» Norma Kang Muico, Amnesty International’s Korea researcher, right, talks with Lim Sam-jin, the senior presidential secretary for civil society, at the Plaza Hotel in Seoul on July 15. Muico has lodged a complaint against the government for its refusal to let her interview people detained for protesting against the U.S. beef agreement.

Amnesty International officially expressed its strong regret on July 15 over the South Korean government’s refusal to allow its investigator to interview people who were detained because they held candlelight rallies. Domestic human rights organizations expressed concern about their government’s refusal, saying, “By refusing to grant interviews, it is like the government is willing itself to run fast toward becoming an underdeveloped nation in terms of human rights.”

That morning, Norma Kang Muico, Amnesty International’s Korea researcher, lodged an official complaint with Kim Ho-cheol, the manager of the human rights policy division at the Ministry of Justice, against the government’s refusal to allow Muico to meet with detainees at the Seoul correctional service. Muico has been in Korea since July 4 to conduct an investigation into possible human rights abuses and allegations of police violence at candlelight demonstrations organized against the U.S. beef agreement.

On July 11, Muico asked the Seoul correctional service for permission to meet with three detainees related to the candlelight rallies, including Ahn Jin-geol, a senior activist for the People’s Countermeasure Council against Full Resumption of Imports of U.S. Beef Endangered with Mad Cow Disease, a coalition of civic groups spearheading the candlelight demonstrations.

Muico’s request was denied by the Justice Ministry and the correctional service, which said that granting the request would “influence their trials.”

Oh Wan-ho, the head of the Human Rights Korea who served as the head of the South Korean section of Amnesty International for 18 years until 2004, said, “Even the government of President Chun Doo-hwan in the 1980s cooperated in a probe conducted by Amnesty International over long-term prisoners or prisoners of conscience by allowing the media to enter the prison where they were being held.” Oh accused the government of carrying out “an unprecedented enforcement of the law of its own.”

Just two years ago, the South Korean Justice Ministry allowed an Amnesty International investigator to interview a detainee. On Dec. 1, 2006, Amnesty International investigators Rajiv Narayan and Kim Hee-jin, the head of Amnesty International’s South Korean section, had a special interview with Kim Ji-tae, the chief of Daechu-ri, who had been detained for staging protests against the U.S. Army’s plan to expand one of its bases to his town.

Oh Chang-ik, the secretary-general for the Citizens’ Coalition for Human Rights, blamed the Justice Ministry for making a “willful decision without any justification, even though it said that it would influence the pending trial.”

Park Rae-gun, a leading activist with Sarangbang, a civic group for human rights, said, “Amnesty International has said that human rights in South Korea are improving via a democratic process. Even so, it sent an investigator to South Korea because there was an adverse trend during the candlelight rallies. While the government has blocked the investigator’s activities, it should think carefully about how international community will regard the matter.”

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