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non-standing member,
National Human Rights Commission of Korea
In strictly legal terms, the difference between a modern state
that may be called 'civilized' versus one that is 'barbaric'
hinges on the presence or absence of a national human rights
commission. Korea only became civilized in this sense with the
advent of its National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in 2001.
Late last November, the Korean NHRC celebrated its first
anniversary. Its experiences of the last year warrant a critical
introduction for international observers.
The Commission at a glance
The Korean NHRC features a broad mandate and diverse
functions. It is an all-in-one human rights institution designed
to protect and promote human rights across the spectrum and to
fight and rectify discrimination. Its counterparts in other
countries include commissions relating to prisons, the police and
army, intelligence, privacy, information, and so on. Also
included would be all types of anti-discrimination and equal
opportunity commissions, such as those relating to gender, race,
disability discrimination, equal employment opportunity, and the
like. At another level, the Korean NHRC can be said to function
like a combination of all the major United Nations human rights
instruments, condensed to suit the one nation. The NHRC has both
a policy advisory function and a complaint– resolving
function. It is also endowed with research and education, and
publicity and networking roles. This multiplicity of functions is
a distinct feature of the Commission when compared with the
traditional judiciary. Unlike a court, which should be an
impartial and dispassionate adjudicator, the Commission is
intended to serve as a monitor, inspector, advocate, advisor,
educator, facilitator, promoter, mediator and adjudicator.
Of all the Commission's roles, the most important are advice
and advocacy. Even when it adjudicates complaints of human rights
violations in quasi-judicial manners, the Commission is different
from a court, for the following reasons. First, in most cases the
remedial package of the Commission includes legal and policy
measures necessary for curbing or preventing a reoccurrence of
the same or similar violations. Secondly, judgements by the
Commission normally go beyond the respondent to include any
superior agency with supervisory powers over the respondent.
Thirdly, Commission decisions come as recommendations, because
coercion is an alien and improper method for an advisor–
advocate– educator. Fourthly, as its decisions are not
binding, the Commission can be more progressive in selecting
criteria for decisions.
The NHRC is an independent and autonomous state agency
answerable to none other, whether the Ministry of Justice,
President, National Assembly or Supreme Court. Legally, the
Commission enjoys absolutely independence, just as a court does.
However when it comes to budgeting, recruiting, and rule-making
procedures, its independence has been less assured. As a
statutory body, the Commission lacks certain guarantees and
safeguards conventionally reserved only for constitutional
bodies. For instance, if the budget of a constitutional agency is
due to be cut, its head must be consulted, whereas the Commission
has been denied this protection. Although the Commission has been
granted autonomy, it is not free from the danger of being
mistaken for an administrative agency under government control. A
recent episode involving overseas travel by the Commission's
president is a telling example. Upon his return from the
Asia-Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions in New
Delhi, the Commission's president unexpectedly received an
official and open warning from the President's Secretariat on two
counts: first, for failing to comply with the legal requirement
that international business trips by officials at ministerial
rank be subject to the President's approval; secondly, for
failing to follow the President's order that ministerial-level
officials not make unnecessary foreign trips. The Commission
quickly pointed out that legally the NHRC does not belong to the
administration and therefore is not subject to presidential
control. Instead of understanding this, the mass media simply
enjoyed the apparent conflict between the Blue House (the
President's office) and the Commission, and it sided with the
Blue House. The Commission's clean image was tarnished as a
result. In fact, the President's Secretariat was acting after
feeling uneasy with a number of principled decisions the
Commission had made without considering their effects on power
politics in general and the administration's position in
particular. It is noteworthy that human rights NGOs were
unanimous in supporting the Commission's interpretation. This
episode vividly indicates the administrative threat to the NHRC's
independence. If the President is displeased with the Commission,
he or she may have many means available to disrupt its
activities.
