hankyoreh

Officials wait for the arrival of a parliamentary investigation team at the main entrance to the National Intelligence Service headquarters in Seoul’s Naegok neighborhood.

The enforcement decree for the Anti-Terror Act that the South Korean government announced on Apr. 15 contains a number of problematic passages, including one about deploying troops outside military facilities, the Hankyoreh confirmed. When the National Human Rights Commission of Korea drew attention to toxic clauses such as these in a previous version of the bill 15 years ago, efforts to pass the bill ground to a halt.

Experts are criticizing the government’s inclusion of sections that have long been debated in South Korean society not in the bill that passed the National Assembly but in the enforcement decree that is prepared by the government. This tactic, they say, is an attempt by the executive branch to circumvent the legislative branch.

While the enforcement decree of the act limits the activities of the anti-terror commando unit at the Defense Ministry to “terrorist incidents that occur inside military facilities,” it also states that the units “may engage in anti-terror operations outside military facilities when there is a need for emergency support because of the limitations of the police force and when there is a request from the head of the countermeasures office.”

This clause, which effectively makes it possible for South Korean troops to be deployed in civilian facilities solely at the request of the head of the countermeasures office (a minister-level position), ran into strong opposition from the National Human Rights Commission of Korea and other groups when it was included in the anti-terror bill submitted by the South Korean government in 2001. At the time, representatives from the commission visited the speaker of the National Assembly to express their opposition to the clause, which they said would “enable troops to be mobilized in civilian areas in order to maintain public order without relying on the martial law described in the constitution.” Ultimately, the bill was scrapped.

But if anything, the protocol for and checks on the deployment of troops are even weaker in this enforcement decree. The 2001 bill only stated that the countermeasures committee could advise the president to deploy troops, and it tried to balance this by requiring the government to comply if the National Assembly requested that troops be withdrawn. But this enforcement decree contains no mention of the procedures for requesting troops or for withdrawing them.

In addition, the regional terror countermeasures councils that are mentioned in the enforcement decree but not in the Anti-Terror Act were also problematic when they appeared in the anti-terror bill 15 years ago. The enforcement decree states that the regional terror countermeasures councils -- agencies charged with handling the terrorism work for local governments in cities and provinces and for central government agencies - are to be chaired by the director of the regional office of the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

When the regional terror countermeasures councils appeared in the 2001 bill under the name “anti-terror countermeasures councils,” the National Human Rights Commission argued that “if the government’s administrative system is reorganized in such a way that the National Intelligence Service, whose organizational hierarchy and staff are not made public, takes on a central role in that system, it will overturn the principle of checks and balances.”

Furthermore, this enforcement decree is even more opaque than the 2001 bill about the anti-terror centers, which are the key agencies for overseeing and arranging anti-terror activities.

The 2001 bill stated that the director of the National Intelligence Service was to set up the anti-terror centers with the approval of the chair of the countermeasures council and of the president. The National Human Rights Commission opposed this provision on the grounds that it would enable “the National Intelligence Service to go beyond its work in intelligence and security and its limited investigative authority to make plans and arrange affairs in every area of the state‘s function.” But in this enforcement decree, no restrictions are placed on the anti-terror centers’ organizational hierarchy, on the number of their staff or on their operations.

“The bill left previous controversial passages to the enforcement order, and the enforcement decree either slipped these in or failed to mention them altogether. In this way, the enforcement decree maximized the likelihood of the government or the National Intelligence Service arbitrarily overstepping their authority,” said Lee Tae-ho, chair of the policy committee for People‘s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy.

“Overall, the enforcement decree for the Anti-Terror Act reminds me of the enforcement decree for the special Sewol Act, when the enforcement decree was used to severely weaken the act itself,” Lee said.

By Bang Jun-ho, staff reporter

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