courts continued to function according to the constitution, even though the president tried to shield his actions and those of his administration from review,” writes Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Robert Pallitto in Prosecuting the Bush Team? “In several instances — authorizing military action against Iraq, detainee treatment, denial of court review to detainees, immunity for warrantless wiretapping — Congress approved presidential actions, thus making it harder to argue that the government wasn't operating according to valid law.”

Obama might also worry that an in-depth investigation of the Bush team would catalyze rather than confound the opposition. In the 1970s, after the Watergate inquiries and the Church commission investigations into the misdeeds of U.S. foreign policy, the precursors to the neoconservatives launched the Committee on the Present Danger. It mobilized discontent with the perceived America-bashing of the Democrats and produced the long Dark Ages of the 1980s presided over by Ronald Reagan. Handing over Donald Rumsfeld to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, however satisfying, would in fact hand over to the opposition a major tool for mobilizing the Foxified and Rushized masses.

But here’s the larger and ultimately more disturbing reason why Obama wants to put the past behind us. Peace and justice so frequently go hand-in-hand in progressive rhetoric. Alas, peace and justice often find themselves in grave tension. Demands for justice often get short shrift to secure the peace. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission solicited testimony from perpetrators by providing them with amnesty beforehand. In Rwanda, mass murderers received relatively light sentences to put the past behind and promote reconciliation. Anyone working on human rights issues confronts this tension between peace and justice every day. In the most recent example, Hillary Clinton in Beijing promoted better relations between two potential Cold War rivals (a good thing) but also slighted human rights concerns (a bad thing).

The red-blue divide in the United States isn’t exactly apartheid or Hutu vs. Tutsi. Still, the last several elections revealed the immense gap between north and south, relatively educated and relatively undereducated, and white and non-white. A deepening economic crisis only widens that gap. To push through an ambitious, very expensive domestic program and forestall dangerous right-wing populism, Obama aims to promote peace across warring factions. His conciliatory temperament, in this case, intersects with his tactical game plan. Something, however, has to give. And that will be justice.

But if Obama lets everyone off the hook — the Bush team, the top military brass, Wall Street billionaires — the public will treat his calls for change with pained indifference. Leahy offers a middle course with his Truth Commission: “Rather than vengeance, we need an impartial pursuit of what actually happened and a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past,” he has written. Even if Obama’s domestic revolution doesn’t come with a proper Bastille — a powerful, symbolic renunciation of the past — then let’s at least lay bare the perversions of power. Of course we must all look forward, as the president argues. But as any psychologist will tell you, there’s no true moving on without a serious coming to terms with the past. What applies to patients traumatized by their childhoods applies double strength to countries traumatized by their presidents.

War Crimes Elsewhere

Obama isn’t only forgiving when it comes to U.S. war crimes. He’s willing to look the other way at those of allied countries.

Amnesty International has called for an arms embargo against both Israel and Hamas in the aftermath of the war in Gaza. The Obama administration shows no signs of honoring that call. “The most Obama might do to express his displeasure toward controversial Israeli policies like the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied territories would be to reject a planned increase in military aid for the next fiscal year and slightly reduce economic aid and/or loan guarantees,” writes FPIF senior analyst Stephen Zunes in Obama and Israel’s Military: Still Arm-in-Arm. “However, in a notable departure from previous administrations, Obama made no mention of any military aid to Israel in his outline of the FY 2010 budget, announced last week. This notable absence may indicate that pressure from human rights activists and others concerned about massive U.S. military aid to Israel is now strong enough that the White House feels a need to downplay the assistance rather than emphasize it.”

After 20 years of far-right-wing rule, El Salvador appears also to be on the verge of moving on. Later this week, Salvadorans go to the polls, and the frontrunner for the presidency is Mauricio Funes of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). If the left wins, Salvadorans might finally learn the truth of the U.S. role in the civil war of the 1980s. “Washington sent $6 billion in aid to a Salvadoran government whose army and paramilitary death squads were responsible for heinous crimes,” writes FPIF senior analyst Mark Engler in Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador? “Some 75,000 people were killed in the country's civil war during that decade. In 1993, a United Nations-backed Truth Commission determined that the government was responsible for 85% of human rights abuses and that the rebel forces were responsible for 5%, with the remaining 10% undetermined.”

Time for Action

Thousands of young activists descended on Washington at the end of February for the Power Shift conference. Also scheduled was the largest act of civil disobedience on the issue of climate change: a protest in front of the coal-fired power plant on Capitol Hill that provides energy for Congress and other buildings. FPIF contributor Andrée Zaleska was there: “There were about 2,500 of us there, despite freezing weather and heavy snow. It was well organized, with great posters and banners. And it was truly fun.” The crowd and the police were both civil, but there was no disobedience. Read her Postcard from…Capitol Climate Action to find out why.

Here’s a suggestion for the Obama administration: Instead of focusing specifically on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in the Six Party Talks, widen the discussion to address a regional nuclear-weapons-free zone. “Pyongyang might accelerate its own denuclearization if provided with assurances that neither Seoul nor Tokyo would embark on nuclear programs or host the nuclear weapons of other countries — with the proviso that North Korea must first return to the Nonproliferation Treaty,” writes Jon Reinsch in No Nukes in Northeast Asia. “Nothing gives insecure countries like North Korea a greater incentive to pursue nuclear weapons than fear of the nuclear arsenals, potential or actual, of their adversaries.”

Burma is a tough nut to crack. The Bush administration and its predecessors have tried a variety of sanctions. And the military junta has only dug in its heels. Kanbawza Win has a different proposal: Washington and Beijing should hammer out their own bipartisan consensus on Burma. “By teaming up with China, the United States can devise a policy that both respects the democratic opposition and also reaches out to the current Burmese government,” he writes in Dealing with Burma through China. “If the two great powers can resolve their differences over Burma policy, despite different political systems, then they can set an example for the undemocratic Burmese government and the democratic opposition to achieve a compromise that can bring Burma, finally, into the 21st century.”