Composition
The Korean NHRC is composed of eleven members and a
secretariat. The eleven members comprise the president, three
standing members, and seven non-standing members. Four, including
the president and one standing member, are nominated by the
President of Korea, another four, including two standing members,
by the National Assembly, and the remaining three by the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, though all members are eventually
appointed by the President. Four or more members should be women.
The Commission members were appointed on 9 October 2001 for a
term of three years. No parliamentary hearings or public
consultations preceded the nomination and appointment. Due to
internal strife, human rights NGOs failed to actively participate
in the nomination procedure. Consequently, NGO influence was
virtually non-existent and those with the legal power to nominate—
namely the President, political parties and Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court— were able to appoint people they preferred
without difficulty. That said, the outcome was not bad. The
president is a respected human rights lawyer and former president
of the Korean Bar Association. The three standing members consist
of a former director of the World Council of Churches in Asia, a
former appellate court judge, and a schoolteacher turned writer.
The seven non-standing members consist of three law professors
specializing in criminal law, family law, and labour law
respectively, three lawyers— including two former judges—
one former prosecutor, and one feminist NGO leader. Five members,
including the president and two standing members, have past or
current NGO affiliations. One standing member and three
non-standing members are women. This profile appears rather
diverse compared to other Korean commissions, though legal
professionals are over– represented at the expense of people
from backgrounds in fields such as religion, labour and
journalism.
Despite their solid legal knowledge, the present members have
been criticized as lacking proper expertise in human rights.
Given that this requires more than legal expertise, even members
with legal training cannot be called human rights specialists in
the proper sense. Lack of human rights experience leads to a lack
of timely initiatives and significant contributions, especially
in policy matters of strategic importance. As members become more
experienced, however, this problem is sure to diminish.
From the perspective of this writer, three members are
politically progressive, three are centrist, and five are
conservative. This implies that without pressure the Commission
is likely to make right-of-center decisions on politically
sensitive human rights issues. Its rather conservative makeup has
been a serious cause of concern and skepticism among most NGO
activists, and it is generally regarded as being responsible for
the Commission's passive, reluctant, and sluggish responses to
highly divisive matters such as conscientious objection, migrant
workers, and the National Security Law. The NHRC is authorized to
recruit up to 215 staff members. Under the relevant Presidential
Decree, about 40% of its staff can be recruited from outside the
bureaucracy, which is unprecedented in any other state agency. In
particular, more of the higher posts in the Commission have been
reserved for civilians than for career bureaucrats, including the
secretary general, four out of five bureau directors, and nine
out of nineteen section chiefs. The first secretary general is in
fact a former NGO leader famous for her campaigns against sexual
violence. The Commission began to recruit staff members last
March and has filled about 170 posts to date. Nearly 60% of all
the staff members are women. The recruitment process is still
under way and will take a couple of months to finish. Due to
excessive delays in personnel recruitment, however, the
Commission lost public confidence in its first few months.
From 25 November 2001, the day it started operating, to early
April 2002, when the first recruitment began, the Commission had
to confine its duties to the mere compilation of complaints and
ad hoc interventions in pressing policy matters. While individual
complaints and policy issues were simply piled up unexamined,
initial public expectations faded away and human rights NGOs
became impatient. It should be stressed, however, that the delays
were caused by the shortage of personnel rather than a lack of
will, and are currently being kept at a tolerable minimum mainly
thanks to the hard work of devoted and competent staffers.
Issues confronted by the Commission
Under the Commission Act, the NHRC has nine specific duties.
They involve the investigation and remedy of complaints of human
rights violations or discrimination; consultation and advice to
the relevant state agencies as to the improvement of human rights
related bills, statutes, institutions, policies, and practices
under their control; investigative surveys of human rights
conditions, advocacy for ratification of international human
rights treaties and human rights education. Though diverse, these
duties complement and reinforce each other.
