South Korea abolishes garrison decree after 68 years  

Posted on : 2018-09-12 17:43 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Decree could mobilize troops without National Assembly consent
South Korean President Moon Jae-in presides over a cabinet meeting at the Blue House on Sept. 11 (Blue House photo pool)
South Korean President Moon Jae-in presides over a cabinet meeting at the Blue House on Sept. 11 (Blue House photo pool)

The garrison decree has been abolished after 68 years.

Blue House spokesperson Kim Eui-kyum announced on Sept. 11 that the decree “has been officially abolished by a cabinet vote today after 68 years.”

“As soon as it was abolished, President Moon [Jae-in] simply said, ‘The garrison decree has been abolished. This is a truly emotional moment,’” he reported.

“As I understand it, President Moon would have been looking closely at the newspapers in 1971 as a student in Seoul preparing to retake his university entrance exam, and he would have been paying special attention to the political situation at the time,” Kim added.

“In 1979, he had passed the first judicial examination and been expelled from his school,” he explained.

“I suspect it was due to the combination of his own uncertain situation and the uneasiness of the political situation that he felt that kind of regret,” he said.

The garrison decree was first enacted on Mar. 27, 1950, to preserve army order and discipline and protect military facilities. Though similar to the martial law decree mobilizing troops to maintain public order, it differed in not requiring National Assembly consent. As a presidential decree, it was invoked three times: during protests against the Treaty on Basic Relations with Japan in 1965, during demonstrations against high school drills in 1971, and during the Busan-Masan Protests in 1979.

The Chun Doo-hwan administration also reportedly planned to invoke the decree during the democracy uprising of June 1987, but withdrew the plan just before the Democratization Declaration on June 29.

In July, the Ministry of National Defense gave advance legislative notice of its plan to abolish the decree, which it concluded was unconstitutional, illegal, and out of alignment with the historical situation.

 

By Seong Yeon-cheol, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]

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