Links

Chris Cillizza, "Ten Facts You Need to Know about Rahm Emanuel," The Washington Post, November 6, 2008; http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/11/top_10_facts_you_need_to_know.html

Ryan Lizza, “The Gatekeeper,” The New Yorker, March 2, 2009; http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/02/090302fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all


Matt Bai, “Yes, More Mr. Nice Guy,” The New York Times Magazine, March 8, 2009; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/magazine/08wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine


Farrah Hassen and Phyllis Bennis, “President Obama Has Things Backward in Afghanistan,” Monterey County Herald, via the Progressive Media Project (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5927); He's putting the escalation cart way out in front of the strategy horse.


Robert Pallitto, “Prosecuting the Bush Team?” Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5914); Bush’s legal advisors facilitated the administration’s use of torture. Should we drag them in front of the court?


Patrick Leahy, “The Case for a Truth Commission,” Time, February 19, 2009; http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1880662,00.html?iid=tsmodule


Stephen Zunes, “Obama and Israel’s Military: Still Arm-in-Arm,” Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5923); Despite some hopeful movement on Middle East issues, the new administration is still lavishing military aid on Israel and, by extension, the U.S. defense industry.


Mark Engler, “Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?” Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5915); The prospect of progressive leadership coming to power in El Salvador's March 15 presidential elections should prompt a new U.S. policy toward Central America.


Andrée Zaleska, “Postcard from…Capitol Climate Action,” Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5925); With the climate in the balance, it's time to step up the pressure on coal.


Jon Reinsch, “No Nukes in Northeast Asia,” Foreign Policy In Focus
(http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5926); One way to deal with North Korea's nuclear program is to go regional.


Kanbawza Win, “Dealing with Burma through China?” Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5921); Here's one way of breaking the impasse with Burma: Go through Beijing.

. . .
Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)
fpif.org: a think tank without walls

In Legal Memos, Clearer View of Power Bush Sought; Crafter thereof, JOHN C. YOO

The new Obama administration being shaped up while filling up the empty seats of each governmental organization, many speculations are circulating around within/outside the nation. Vocal ones raised the emphasis on defence alliances, widening FTAs throughout the globe as a mean to breakthrough the economic hardship, regardless of how effective and accurate analysis it was based on, multilateral cooperation concerning the energy and environment. Last but not the least is the issue with human rights. The chairmen of both House and Senate Judiciary Committee have vocalized on the necessity to establish a Truth Commission investigating any human rights violations during the Bush administration. So far Obama took a rather careful stance, trying not to give an impression it may be viewed as politicised issue. But a series of articles published both within/outside the US suggests the attempt is indeed gradually visualized as time goes by. Will this bring more collaborative allianceship between the US and the ROK in terms of human rights issues?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1GT-BZvhrw



March 3, 2009
In Legal Memos, Clearer View of Power Bush Sought
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON — The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants.

That opinion was among nine that were disclosed publicly for the first time Monday by the Justice Department, in what the Obama administration portrayed as a step toward greater transparency.

The opinions reflected a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.

Some of the positions had previously become known from statements of Bush administration officials in response to court challenges and Congressional inquiries. But taken together, the opinions disclosed Monday were the clearest illustration to date of the broad definition of presidential power approved by government lawyers in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

In a memorandum dated this Jan. 15, five days before President George W. Bush left office, a top Justice Department official wrote that those opinions had not been relied on since 2003. But the official, Steven G. Bradbury, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel, said it was important to acknowledge in writing “the doubtful nature of these propositions,” and he used the memo to repudiate them formally.

Mr. Bradbury said in his memo that the earlier ones had been a product of lawyers’ confronting “novel and complex questions in a time of great danger and under extraordinary time pressure.”

The opinion authorizing the military to operate domestically was dated Oct. 23, 2001, and written by John C. Yoo, at the time a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, and Robert J. Delahunty, a special counsel in the office. It was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked whether Mr. Bush could use the military to combat terrorist activities inside the United States.

The use of the military envisioned in the Yoo-Delahunty reply appears to transcend by far the stationing of troops to keep watch at streets and airports, a familiar sight in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. The memorandum discussed the use of military forces to carry out “raids on terrorist cells” and even seize property.

“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force.

The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty said that in addition, the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars the military from domestic law enforcement operations, would pose no obstacle to the use of troops in a domestic fight against terrorism suspects. They reasoned that the troops would be acting in a national security function, not as law enforcers.

In another of the opinions, Mr. Yoo argued in a memorandum dated Sept. 25, 2001, that judicial precedents approving deadly force in self-defense could be extended to allow for eavesdropping without warrants.

Still another memo, issued in March 2002, suggested that Congress lacked any power to limit a president’s authority to transfer detainees to other countries, a practice known as rendition that was widely used by Mr. Bush.

Other memorandums said Congress had no right to intervene in the president’s determination of the treatment of detainees, a proposition that has since been invalidated by the Supreme Court.

The Jan. 15 memo by Mr. Bradbury repudiating these views said that it was “not sustainable” to argue that the president’s power as commander in chief “precludes Congress from enacting any legislation concerning the detention, interrogation, prosecution and transfer of enemy combatants.”

Mr. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is widely known as the principal author of a 2002 memorandum, separate from those made public Monday, that critics have characterized as authorizing torture. That memorandum, signed by Jay S. Bybee, a predecessor of Mr. Bradbury as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, was repudiated in 2004.

The memorandum issued by Mr. Bradbury this January appears to have been the Bush lawyers’ last effort to reconcile their views with the wide rejection by legal scholars and some Supreme Court opinions of the sweeping assertions of presidential authority made earlier by the Justice Department.

Walter Dellinger, who led the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration and is now a law professor at Duke University, said in an interview that Mr. Bradbury’s memo “disclaiming the opinions of earlier Bush lawyers sets out in blunt detail how irresponsible those earlier opinions were.”

Mr. Dellinger said it was important that it was now widely recognized that the earlier assertions “that Congress had absolutely no role in these national security issues was contrary to constitutional text, historical practice and judicial precedent.”

In a speech a few hours before the documents were disclosed Monday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said: “Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties. Not only is that thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good.”

Mr. Holder said that the memorandums were being released in light of a substantial public interest in the issue.

_______________________________________________________________________________

John C. Yoo served for only two years in the Bush administration Justice Department and never rose higher than the rank of assistant attorney general in the legal counsel office. But his bold assertion of executive power and rejection of international law helped shaped some of the administration's most controversial policies, and are likely to have an impact in debates over crucial Constitutional questions for years to come.