Certainly it takes both time and experience to understand
fully the characteristics and potential of the Commission. In
order to speed up understanding and minimize trial-and-error, the
Commission should encourage strategic discussions to develop
goals and tasks so that it will not operate on an ad hoc basis
and be engulfed by routine matters. In my opinion, the Commission
failed to do this during its first formative year, though it
worked very hard.
Some aspects of the Commission's work in its first year are as
follows.
Complaints– handling
1) Complaints statistics
As of 1 November 2002, a total of 2937 complaints had been
filed with the Commission. Of these, at least 70% fell outside of
its jurisdiction. They were mostly complaints regarding police
investigations, prosecutions, judicial judgements, parliamentary
legislation and property disputes. Among valid complaints, human
rights abuses by state agencies, local governments and welfare
facilities occupy 80% or more. Fewer than 200 complaints were of
discrimination, and among these, the majority consisted of
complaints about the infringement of the right to equality by
state agencies, local governments or welfare facilities.
Complaints of discrimination in the private sphere— such as
in employment, education, vocational training, use or provision
of goods and services, for instance, housing and transportation—
have accounted for less than a hundred so far. The relative
paucity of discrimination cases is attributable to the fact that
gender discrimination in general and in employment in particular
is effectively addressed elsewhere, and also because social
sensitivity to discrimination is still rather underdeveloped.
The largest number of complaints has so far related to
violations of detainee rights, as the Commission Act has for the
first time given inmates a right to make face-to-face complaints.
Lately, face-to-face complaints involving prison matters alone
have exceeded 150 per month. Members or staff of the Commission
should visit detaining facilities to receive complaints
face-to-face when internees request it. The Commission has
received over 700 such requests, nearly all from prison inmates.
Only a handful of such requests have been filed so far from
internees in welfare facilities or army prisons, which implies
that the Commission has failed to reach out to them. The
Commission should make efforts to publicize this new right to all
internees, wherever they are detained.
2) The 'rejection first' policy Having begun recruitment in
late March, the Secretariat started to review and investigate
complaints from early April. By this time early complainants had
become frustrated and discontent. Burdened by the sheer number of
pending complaints, the Commission president decided to give
priority to those complaints that could be rejected at first
sight. For the subsequent four months, the two complaints–
handling subcommittees were preoccupied with rejecting more than
700 cases, but meanwhile new complaints were being filed, leaving
them hundreds still to reject. The greatest frustration is that
so far less than 30 cases have been remedied, though in most
cases they are milestones. The 'rejection first' policy is partly
responsible for causing unnecessary disappointment and suspicion
among complainants and observers.
3) The burden of proof The Commission is worried that
following the hundreds of rejections there may now be a sequence
of dismissals due to lack of evidence. In particular, complaints
involving prisons, the police and army are believed to be very
difficult to prove because witnesses are few and tend to keep
silent— in the case of inmates out of fear of reprisal, and
in the case of colleagues out of false loyalty to their
organization and comrades. To cope with the problem of evidence
in cases of human rights violations, the Commission is now
seriously considering transferring the burden of proof to the
respondent, that is, state agencies such as the police and
correctional services. State agencies or local governments
exercising public power have a constitutional duty to respect and
ensure human rights. They are also bound by law to prevent their
officials from violating the human rights of those under their
custody or protection, be they facility inmates or criminal
suspects. It follows therefore that such public agencies may be
required to prove that they have done their best to fulfill their
duties. If they do not do so they cannot claim their innocence or
immunity. If this strategy fails for any reason, the future of
complaints– handling is bleak, because complaints involving
prison, police, or army officers can hardly be proven. In that
case, inmate expectations would change into disappointment.
4) Remedial measures Three questions have been raised
regarding remedial measures. The first was whether the Commission
may recommend remedial measures which victims do not want. This
question was brought up because both the victim and the
complainant of a disability discrimination case stated at a
hearing that their goal was to obtain official apologies and
reliable preventive measures rather than monetary compensation.
