President Yoon Suk Yeol is a champion of freedom.
The president used the word freedom dozens of times in his inaugural speech and his address at the United Nations General Assembly. When Koreans think of their leader, they think of freedom.
However, a recent report from the global organization is quite dismaying. The U.N. Human Rights Committee released its fifth periodic report on Korea last Friday. Sadly, its observations and recommendations showed that the civil liberty situation in this country has regressed to 2015.
“The Korean government delegates’ responses were passive,” said Jose Manuel Santos Pais, a committee member. “Answers to many questions were virtually identical to those of the fourth review eight years ago.” The Portuguese official summed up the agency’s sentiments after analyzing Korea’s rights situations in various areas.
That also demonstrated how far Korea has to go before matching what Yoon preaches and his government practices.
Most noteworthy was the committee’s recommendations on the Itaewon disaster. It advised Seoul to launch an “independent and impartial body” to probe the incident and determine the truth; ensure that all officials responsible are brought to justice, including those in “senior positions,” and punished properly; and offer adequate reparation and memorization to victims and bereaved families. We can hardly agree more.
The government delegation reiterated its formal position that there were police probes and parliamentary audits, and it is supporting bereft families. However, no officers remain behind bars following the police’s internal investigation. No senior officials have been probed and prosecuted. All ranking officials, including the president, stayed away from a recent joint memorial, saying the event was partisan. Yoon and his aides should have attended the event, making it a bipartisan one.
More than a year has passed since the tragedy occurred, but the Board of Audit and Inspection has yet to launch a probe. Koreans cannot even rely on the judiciary branch to keep their right to life. Nothing showed this better than the Supreme Court’s recent acquittal of nine coastguards who failed to rescue victims during the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014.
The top court cited insufficient evidence to assume higher officials had known the victims might die based on their men’s reports. All this shows the establishment hasn’t moved one inch forward from nine years ago.
It also came as a rude awakening for Koreans, who did not know how to hold the state responsible for failing to respond to disasters. Will it be all right if they stop riding ferries or avoid crowded places altogether?
The former Park Geun-Hye administration went even further, reportedly obstructing the investigation and having the intelligence service track critics of the official response. In her recent interview with a vernacular daily, Park regretted failing to have more meetings with the bereaved families. We hope the incumbent leader will not repeat his predecessor’s regrets years from now.
However, few can say there will never be another Sewol or Itaewon tragedy in Korea.
Korea did not get good marks in other areas, either. The Human Rights Committee particularly pointed to labor rights and press freedom. That issue has long ceased to grab headlines in Korea. However, a recent episode revealed how Yoon regards people’s economic freedom.
At a meeting to discuss measures to improve the public's livelihood, Yoon cited examples of business owners hiring fewer than 50 workers. These managers complained about giving the same wages to migrant workers as Koreans and being punished for industrial accidents. They then requested the government to exit from ILO provisions regulating these matters. “The government will do its best to solve them quickly,” the president said.
The presidential office asked not to link the chief executive’s remarks to any immediate policy change. However, Yoon’s remarks revealed his concerns about people’s lives prioritizing business owners, not workers, and he discriminates against foreigners, running counter to the U.N. agency’s principle that bans all types of discrimination.
Yoon and his aides must read the committee's report carefully. That should be the start of narrowing the gap between their slogans and reality.