When the Justice Department offices were being evacuated Mr. Yoo, then a 34-year-old former law professor whose academic work had focused on foreign affairs and war-powers issues, was asked to stay behind, and he quickly found himself in the department's command center, on the phone to lawyers at the White House.

Within weeks, Mr. Yoo had begun to establish himself as a critical player in the Bush administration's legal response to the terrorist threat, and an influential advocate for the expansive claims of presidential authority that have been a hallmark of that response.

Read More...

Mr. Yoo was a primary author of a series of legal opinions on the fight against terrorism, including one that said the Geneva Conventions did not apply and at least two others that countenanced the use of highly coercive interrogation techniques on terror suspects. He also wrote a still-secret 2002 memorandum that gave legal backing to the administration's secret program to eavesdrop on the international communications of Americans and others inside the United States without federal warrants.

After Mr. Yoo left government in 2003 to return to teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, an opinion he wrote on interrogations with the head of the legal counsel office, Jay S. Bybee, was publicly disavowed by the White House, a highly unusual step.

While his successors in the Justice Department may have had second thoughts, Mr. Yoo has not backed down. In a combative book, “War by Other Means,” Mr. Yoo was more candid than many of his colleagues about his fervent belief in unfettered executive power.

In the book, Mr. Yoo argued that the Constitution grants the president “the leading role in foreign affairs,” and that the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress a week after 9/11, gives the president broad powers to wage the war on terror the way he wants to. Indeed, Mr. Yoo says, “We wrote the law as broadly as we did” to “make sure there could be no claim in the future that the President was acting in the war on terrorism without congressional support.”

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Some US Lawmakers Call for 'Truth Commission' to Investigate Bush Policies

By Cindy Saine
Washington, VOA
25 February 2009

Senator Patrick Leahy
Influential Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy has proposed that an independent "truth commission" be established to investigate alleged abuses of power under the Bush administration. President Barack Obama has reacted cautiously to the suggestion, saying he is more interested in looking forward than backwards.

Several Democratic lawmakers have joined a number of human-rights organizations in calling for an investigation of the Bush administration's counter-terrorism policies. Controversial policies include certain interrogation techniques used at U.S. detention centers in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the warrant-less wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

Speaking at Georgetown University earlier this month, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said there was a "dangerous departure from the rule of law" during the Bush administration, and that Congress needs to make sure America gets back on the right track.

"One path to that goal would be a reconciliation process, a truth commission. We could develop and authorize a person, a group of people universally recognized as fair-minded, without any ax to grind [no personal or political interest]. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth. People would be told to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts, he said.

Leahy said he envisions the panel modeled after the truth commission in South Africa that investigated the apartheid era, and that immunity from prosecution could be offered to those who cooperate.

"Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened. And sometimes the best way to move forward, is to find out the truth, find out what happened, and we do that to make sure it never happens again," he said.

Leahy has also made clear that Democratic lawmakers who supported questionable Bush administration policies must also be investigated, which may help to explain why not many Democratic lawmakers have been clamoring for the commission.


A 2008 file photo of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., on Capitol Hill
One notable exception is House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, who has called for a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties, with subpoena power, much like the 9/11 Commission.

Elizabeth Goitien of the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute, agrees that some sort of truth commission could help U.S. credibility.

"Now in order to do that, the commission would have to be set up correctly, I mean it would have to have real teeth and real powers. It would have to have subpoena power, it would have to get cooperation from the government and there would have to be the force of law behind it to make sure that it got cooperation. And it would have to be thorough and unflinching. But I think if a commission were to be set up the right way and to do a good job, then I think "yes", it could demonstrate to the rest of the world that we are very serious about accountability," she said.

Most Republican lawmakers oppose investigating the Bush administration, saying such a probe could compromise counter-terrorism efforts.

Moderate Republican Senator Arlen Specter rejected the idea of truth commissions, saying if every administration started to examine what the previous administration did, there would be no end to it.


President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the Capitol in Washington, 24 Feb 2009
President Obama has not endorsed the truth commission. At a nationally-televised prime-time news conference earlier this month, he was asked about Leahy's proposal, and said he would review it.

"Nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen. But, that generally speaking, I am more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards," he said.

Mr. Obama may fear an investigation could inflame the kind of partisan divisions he has said he wants to avoid. Also the president will likely need Republican support to deal with the economic crisis and challenges such as health care and foreign policy issues.

But a USA Today/Gallup poll this month found that 62 percent of Americans support either a criminal investigation or an independent panel to look into allegations of torture and other abuses of power during the Bush administration.

Human Rights Report; the US State Department

Below is the Human Rights Report of the US State Department, released on Feb. 25. Amongst dozens of nations, the one of the Republic of Korea is extracted here for your reference. How objectively they were written? I guess that's upto your own judgement. For those, who think they understand Korea, let me hear your voice. (beforethedawn7@gmail.com)