The Commission decided in the affirmative on the ground that its
procedure is more inquisitorial than adversarial. The second
issue raised was whether the Commission may recommend
compensation for damages without specifying the amount. This was
also resolved in the affirmative, however the wisdom of this
decision is highly questionable, as it is likely to lead to new
disputes over the proper amounts of compensation until a court
intervenes. This decision appears without precedent in comparable
complaints– resolving commissions at home and abroad. The
Commission should give it second thought.
The third issue raised was whether the Commission may include
among its remedial recommendations one that apologies be
published in the mass media. The Constitutional Court has held
that it is unconstitutional for courts or state agencies to order
public apologies, on the ground that apologies, being moral by
nature, should not be coerced. In other words, compulsory
apologies have been prohibited as violating the constitutionally
protected freedom of conscience. Because the Commission cannot
issue orders but only recommendations that the respondent is free
to accept or refuse, it may be argued that mere recommendations
to apologize should be acceptable. According to the Commission
Act, however, the respondent should seriously endeavour to
implement recommendations and in case it cannot, it should
provide reasons for its failure. Based on this provision, the
majority of members in the Commission found that recommendations
for public apologies would be semi-coercive and therefore also
prohibited them. Again, this is a questionable decision, because
the Commission has as a result lost a useful tool for remedies.
Surveys of human rights conditions
In early July 2002, the Commission invited NGOs and experts to
bid for nine survey projects on human rights in Korea, including
one on prison conditions and one on the army. Two problems passed
unnoticed in this matter. First, prison and army conditions are
unsuitable for surveys conducted entirely by outside contractors,
because neither NGOs nor experts have legal access to prisons or
army camps. Unlike literature surveys or research projects, field
surveys need to be conducted under the authority of the
Commission. Secondly, the results of these surveys need to be
published under the name of the Commission so that they can carry
public authority. However, at present the Commission must attach
the usual copyright disclaimer on the cover page of the survey
report, which reads, "The analysis and contents of this
report are not necessarily those of the Commission".
Certainly more authoritative accounts and analyses of human
rights conditions are needed. The Commission's authority to
conduct human rights surveys should serve that purpose.
Policy advisory functions
The NHRC has the legal power to initiate consultations or
express opinions on the human rights aspects of any bill,
statute, institution, policy and practice. It has effectively
intervened in such diverse areas as an anti-terrorism bill, the
driver's law and the nationality law, as circumstances have
required. In the future, policy interventions need be more
planned than reactive to outside pressures. The Commission's
opinions of a recommendatory nature are likely to prevail in most
cases, even though they lack binding force, because state
agencies normally respect the rational judgments of other state
agencies, unless they have convincing counter– arguments or
their vital interests are at stake. It is important in the latter
case that the Commission shows its commitment to having its
opinions respected by doing the necessary lobbying and allying
itself with concerned NGOs.
Public hearings
The NHRC may hold public hearings to receive testimony from a
wide variety of persons and agencies, including victims and
experts. The Commission has to date arranged just one public
hearing, which lasted only a few hours because it heard opinions
rather than facts. The public hearing function needs be activated
more frequently to obtain information. Public hearings are useful
for a balanced view of sensitive human rights issues. Sometimes
they could continue for weeks or months, and in fact such
large-scale public hearings should precede strategic policy
interventions. It is also important to remember that large-scale
public hearings are natural companions to research and surveys of
complicated human rights situations.
Submission of opinions to the courts
The NHRC is authorized to submit written opinions to courts
trying a human rights case without its permission. Courts are
also empowered to request the Commission to submit an expert
opinion. To exercise this power judiciously, the Commission has
to know, above all, what cases are in the court dockets and then
carefully select a manageable number of representative cases.
Until now, however, the full list of human rights cases pending
in lower courts and the Constitutional Court has been unavailable
to the Commission. As a result, it failed to intervene in three
important human rights cases decided by the Constitutional Court.
