hankyoreh

By Kim Min-kyoung　
　　
According to an analysis of applications of the National Security Law, the number of people booked on violation of the law has risen sharply from 35 in 2006 to 130 this year as of October. But with an arrest warrant rejection rate of a full 43.3 percent over the past three years, civil society groups are charging that with an increase in arbitrary application and overuse of the law by investigative bodies, humans rights infringements based on the law are returning to their past levels.
People’s Solidarity for Abolition of the National Security Law, an organization of some 220 civil society groups, held a press conference in front of the National Assembly Building in Yeouido on Wednesday to mark the 62nd anniversary of the National Security Law’s enactment. At the conference, the organization unveiled its “2010 Report on the Application of the National Security Law.”
“Sixty-two years may have passed, but the National Security Law has come back to life in even greater vigor and is getting in the way of freedoms of expression and conscience,” the organization said.
According to the organization’s analysis of National Police Agency data, the number of people booked on violations of the National Security Law has increased sharply over the past two years, from 35 in 2006, 39 in 2007, and 40 in 2008 to 70 in 2009 and 130 as of October 2010. At the same time, twenty-nine arrest warrant requests by police on charges of National Security Law violations were rejected between 2008 and October 2010, representing 43.3 percent of the 67 total such requests.
“Lawful visits to North Korea that were previously recognized for officials with the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification and Solidarity for Practice of the North-South Joint Declaration are now the subject of bookings and arrests on violation of the National Security Law,” the organization said. “It is a violation of legal stability for the application of a law to change according to the administration’s position on North Korea.”
In a statement to the press, the organization said, “The National Security Law is a vicious law par excellence, one that destroys democracy and human rights and gets in the way of Constitutionally guaranteed citizen freedoms of thought and conscience, and it must be abolished.”
　　
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