U.S. Department of State

2008 Human Rights Report: Republic of Korea
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
February 25, 2009
The Republic of Korea (Korea or ROK) is a constitutional democracy governed by a president and a unicameral legislature. The country has a population of approximately 48 million. In April the Grand National Party obtained a majority of National Assembly seats in a free and fair election. Civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces.
The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens; however, there were problems in some areas. Women, persons with disabilities, and minorities continued to face societal discrimination. Rape, domestic violence, child abuse, and trafficking in persons remained serious problems.
RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:
a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life
There were no reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings.
Official figures indicated that hazing was a factor in many of the 321 suicides by military personnel since 2004.
b. Disappearance
There were no reports of politically motivated disappearances.
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
The law prohibits mistreatment of suspects, and officials generally observed this prohibition in practice.
The government continued to investigate incidents of possible abuse under the country's former military regimes. As of November the Commission for the Restoration of Honor and Compensation to Activists of the Democratization Movement had reviewed 11,241 of the 13,348 cases reported since its creation in 2000 and determined that compensation was due in 8,908 of them.
Prison and Detention Center Conditions
Prison and detention center conditions generally met international standards, and the government permitted visits by independent human rights observers.
d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention
The law prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention, and the government generally observed these prohibitions. However, the National Security Law (NSL) grants the authorities broad powers to detain, arrest, and imprison persons who commit acts the government views as intended to endanger the "security of the state." Critics continued to call for reform or abolishment of the law, contending that its provisions did not define prohibited activity clearly. The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) maintained that the courts had established legal precedents for strict interpretation of the law that preclude arbitrary application. The number of NSL investigations and arrests has dropped significantly in recent years.
During the year authorities arrested 16 persons and prosecuted another 27 persons for alleged NSL violations. Of those prosecuted, four were found guilty; the remaining 23 were on trial as of year's end. In August authorities indicted a secondary school teacher on charges of violating the NSL for distributing materials related to the May 1980 Kwangju uprising. At the end of the year he was awaiting trial without physical detention. In another case four members of a nongovernmental organization (NGO) were detained and charged in September with illegal contact with Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) agents and distribution of North Korean press material for the purpose of exalting DPRK leader Kim Jong-il. The NGO claimed the government used falsehoods against the four and filed a defamation claim for damages. At year's end the four were in detention awaiting trial, and the defamation claim had not been settled.
In November 2007 a university professor found guilty of violating the NSL and sentenced in 2006 to two years in prison lost his final appeal.
An Amnesty International (AI) report alleged there were arbitrary arrests of bystanders on at least three occasions during demonstrations against President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul between May and September. Those arrested were detained and released. The Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) stated that police followed the requirements of the law in responding to the demonstrations. The MOJ reported that official investigations had not confirmed any instances of arbitrary arrest as of year's end.
Role of the Police and Security Apparatus
Civilian authorities maintained effective control over the KNPA, and the government has effective mechanisms to investigate and punish abuse and corruption.
AI reported that some riot police dispatched to demonstrations in Seoul between May and September had hidden their name badges or not worn them. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) also reported that some riot police had covered their nametags with black tape and recommended that the KNPA ensure that police nametags are easily visible.
Arrest and Detention
The law requires warrants in cases of arrest, detention, seizure, or search, except if a person is apprehended while committing a criminal act or if a judge is not available and the authorities believe that a suspect may destroy evidence or escape capture if not quickly arrested. In such cases a public prosecutor or judicial police officer must prepare an affidavit of emergency arrest immediately upon apprehension of the suspect. Police may not question for more than six hours persons who voluntarily submit to questioning at police stations. Authorities generally must release an arrested suspect within 20 days unless an indictment is issued. An additional 10 days of detention is allowed in exceptional circumstances.
There is a bail system, but human rights lawyers stated that bail generally was not granted for detainees who were charged with committing serious offenses, might attempt to flee or harm a previous victim, or had no fixed address.
The law provides for the right to representation by an attorney, including during police interrogation. There are no restrictions on access to a lawyer, but the authorities can limit a lawyer's participation in an interrogation if the lawyer obstructs the interrogation or divulges information that impedes an investigation. The courts generally observed a defendant's right to a lawyer. During both detention and arrest periods, an indigent detainee may request that the government provide a lawyer.
Access to family members during detention varies according to the level of crime being investigated. There were no reports of access to legal counsel being denied.
Amnesty
In August the government granted a special amnesty to approximately 342,000 persons. Most were government officials due to receive disciplinary action. Approximately 1,900 of the pardons involved Election Act violations and another 10,000 involved commutation of sentences or probation for persons convicted of other crimes.
e. Denial of Fair Public Trial
The law provides for an independent judiciary, and the government generally respected judicial independence in practice.
Trial Procedures
The law provides defendants with a number of rights in criminal trials, including the presumption of innocence, protection against self-incrimination, the right to a speedy trial, the right of appeal, and freedom from retroactive laws and double jeopardy. Trials are open to the public, but judges may restrict attendance if they believe spectators might disrupt the proceedings. There is a public jury system, but the verdict of the jury is not legally binding. Court-appointed lawyers are provided by the government (at government expense) in cases where defendants cannot afford to provide their own legal counsel. When a person is detained, the initial trial must be completed within six months of arrest. Judges generally allowed considerable scope for examination of witnesses by both the prosecution and defense. Defendants have the right to be present and to consult with an attorney, can confront or question witnesses against them, and can present witnesses and evidence on their behalf. Defendants have access to government-held evidence relevant to their cases. The constitution provides for the right to a fair trial, and an independent judiciary generally enforced this right.
Political Prisoners and Detainees
It was difficult to estimate the number of political prisoners, because it was sometimes unclear whether persons were arrested for exercising the rights of free speech and association or for committing acts of violence or espionage. The NGO Mingahyup reported that as of December, the government had imprisoned 74 persons for their political beliefs and convicted 399 conscientious objectors who failed to report for military service. However, the MOJ stated that there were no cases of incarceration for political beliefs and that the law does not distinguish conscientious objectors from others who do not report for military service.
Civil Judicial Procedures and Remedies
There was an independent and impartial judiciary in civil matters, and there were no problems enforcing domestic court orders. Citizens had access to a court to bring lawsuits seeking damages for, or cessation of, a human rights violation.