They questioned, respectively, the constitutionality of statutory
censorship of "unsound" content in cyberspace, the
strip search practice of the police, and the law-abiding oath
required of national security criminals as a prerequisite to
conditional release. The Commission has discussed whether it can
officially express opinions or comment on decisions of the
Constitutional Court, and concluded in the negative. Arguments in
favour of the Commission's announcement of reasoned regrets were
twofold: first, because the Commission has the power to submit an
expert opinion to the Constitutional Court it is natural that it
would make a critical statement in cases where its opinion is
ignored; secondly, because the Commission is expected to speak
for international as well as domestic human rights law, it may
occasionally be the duty of the Commission to publicly criticize
the Constitutional Court in relation to a human rights issue.
However, such arguments were rejected on the grounds that all
state agencies are legally bound by the decisions of the
Constitutional Court. It is noteworthy that whereas members from
the bench or the bar unanimously supported the negative position,
members representing NGOs warned of the danger of accepting the
unconditional supremacy of the Constitutional Court.
Problematic decisions by the Commission Conscientious
objection
The very first day the Commission started to perform its
duties, it received a complaint about the discrimination of
conscientious objectors in penal administration. The complainant
argued that Jehovah's Witnesses inmates serving sentences for
conscientious objection were discriminated against in conditional
release.
Every year, over 500 Witnesses in Korea are imprisoned for
their refusal to take up arms during military service. Because
they are generally sentenced to three years imprisonment—
the maximum punishment prescribed for disobeying orders under the
Military Criminal Code— the total number of Witnesses in
Korean prisons has always exceeded 1500. Both the militarist
Korean state and the intolerant society have closed their eyes
and ears for decades to the collective plight of these religious
pacifists.
It was in the spring of 2000 that this old issue at last
succeeded in drawing the attention and dedication of a number of
human rights attorneys and advocates. They argued before a
military court that criminal punishment of conscientious
objection violates the freedom of conscience and faith, and
demanded that the practice be stopped. The military court seemed
to be moved and hesitated for weeks but finally adhered to its
usual sentencing practice.
Abandoning hopes of influencing the military court, the
attorneys changed their strategy and urged conscripted Jehovah's
Witnesses to reject military service from the start— rather
than to disobey orders during military service— so that they
could be tried by civilian courts. The change in litigation
strategy worked, with two significant results. First, the courts
lowered the sentence to 18 months, which is the minimum period.
Secondly, one of the trial judges involved was convinced of the
unconstitutionality of the current system of compulsory military
service, in which no alternative means of military service is
offered to conscientious objectors, and officially applied for
the judgment of the Constitutional Court.
Under these new developments, those Jehovah's Witnesses still
serving three-year sentences began to sense injustice. It was
particularly painful for their parents to see latecomers
conditionally released in advance, because of the sentence
differences. Upon close examination, it was found that Jehovah's
Witnesses had been granted conditional release upon serving 27
months, on the grounds that those convicts who disobeyed military
orders should be imprisoned for a period one month longer than
the compulsory military service period, which is currently 26
months. It turned out that Witnesses were not discriminated
against in conditional releases. While conscientious objectors
are conditionally released without exception after serving 75% of
their sentence, 80% or more of other convicts with a three year
sentence have been conditionally released after serving more than
80% of their sentence. In other words, Jehovah's Witnesses or
conscientious objectors have been favoured in the administration
of conditional releases. Most members of the Commission lost
confidence before these statistics.
Nevertheless, conscientious objectors are discriminated
against in one important respect. The basic criterion for
conditional release is the percentage of the sentenced period
served, which differs depending on the crime type, past criminal
records, prison behaviour ratings, and so on. In the case of
conscientious objectors, however, release has come after the
obligatory service period plus one month more. In other words,
the government has applied a unique criterion to conscientious
objectors in its administration of conditional release. It is
nonsense, however, to equate the military service period with the
imprisonment period, and the veteran soldier with the convicted
criminal. Nevertheless, the majority of Commission members were
inclined to dismiss the case. Lest such a decision should
adversely affect the ongoing campaign for the introduction of a
substitute service system, however, they agreed to postpone
making a final decision. The Commission was recently freed from
an obligation to decide on this case because the complainant
dropped the complaint, having sensed the adverse atmosphere.
