South Korea's 'abandonment of democracy'
In an unprecedented ruling late last year, South Korea’s Constitutional Court outlawed the largest social democratic party in the country, the Unified Progressive Party (UPP), and disqualified all five of its elected representatives in the National Assembly.
The ruling came in response to a petition filed in 2013 by the right wing Park Geun-hye government. The petition alleged that the UPP, which advocates re-unification with North Korea, was an agent of Pyongyang and sought to foment violent revolution.
The same year, the homes of 10 leading UPP members were raided by the National Intelligence Service, and UPP leader Lee Seok-ki was arrested and jailed for inciting insurrection and violating the vaguely-worded National Security Law.
The UPP’s defence team, MINBYUN (Lawyers for a Democratic Society), described the court ruling as an act of “totalitarianism” and an “abandonment of democracy”.
MINBYUN says that there was no evidence to support the allegations against the UPP, noting that the court had “not found that the party was directly related with North Korea or sought … a revolution by force”.
According to MINBYUN, the court “turned back the clock”, an allusion to the dictatorship of Park Guen-hye’s father, Park Chung-hee, who declared martial law in 1972 and made himself president for life.
His regime was marked by widespread human rights abuses, the assassination of political opponents and the jailing, torturing and execution of dissidents. He was assassinated by his own security chief in 1979.
Since being elected as the first female president in 2013, Park Geun-hye has been accused of following in her father’s footsteps. In December 2013, Park’s Saenuri Party government cracked down on trade unions that had been leading mass anti-privatisation demonstrations. In one incident, more than 4,600 riot police and 900 SWAT police stormed the headquarters of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. Thirty-five arrest warrants were also issued against union leaders.
Last November, Park demanded that the Korean Bar Association discipline seven lawyers from MINBYUN. One of the attorneys told Hankyoreh newspaper that they were being “subjected to retaliatory prosecution for defending basic rights and upholding democracy at the scene of a demonstration”.
In response to the banning of the UPP, Amnesty International issued a statement on 19 December. It noted that the court ruling was merely the latest attack on free speech by Park’s government as it, in a fashion familiar worldwide, “increasingly [used] national security as a guise to repress political opposition and curtail freedom of expression”.