f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence
The law prohibits such actions, and the government generally respected these prohibitions in practice. Some human rights groups raised concerns about possible government wiretapping abuse. The law establishes broad conditions under which the government may monitor telephone calls, mail, and other forms of communication for up to two months in criminal investigations and four months in national security cases. According to the National Assembly parliamentary audit, there were 1,149 instances of wiretapping in 2007. The National Intelligence Service conducted 87.9 percent of these. Telecommunications companies provided customer information to investigation agencies on 426,453 occasions in 2007.
The government continued to require some released prisoners to report regularly to police in accordance with the Security Surveillance Act. While the Ministry of Unification (MOU) designated precinct-level officers to handle issues brought forth by resettled DPRK refugees, the ministry claimed that there were no reporting requirements for the resettled citizens.
The NSL forbids citizens from listening to North Korean radio in their homes or reading books published in the DPRK if the government determines that the action endangers national security or the basic order of democracy in the country. However, this prohibition was rarely enforced, and the viewing of DPRK satellite telecasts in private homes is legal.
Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
a. Freedom of Speech and Press
The law provides for freedom of speech and of the press, and the government generally respected these rights in practice. An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combined to ensure freedom of speech and of the press. The independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views generally without restriction. However, under the NSL the government may limit the expression of ideas that authorities consider Communist or pro-DPRK.
Internet Freedom
The government blocked violent, sexually explicit, and gambling-oriented Web sites and required site operators to rate their site as harmful or not harmful to youth, based on telecommunications laws that ban Internet service providers from offering information considered harmful to youth. The government also continued to block DPRK Web sites.
The law requires identity verification in order to post messages to Web sites with more than 300,000 visitors per day.
According to 2007 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data, 94.1 percent of households had access to the Internet through broadband connections. In addition to Internet access from home, public Internet rooms were widely available and inexpensive.
Academic Freedom and Cultural Events
There were generally no government restrictions on academic freedom or cultural events.
b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
Freedom of Assembly
The law provides for freedom of assembly, and the government generally respected this right in practice. The law prohibits assemblies that are considered likely to undermine public order and requires police to be notified in advance of demonstrations of all types, including political rallies. The police must notify organizers if they consider an event impermissible under this law; however, police routinely approved demonstrations. The police reportedly banned some protests by groups that had not properly registered or that had been responsible for violent protests in the past.
The KNPA reported that 26 riot police were accused of abuses during the period of the "Candlelight Demonstrations" in Seoul against the administration of President Lee Myung-bak between May and September. An AI report on the demonstrations noted that protesters were mostly peaceful and the police showed "organization and restraint," but it criticized riot police for misusing water cannons and fire extinguishers; exercising excessive and unnecessary force; and kicking and beating protesters, journalists, observers, and medical volunteers with shields and batons. The report also stated that riot police were insufficiently trained in crowd control and dispersion. The NHRC also reported that police occasionally had suppressed demonstrations in an excessive manner, injuring protesters. The KNPA stated that police responded to violent and illegal demonstrations in accordance with the law. Official investigations of allegations of police abuse were ongoing at year's end.
Freedom of Association
The law provides for freedom of association, and the government generally respected this right in practice. Associations operated freely, except those deemed by the government to be seeking to overthrow the government. In December 2007, for example, Jang Min-ho, a foreign citizen and former reporter for the newspaper Joongang Daily, was sentenced to seven years and fined 19 million won (approximately $14,300) for allegedly meeting with DPRK spies. He was serving his sentence as of year's end.
c. Freedom of Religion
The law provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respected this right in practice.
In August tens of thousands of Buddhists protested alleged discrimination by the government. Buddhist leaders denounced a police search of a temple vehicle for fugitive anti-Lee Myung-bak demonstrators and demanded the dismissal of the KNPA commissioner general, who had appeared in a poster promoting a Christian police event. In September President Lee Myung-bak expressed regret that any actions of civil servants had "caused concern within the Buddhist community." The head of the Buddhist Jogye Order accepted an apology from the police commissioner general in November.
Societal Abuses and Discrimination
The small Jewish population consists almost entirely of expatriates. There were no reports of anti-Semitic acts.
For a more detailed discussion, see the 2008 International Religious Freedom Report at www.state.gov/g/drl/irf/rpt.
d. Freedom of Movement, Internally Displaced Persons, Protection of Refugees, and Stateless Persons
Most citizens could move freely throughout the country; however, government officials restricted the movement of certain DPRK defectors by denying them passports. In January the Supreme Court ruled that the denial of a passport to one defector was "unjust." While foreign travel generally was unrestricted, the government must approve travel to the DPRK. In many cases travelers going to the DPRK must receive a briefing from the Ministry of Unification prior to departure. They must demonstrate also that their trip does not have a political purpose and is not undertaken to praise the DPRK or criticize the government. The government cooperated with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other humanitarian organizations in assisting refugees and asylum seekers.
The law does not include provisions for forced exile of its citizens, and the government did not employ it.
Protection of Refugees
The laws provide for the granting of asylum or refugee status in accordance with the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 protocol, and the government has established a system for providing protection to refugees. However, the government routinely did not grant refugee status or asylum. In practice the government generally provided protection against the expulsion or return of refugees to countries where their lives or freedom would be threatened.
Government guidelines provide for offering temporary refuge in the case of a mass influx of asylum seekers and an alternative form of protection--a renewable, short-term permit--to those who meet a broader definition of "refugee." During the year the government recognized 36 asylum applicants as refugees, many more than in past years. However, a complex procedure and long delays in refugee status decision making continued to be problems. At year's end approximately 1,500 applications were pending decisions. Asylum seekers who were recognized as refugees received basic documentation but frequently encountered problems in exercising their rights. Like other foreigners, refugees frequently were subjected to various forms of informal discrimination.
The government continued its longstanding policy of accepting refugees from the DPRK, who are entitled to ROK citizenship. The government resettled 2,809 North Koreans during the year, resulting in 15,057 North Koreans resettled in the country.
Section 3 Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government
The law provides citizens with the right to change their government peacefully, and citizens exercised this right in practice through periodic, free, and fair elections held on the basis of universal suffrage for all citizens 20 years of age or older.
Elections and Political Participation
National Assembly elections held in April were free and fair.
Both the majority and the various minority political parties operated without restriction or outside interference.
