hankyoreh

at Cheonggye Square in central Seoul

Feb. 15.

By Jung Hwan-bong, staff reporter

Critics are crying foul over the police’s decision to erect a bus barricade around a candlelight vigil protesting the Park Geun-hye administration, while leaving open a demonstration just across the street by conservative groups calling for a “purge of pro-North Korea forces.”

The National Rally to Eradicate Anti-State Pro-North Korean Forces began at 5:30 pm on Feb. 15 in front of the Dongwha Duty Free Shop at Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul. The event, organized by the Korean National Police Veterans’ Association, was attended by around 1,000 people.

Thirty minutes later, a similarly sized weekend candlelight vigil began just on the other side of Sejong Road at Cheonggye Plaza, with participants expressing support for a Feb. 25 national strike to mark the first anniversary of the Park administration’s inauguration.

Police erected a barricade of ten buses - but only on the Cheonggye Plaza side.

“A vehicle barricade doesn’t just make it difficult to people to get to the rally site, it also scares citizens away from participating,” said Yoo Ki-soo, secretary-general of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and a participant in the rally.

“The aim of the rally was to alert people to a problem, and the barricade served to prevent it from achieving that goal,” Yoo added.

Similar tactics were decried by UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Margaret Sekagya in a January report published after an examination of the South Korean human rights situation conducted from May 29 to June 7, 2013.

“During my visit, I have learned about various instances and situations where the fundamental right to peaceful assembly has been unduly restricted and that in some instances, the police has resorted to excessive use of force when handling protests,” Sekagya wrote in her report.

The police bus barricades have also been declared unconstitutional. In June 2011, the Constitutional Court ruled that by using buses to surround Seoul Square at a 2009 event to commemorate the death of former President Roh Moo-hyun, police had “infringed on freedom of action by fundamentally blocking citizen passage.” Even after the ruling, police have continued to erect bus barricades at major protests.

A source with Jongno Police Station, which responded to the Feb. 15 rallies, said the conservative event did not go unchecked.

“We had police buses on standby a short distance away from the conservative rally,” the source said on condition of anonymity. “The reason we set the buses up at Cheonggye Plaza was simply because of the need to ensure smooth traffic.

“This was not about using police buses to prevent people from taking part in a rally.”

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