Discrimination in prison wages

A member of a North Korean human rights organization, only identified by his initial K, was fined 4 million won (3,740 U.S. dollars) for the charge of infringing upon law enforcement while staging a protest rally against repatriation of North Korean defectors in front of Okin Church in Seoul’s Jongno district. Having failed to pay the fine, he was imprisoned at the Seoul Nambu Detention House in January by agreeing to work at a prison workplace for 80 days based on a daily wage of 50,000 won (46.8 dollars). The court set at 50,000 won, more than 90 percent of working class people’s daily wage.

Heo Jae-ho, former chairman of Daejoo Group, was handed two years and six months in prison with four-year stay of execution, and 25.4 billion won (23.8 million dollars) in fine by the Gwangju High Court for dodging tax worth 50 billion won (46.8 million dollars) in early 2010. In case he fails to pay fines, he was ordered to engage in prison labor for 50 days by calculating his daily wage at 500 million won (467,727 dollars), which was calculated by doubling his daily wage of 500 million won and cutting in half his fines from the lower court’s ruling, which levied hard labor for 203 days. The ruling was upheld at the Supreme Court the following year. Heo departed the country for New Zealand soon after he was handed ruling by an appellate court.

After returning to Korea soon, Heo will reportedly choose to engage in hard labor in lieu of paying unpaid fines. The daily wage of 500 million won is the maximum amount among court rulings, which is approximately 10,000 times that for working class people. Some critics say that “If (he) works for eight hours per day at a workplace of the detention house, he effectively comes to take a part-time job paying more than 60 million won (56,000 dollars) per hour.” If Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee, who had been handed 110 billion won (103 million dollars) in fines in 2008, had declined to pay the sum, his daily wage for hard labor in prison would have calculated at 110 million won (102,900 dollars).

The daily wage for hard labor in prison is determined at the discretion of judges. Only the duration of hard labor is set at the maximum of up to three years according to the Criminal Code. More than 30,000 people opt for labor, rather than paying fines, per year. Even considering the characteristic of crimes by entrepreneurs, the "daily wage of 500 million won" is disproportionately unfair when compared with that for ordinary people. A cap on daily wages for hard labor in prison needs to be defined by law according to the amount of fines levied. Judges who decided Heo’s case at both the lower court and appellate court were “hometown judges” who only worked in the Gwangju-South Jeolla region for years, drawing criticism for the exorbitantly high daily wage set for him. Some have suspicions about relationship between “hometown judges’ and the entrepreneur in the local community.

Editorial Writer Choi Yeong-hoon (tao4@donga.com)