In general elections, 50 percent of each party's candidates on the proportional ballot must be women, and 30 percent of each party's geographical candidates are recommended to be women. There were 41 female lawmakers in the 299-seat National Assembly, with three of 18 National Assembly committees chaired by women. Two of 13 Supreme Court justices and two of 15 cabinet ministers were women.
There were no minorities in the National Assembly.
Government Corruption and Transparency
The law provides criminal penalties for official corruption, and the government generally implemented these laws effectively. The Korea Independent Commission Against Corruption stated that the overall "cleanliness level" of the government for 2007 was 8.89 out of 10 points, an improvement from 8.77 in 2006. There were reports of officials receiving bribes and violating election laws. Several National Assembly members were found guilty of taking bribes in exchange for fixing candidate lists for proportional representation seats up for election in April. In November the prosecutor's office announced corruption indictments against 250 officials at state-backed companies, primarily for taking bribes.
By law public servants above a certain rank must register their assets, including how they were accumulated, thereby making their holdings public. Among the anticorruption agencies are the Board of Audit & Inspection and the Public Servants Ethics Committee. In February the Korea Independent Commission Against Corruption, Ombudsman of Korea, and Administrative Appeals Commission were integrated to form the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission.
The country has a Freedom of Information Act; in practice the government granted access for citizens and noncitizens alike, including foreign media.
Section 4 Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights
A wide variety of domestic and international human rights groups generally operated without government restriction, investigating and publishing their findings on human rights cases. Government officials often were cooperative and responsive to their views.
The NHRC is an independent government body established to protect and promote human rights; however, it has no enforcement powers and its decisions are not binding. The NHRC investigates complaints, issues policy recommendations, and conducts education campaigns. The NHRC largely has enjoyed the government's cooperation, received adequate resources, and been considered effective.
Section 5 Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons
The law forbids discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, disability, social status, and race, and the government generally respected these provisions. However, traditional attitudes limited opportunities for women, persons with disabilities, and ethnic minorities. While courts have jurisdiction to decide discrimination claims, many of these cases were instead handled by the NHRC. During the year 1,380 such cases were brought before the NHRC.
Women
Rape remained a serious problem. Although there is no specific statute that defines spousal rape as illegal, the courts have established a precedent by prosecuting spouses in such cases. The MOJ stated that there were 7,532 reports of rape and 3,581 prosecutions during the year. In 2007 there were 15,325 registered cases of sexual violence, including rape, sexual harassment, and other sexual crimes, according to the Ministry of Gender Equality (MOGE). A study by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs and the Korean Institute of Criminology found that annually 17.9 of every 1,000 women were victims of sexual harassment, rape, or other sexual crimes, but the reporting rate for rape was only 7.1 percent. The penalty for rape is at least three years' limited imprisonment; if a weapon is used or two or more persons commit the rape, punishment ranges from a minimum of five years' to life imprisonment.
Violence against women remained a problem. During the year the MOJ registered 11,048 cases of domestic violence and prosecuted 1,747 cases. According to an MOGE survey, approximately 30 percent of all married women were victims of domestic violence. The law defines domestic violence as a serious crime and enables authorities to order offenders to stay away from victims for up to six months. Offenders can be sentenced to a maximum five years' imprisonment or fined up to seven million won ($5,300). Offenders also may be placed on probation or ordered to see court designated counselors. The law also requires police to respond immediately to reports of domestic violence, and the police generally were responsive.
Prostitution is illegal but widespread. In July police began a crackdown on alleged prostitution-related establishments in multiple areas of Seoul, closing 61 businesses in one district and prosecuting approximately 350 persons without physical detention. The government allows for the prosecution of citizens who pay for sex or commit acts of child sexual exploitation in other countries. The Act on the Prevention of the Sex Trade and Protection of Victims Thereof, which entered into effect in September, further stipulates that the MOGE complete a report every three years on the status of domestic prostitution in addition to the involvement of citizens in sex tourism and the sex trade abroad. NGOs continued to express concern that sex tourism to China and Southeast Asia was becoming more prevalent.
The law obligates companies and organizations to take preventive measures against sexual harassment, but it continued to be a problem. The NHRC received 152 cases of sexual harassment during the year. According to the NHRC, remedies included issuance of a recommendation for redress, conciliation, mutual settlement, and resolution during investigation. The NHRC lacks the authority to impose punitive measures, which must be pursued through the court system.
The family law permits a woman to head a household, recognizes a wife's right to a portion of a couple's property, and allows a woman to maintain contact with her children after a divorce. The law also allows remarried women to change their children's family name to their new husband's name. Women enjoy the same legal rights under the constitution as men.
Women continued to experience economic discrimination in pay for substantially similar work. According to the Korea Institute of Finance, a survey of financial services companies revealed that almost 60 percent of newly created jobs in this sector were filled by women. The portion of entry-level civil service positions that women filled increased from 3.2 percent in 1992 to 49 percent in 2007. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade reported that 67.7 percent of new diplomats were women. The Ministry of Labor (MOL) stated that the employment rate of females between the ages of 15 and 64 had risen approximately 10 percentage points since 1996, from 43.6 percent to 53.1 percent. Nevertheless, relatively few women worked in managerial positions or earned more than a median income, and gender discrimination in the workplace remained a problem. An MOL survey released in April found that 53.9 percent of respondents believed that sexual discrimination within the workplace was a serious problem.
The law penalizes companies found to discriminate against women in hiring and promotions. A company found guilty of practicing sexual discrimination could be fined up to approximately five million won ($3,800) and have its name published in the newspaper. The law also provides for a public fund to support victims in seeking legal redress. Some government agencies' preferential hiring of applicants with military service (nearly always men) reinforced barriers against women, despite a Constitutional Court ruling that such preferential hiring was unconstitutional.
Children
The government demonstrated its commitment to children's rights and welfare through free public education. High quality health care was widely available to children.
From January through June, a total of 2,733 child abuse cases were reported to the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW). The MOGE maintained four centers that provided counseling, treatment, and legal assistance to child victims of sexual violence. In February the government revised the Acts on the Prevention of School Violence and Countermeasures to make sexual violence perpetrated at school subject to criminal prosecution.
The law establishes a maximum sentence of 25 years' imprisonment for the brokerage and sale of the sexual services of persons younger than 19 years of age. It also establishes prison terms for persons convicted of the purchase of sexual services of youth under age 19. The Commission on Youth Protection publicizes the names of those who commit sex offenses against minors. The law provides for prison terms of up to three years or a fine of up to 20 million won ($15,000) for owners of entertainment establishments who hire persons under age 19. The commission's definition of "entertainment establishment" includes facilities such as restaurants and cafes where children are hired illegally as prostitutes.