Nevertheless, the Commission needs to establish a taskforce or
special subcommittee to address this matter in a comprehensive
and responsible manner. It would be a grave mistake if the
Commission thinks it has dispensed with this thorny issue by
bypassing this one complaint.
Consecutive segregation periods while imprisoned
Most complaints from prisoners involve abuses of disciplinary
power and tools of restraint, as illustrated by a typical case
that took place in Busan Penitentiary last May. An inmate
allegedly committed suicide in a disciplinary segregation cell.
He was in his mid-thirties, had already served over four years,
and was only eight months away from release. Normally no sane
inmate would attempt suicide in this situation. However,
according to the story later related by his brother, the prisoner
was in extraordinarily dire circumstances. First of all, he was
disciplined as many as 15 times during his 52 months in jail.
Rumour has it that after blowing the whistle on intramural drug
trafficking he became unpopular among ward officials and was
frequently locked in the segregation cells. Secondly, by the time
he killed himself, he had been kept under disciplinary
segregation for four months and would have had to endure another
four months there, because he had been prescribed a total of
eight months for four different accounts of bad behaviour.
Thirdly, at the time of his death, he had been kept handcuffed
and chained for four days. That he could not even help but eat
like a dog must have damaged his dignity beyond repair.
Apparently these triple factors compelled him to suicide.
Once placed into disciplinary cells, Korean inmates are
prohibited from going out for physical exercise, meeting family
and friends, reading books and newspapers, writing letters or
petitions, watching television, and purchasing goods from
canteens. In short, disciplinary segregation cells are the
highest security confinement within prisons. The maximum period
of disciplinary segregation under Korean law is two months. But
the law is silent as to what should happen if an inmate is
subject to a second, third or fourth two-month period of
disciplinary segregation. This issue is of utmost practical
importance in Korean prisons, where segregation is the most
frequently utilized means of discipline. Prison authorities
routinely enforce consecutive periods of disciplinary segregation
regardless of the total time that may elapse. This unrestricted
practice of consecutive segregation periods results in extreme
cases of indefinite deprivation of sunlight and speech, amounting
to slow murder. Consecutive enforcement of disciplinary
segregation is also incompatible with the legal provision
limiting the maximum length of disciplinary isolation to two
months, because its rationale must be that these things are the
most basic necessities of life, and deprivation of them should
never exceed that period.
It was a grave mistake of the Committee of Standing Members,
therefore, when— while entrusted with emergency relief power—
it voted last February against granting emergency relief to an
inmate who had been under disciplinary segregation for more than
six consecutive months. Relying on the legality of consecutive
enforcement of multiple sentences of imprisonment, the Committee
effectively ruled that consecutive enforcement is legally
acceptable if each disciplinary measure is lawful. The Committee
failed to distinguish between consecutive imprisonment, which
allows a prisoner his or her rights to sunlight, physical
exercise, and conversation, and consecutive segregation, which
should be disallowed because sunlight, exercise and all forms of
communication are denied. The plenary Commission is expected to
deal with the issue of consecutive segregation soon, because of
the suicide case. It should recommend to the Ministry of Justice
to stop the correctional practice of consecutive segregation
exceeding two months in total. The Commission should do
everything in its power to intervene with a view to reforming
prisons by guaranteeing prisoners rights, including conducting
public hearings, prison conditions surveys, inspection visits and
complaints– handling. A task force or a special subcommittee
is also required in this case.
