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Vol. 79/No. 1      January 19, 2015

 
SKorea high court sanctions
gov’t ban of opposition party
 
BY SETH GALINSKY
In a blow to freedom of association and speech, South Korea’s Constitutional Court banned the Unified Progressive Party on Dec. 19, expelled all five of its representatives from the 300-member National Assembly, confiscated the party’s assets and ruled that the group’s members would not be allowed to form a new party. Chief Justice Park Han-chul said the party was guilty of seeking to “undo South Korea’s democratic order” and bring the country under “North Korea-style socialism.”

President Park Geun-hye hailed the court order, issued at the behest of her cabinet, calling it a “historic decision that strongly protects our liberal democracy.”

Park’s government has also attacked unions across the country, seeking to ban the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union and imprison the leaders of a December 2013 rail strike.

“The court, without any concrete evidence behind it, deemed the UPP’s ‘true motives’ to be coordinating with North Korea because some of its members were saying similar things to Pyongyang,” South Korean daily Hankroyeh said in a Dec. 20 editorial.

“Many people who agreed with progressive principles could now see themselves cast out of the system, their political views portrayed as unconstitutional or ‘pro-North Korea,’” Hankroyeh said. “Today it’s the UPP that’s being cast out; who knows who will be next?”

It didn’t take long to find out the answer. On Dec. 22 police searched eight locations associated with attorney Jang Kyung-wook, a member of MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society, which has opposed government attacks on political rights. Police also searched offices of the Corean Alliance, which has criticized the government’s foreign policy.

That same day Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Commissioner Kang Shin-myung announced that police are investigating speakers at two demonstrations against the banning of the Unified Progressive Party, Hankroyeh reported, including leaders of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the Korean Peasants League and the Korea Alliance for Progressive Movement.

The government sought the ban after it arrested Unified Progressive Party members in November 2013 and charged them with seditious conspiracy, incitement and violation of the National Security Law. Party leader Lee Seok-ki and six other members were found guilty of the two main charges, and Lee was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

In February this year, the Seoul High Court overturned the conspiracy charge but upheld Lee’s conviction on the other counts, reducing his sentence to nine years.

On Dec. 22 a Seoul court acquitted four former officials of the union at the Korea Railroad Corp. of charges of obstructing business for leading a three-week-long strike in December 2013. Prosecutors were seeking a five year prison sentence.

“A court ruling in 2006 said that a strike is not obstruction of business even if the government says it is illegitimate unless it takes place in a surprise manner. But the strike was announced in advance and the company had time to prepare,” Wol-san Liem, international affairs director for the Korean Federation of Public Services and Transportation Workers’ Unions, told the Militant in a phone interview from Seoul Dec. 29. International solidarity with the strike and the accused union leaders “was referenced by the judge,” Liem said.

“The prosecution immediately appealed,” Liem added, expressing concern that unionists could still be convicted. “There have been some pretty bad decisions recently, like the dissolution of the UPP and the Supreme Court overturning a lower court decision in favor of workers at Ssangyong Motor factory.”  
 
 
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