Abuse Of National Security Law To Arrest

While the number of the arrest and the indictment ratio by the National Security Law has been reduced in the Kim Dae-Jung administration, the abuse of the arrest investigation, the cruel treatments, and the violation of the human rights remain unchanged.

`A report on the National Security Law 2000` published by The Lawyers for a Democratic Society (MinByun) reveals the number of the alleged violators accused by the NSL has reduced to 169 last year from 509 (1999) and 688 (1998).

The arrest ratio by the NSL also has declined to 51.5 percent (87 persons), compared to 58.7 percent (299 persons) of 1999 and 66 percent (454 persons) of 1998.

In case of last year when the inter-Korean summit was held, the bailment ratio allowed by the court to the restrained drastically jumped up to 14.2 percent from 0.4 percent of the previous year and the refused ratio of the warrant had increased a little bit from 3.81 percent of 1998 and 3.83 percent of 1999 to 4.17 percent last year.

However, the number of the restrained after the inter-Korean summit (81 persons) exceeded the total restrained before the summit talk (47 persons) and Article 5 of the NSL, the crime of the admiration and encouragement, was applied to the majority of the retrained (117 persons, 91.4 percent).

MinByun asserted that the investigation institutions had committed unreasonable arrest investigations, indicating that the court allowed the bail to some of the indicted out of the total 49 indicted persons in the Seoul district in the process of trials and gave suspended sentences to all the indicted.

MinGaHyeop (The family member meeting for the democratization movement) also asserted that the violation of the human rights such as sexual abuses and threats in the process of the arrest and the investigation has continuously been committed [by the investigation institutions].

Lee Jung-Eun lightee@donga.com