In July the Constitutional Court overturned a 1987 ban on prenatal gender tests, ruling that a parent's right to know outweighed the risk of male-preference abortion, a practice that the court stated was in decline.
Trafficking in Persons
The law prohibits all forms of trafficking in persons; however, there were reports that persons were trafficked to, from, through, and within the country. Women from Russia, other countries of the former Soviet Union, China, Mongolia, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian countries were trafficked to the country for sexual exploitation and domestic servitude. They were recruited personally or answered advertisements and were flown to Korea, often with entertainer or tourist visas. In some instances, once these visa recipients arrived in the country, employers illegally held victims' passports. In addition some foreign women recruited for legal and brokered marriages with Korean men ended up in situations of sexual exploitation, debt bondage, and involuntary servitude once married. Korean women were trafficked primarily for sexual exploitation to the United States, sometimes through Canada and Mexico, as well as to other countries, such as Australia and Japan. Relatively small numbers of migrants seeking opportunities in the country were believed to have become victims of trafficking as well, although the MOL Employment Permit System reduced the number of workers trafficked into the country. There were reports that human traffickers exploited ROK passports for the purpose of human trafficking. There was no credible evidence that officials were involved in trafficking.
The law prohibits trafficking for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation, including debt bondage, and prescribes up to 10 years' imprisonment. Trafficking for forced labor is criminalized and carries penalties of up to five years' imprisonment. February revisions to the Passport Act allow for restricted issuance or confiscation of passports of persons engaging in illegal activity overseas, including sex trafficking. However, some NGOs believed the laws against sex trafficking were not being enforced to their fullest potential. During the year authorities conducted 220 trafficking investigations and prosecuted in 31 cases, all for sex trafficking. There were no reported prosecutions or convictions of labor trafficking offenses.
The Marriage Brokerage Management Act, which entered into effect in June, regulates both domestic and international marriage brokers and prescribes penalties for dishonest brokers, including sentences of up to three years' imprisonment or fines. There also are laws to protect "foreign brides" in the country and punish fraudulent marriage brokers, but NGOs claimed the laws needed to be strengthened.
The KNPA and the MOJ were principally responsible for enforcing antitrafficking laws. The government worked with the international community on investigations related to trafficking.
The government maintained a network of shelters and programs to assist victims of abuse, including trafficking victims. Victims were also eligible for medical, legal, vocational, and social support services. NGOS with funding from the government provided many of these services. NGOs reported that there was only one counseling center and two shelters in the country dedicated to foreign victims of sex trafficking. The MOJ continued to educate male clients of prostitution to correct distorted views of prostitution. During the year 17,956 individuals participated in the program.
The State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report can be found at www.state.gov/g/tip.
Persons with Disabilities
In April the Anti-Discrimination Against and Remedies for Persons with Disabilities Act (DDA) took effect. The DDA adopts a definition of discrimination encompassing direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, and denial of due conveniences, and it establishes penalties for deliberate discrimination of up to three years in prison and 30 million won ($22,600). The government, through the MOHW, initiated a five-year plan to implement a comprehensive set of policies, took measures to make homes barrier free, provided part-time employment, established a task force to introduce a long-term medical care system, and opened a national rehabilitation research center to increase opportunities and access for persons with disabilities. During the year the NHRC received 635 cases of alleged discrimination in areas such as employment, property ownership, and access to educational facilities.
Firms with more than 100 employees are required by law either to hire persons with disabilities or contribute to funds used to promote the employment of persons with disabilities. Nevertheless, the hiring of persons with disabilities remained significantly below target levels.
National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities
The country is racially homogeneous, with no sizable populations of ethnic minorities. Citizenship is based on parentage, not place of birth, and persons must demonstrate their family genealogy as proof of citizenship. Naturalization is a difficult process requiring detailed applications, a long waiting period, and a series of investigations and examinations. Because of the difficulty of establishing Korean citizenship, those not ethnically Korean remained "foreign." Many foreign workers continued to report difficult working conditions.
Other Societal Abuses and Discrimination
Despite cultural respect for the elderly, there were reports of age discrimination in the workplace. In March the government enacted the Age Discrimination in Employment Act to address age discrimination in hiring and employment.
Some observers claimed that persons with HIV/AIDS suffered from severe societal discrimination and social stigma. The law ensures the confidentiality of persons with HIV/AIDS and protects individuals from discrimination. The government supported rehabilitation programs and shelters run by private groups and subsidized medical expenses from the initial diagnosis. The government operated a Web site with HIV/AIDS information and a telephone counseling service.
The law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but societal discrimination persisted. In November a military court asked the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of rules prohibiting sexual activity between male military personnel. An opinion had not been rendered by year's end.
Section 6 Worker Rights
a. The Right of Association
The law provides workers with the right to associate freely and allows public servants to organize unions. The government continued to postpone the implementation of the 1997 law that authorizes union pluralism.
The ratio of organized labor in the entire population of wage earners in 2007 was approximately 11 percent, or 1.5 million unionists from a total of 14.7 million workers. The country has two national labor federations--the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU)--and an estimated 1,600 labor unions. The KCTU and the FKTU were affiliated with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Most of the FKTU's constituent unions maintained affiliations with global union federations.
The government recognized a range of other labor federations, including independent white-collar federations representing hospital workers, journalists, and office workers at construction firms and government research institutes. Labor federations not formally recognized by the MOL generally operated without government interference. AI criticized the MOL for continuing to deny legal recognition to the Seoul-Gyeonggi-Incheon Migrants Trade Union (MTU), even after a high court ruled that the law protecting the right of association applied to migrant laborers. In May the government arrested and deported MTU's President Torna Limbu and Vice President Abdus Sabur for being in "irregular or undocumented status." The ITUC criticized the May arrest and deportation of the two under immigration charges as governmental antiunion repression. Previous MTU leaders also previously were arrested and deported.
By law unions must submit a request for mediation to the Labor Relations Commission before a strike; otherwise, the strike is considered illegal. In most cases the mediation must be completed within 10 days; in the case of essential services, within 15 days. Strikes initiated following this period without majority support from union membership are illegal. Striking is also prohibited in cases in which a dispute has been referred to binding arbitration. Workers employed at major defense corporations subject to the Special Act on the Defense Industry and those working in the areas of electricity generation, water supply, or production of defense products are not allowed to strike. In addition, if striking employees resort to violence, unlawful occupation of premises, or infliction of damage to facilities, their actions are deemed illegal. Strikes not specifically pertaining to labor conditions, including wages, benefits, and working hours, are also illegal. Under the penal code for "obstruction of business," arrest warrants can be issued against union leaders during an illegal strike. Striking workers can be removed by police from the premises and, along with union leaders, prosecuted and sentenced.