Discrimination in repatriation to North Korea
From time to time, the Commission has to deal with politically
sensitive complaints. One such case involved government policy
towards converted former long-term prisoners. The complainant, a
former spy dispatched from North Korea, was captured and
sentenced to lifetime imprisonment. In 1985, he yielded to
tenacious and terrible conversion methods and signed a document
called a 'letter of conversion' renouncing the pro-North
communist ideology. As a result, he was released in 1987. In
1999, he publicly revoked the conversion in the hope of returning
to North Korea, but in 2000 the government rejected his
application for repatriation on the grounds that he did not fall
under the category of unconverted long-term ex-prisoners because
he converted while he was serving his sentence. Citing the case
of another long-term ex-prisoner who was allowed to return to
North Korea despite having revoked an earlier conversion, the
complainant argued that the government had discriminated against
him and thereby violated his right to equal protection under the
law. Upon close examination, it turned out that the repatriated
convert in the earlier case had signed an official conversion
document while he was detained in a security surveillance camp,
after being released from prison. The Ministry of Justice's
position was that he was qualified to return to North Korea
because he remained unconverted during the entire period of his
sentence. The fact that he later converted at a security
surveillance camp should not have affected his status as an
unconverted ex-prisoner because surveillance camps are not
prisons, at least in theory. But looking at the facts of the
case, this person had converted in 1982 and reneged in 1999. He
lived in South Korea after his conversion for three more years
than the complainant in the recent case. The reasons and motives
for their conversions and revocations were identical. They
converted out of fear and despair. In most cases, ideological
conversions were the result of physical and psychological
torture; shameful violations of the freedom of thought. The
prisoners revoked these conversions to recover their self-esteem
and be reunited with their families.
Moreover, the general conditions of security surveillance
camps were worse than ordinary prisons because the former were
specially designed to detain unconverted, pro-North communists.
Security surveillance camps were regarded to be beyond the reach
of the rule of law. Considering these facts, it seems groundless
to distinguish between those who converted while in prisons and
those in post– prison surveillance camps for repatriation.
Before making the forced conversion, the complainant had
already served in prison for long enough to be eligible for the
status of unconverted long-term ex-prisoner. If the state
regretted having violated his freedom of conscience and thought,
it should have helped him return to his family and live a normal
life in North Korea. Instead, it made an extremely formal and
bizarre distinction between the two converts and discriminated
against those who converted while in prison regardless of the
actual period served. The Commission rejected the case on the
formal ground that the complaint was filed two months after the
statutory deadline, which is prescribed as within one year after
the cause of the complaint occurred, with certain exceptions.
This was an unfortunate decision, as the Commission should have
taken the human rights aspects of the issue seriously. Those who
are separated from their beloved families and homeland have a
right to return to them, whether they are converts or
non-converts.
Conclusion
The Korean NHRC was received enthusiastically by the mass
media and NGO community as an essential part of a liberal and
democratic state in this age of international human rights law.
With less than 20 billion Won (approximately US$ 16 million) in
budget, it endeavors to inspire the spirit of human rights into
all state agencies in Korea. Without the Commission, human rights
complaints would be less heard, more dispersed, and more costly
to resolve. Now that all human rights issues and complaints
sooner or later find their way to the Commission, both experience
and expertise can rapidly develop and accumulate inside the
single state agency. It has already dealt with dozens of
interesting cases otherwise likely to be scattered and skipped
over. Considering that it is a new and relatively small
organization, the Commission has already made remarkable
achievements.
However, the Commission has failed to reach its full
potential. Given its very competent and devoted staff, it would
perform excellently if its organizational culture were changed to
be more horizontal and cooperative. What is most needed at this
point is an environment in which lively reflective and strategic
discussions are encouraged to flourish. Above all, such
discussions should prevail during the plenary meetings of the
Commission so that its members can develop and share a heightened
sense of direction. This is the key to the future success of the
Commission.
Posted on 2003-01-17
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