On December 5, authorities arrested KCTU President Lee Suk-haeng and charged him with "obstruction of business" in connection with his role organizing a general strike on July 2 to protest plans to resume foreign beef imports. Authorities also charged him with organizing solidarity action in 2007 against a retail company that allegedly subjected its workers to precarious and exploitative employment arrangements. The ITUC criticized his arrest, on warrants issued against him and 10 other KCTU and Korean Metal Workers' Union officials, as violating the government's legal obligations to respect freedom of association.
The law prohibits retribution against workers who conduct a legal strike and allows workers to file complaints of unfair labor practices against employers.
By law unions in enterprises determined to be of "essential public interest"--including railways, utilities, public health, the Bank of Korea, and telecommunications--can be ordered to submit to government-ordered arbitration. Strikes are prohibited for both central and local government officials.
b. The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively
The law provides for the workers' right to collective bargaining and collective action, and workers exercised these rights in practice. The law also empowers workers to file complaints of unfair labor practices against employers who interfere with union organizing or who discriminate against union members. Employers found guilty of unfair practices can be required to reinstate workers fired for union activities. However, forced reinstatement was used infrequently because employers took extra precautions when firing union members. According to the ITUC, employers in some cases levied "obstruction of business" charges against union leaders who were seeking to bargain collectively or engage in regular union activities.
The law permits public servants to organize trade unions and bargain collectively, although it restricts the public service unions from collective bargaining on topics such as policy-making issues and budgetary matters.
The government designated enterprises in the two export processing zones (EPZs) as public interest enterprises. Workers in these enterprises have the rights enjoyed by workers in other sectors, and labor organizations are permitted in the EPZs. However, foreign companies operating in the EPZs are exempt from some labor regulations. For example, foreign-invested enterprises are exempt from provisions that mandate monthly leave, paid holidays, and menstruation leave for women; give preferential treatment to patriots, veterans, and their families; obligate companies with more than 300 persons to recruit persons with disabilities for at least 2 percent of their workforce; encourage companies to reserve 3 percent of their workforce for workers over 55 years of age; and restrict large companies from participating in certain business categories.
c. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor
The law prohibits forced or compulsory labor, including by children, and there were no reports that such practices occurred.
d. Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment
The law protects children from exploitation in the workplace and prohibits forced or compulsory labor, and the government effectively enforced these laws through regular inspections. Child labor was not considered a problem.
The labor standards law prohibits the employment of persons under age 15 without a special employment certificate from the MOL. Because education is compulsory through middle school (approximately age 15), few special employment certificates were issued for full-time employment. To obtain employment, children under age 18 must obtain written approval from either parents or guardians. Employers must limit minors' overtime hours and are prohibited from employing minors at night without special permission from the MOL.
e. Acceptable Conditions of Work
The minimum wage is reviewed annually. During the year the minimum wage was 3,770 won (approximately $2.80) per hour. The FKTU and other labor organizations asserted that the existing minimum wage did not meet the basic requirements of urban workers.
Employees of large conglomerates, publicly owned companies, banks, insurance companies with 1,000 or more registered workers, and companies with more than 50 employees work a five-day, 40-hour workweek. Labor laws mandate a 24-hour rest period each week and provide for a flexible hours system, under which employers can require laborers to work up to 48 hours during certain weeks without paying overtime (and 52 with approval from the relevant labor union), so long as average weekly hours for any given two-week period do not exceed 40 hours. If a union agrees to a further loosening of the rules, management may ask employees to work up to 56 regular hours in a given week. Workers may not be required to work more than 12 hours per working day. The labor standards law also provides for a 50 percent higher wage for overtime.
The Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (KOSHA) is responsible for implementing industrial accident prevention activities. The government set health and safety standards, but the accident rate was high by international standards. During the year there were 2,422 fatalities related to industrial accidents. According to KOSHA, approximately 60 percent of work-related injuries occurred in workplaces with 50 workers or less. During the year KOSHA provided funds and technical support to improve safety and health facilities at manufacturing workplaces employing fewer than 50 employees, awareness of occupational health problems in the workplace, and safety education for migrant workers. Foreign workers reportedly were more likely to be victims of work-related injuries but were often discouraged from seeking compensation. By law an employer may not dismiss or otherwise disadvantage an employee who interrupts work and takes shelter because of an urgent hazard that could lead to an industrial accident.
Contract and other "nonregular" workers accounted for a substantial portion of the workforce. According to the government, there were approximately 5.4 million nonregular workers, comprising approximately 34 percent of the total workforce. In general nonregular workers performed work similar to regular workers but received approximately 67 percent of the wages of regular workers; 53 percent of nonregular workers were ineligible for national health and unemployment insurance and other benefits, compared with 6 percent of regular workers. In July application of the 2006 Non-Regular Workers Act was expanded to cover businesses with 100 or more employees. The vast majority of contract and other nonregular workers were not foreign workers.
The law on nonregular workers allows companies with more than 300 workers to use temporary worker contracts valid for a maximum of two years. However, labor groups alleged that employers used a loophole in the law to avoid their obligation to hire part-time workers as regular workers after the two-year time limit.
The MOJ reported that the total number of foreigners with legal working status was 494,035 as of year's end. The total number of foreign workers in illegal status was 54,518. The government continued its crackdown on illegal foreign labor.
The government continued to use the Employment Permit System (EPS) to increase protections and controls on foreign workers while easing the labor shortage in the manufacturing, construction, and agricultural sectors. Through the EPS, permit holders may work in certain industries only and have limited job mobility but generally enjoy the same rights and privileges, including the right to organize. Foreign workers were limited in their freedom to change jobs. Before changing jobs the employee's place of work must close down or the worker must have proof of physical abuse at the hand of the employer. Unless MOJ guidelines allow for an extension on humanitarian grounds, workers lose their legal status if they do not find a new employer within two months.
During the year 75,024 foreigners entered Korea under the EPS. They often encountered difficult working conditions. AI and local media reported that foreign laborers often faced physical abuse and exploitation from employers. The NGO Korea Migrant Center received reports of abuse of female entertainment visa holders. The MOJ reported that foreign workers filed 8,074 complaints related to unpaid wages during the year.
Foreign workers employed as language teachers continued to complain that the institutes for which they worked frequently violated employment contracts, but employers reported there were a large number of foreign teachers who did not fully honor their work contracts.