Today on The Korea Times Podcast: The Constitutional Court dissolves the United Progressive Party and only one judge dissents. Plus Seoul backs the United Nations on referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court and US Rep representative Honda calls Abe’s actions nonsense.
The Constitutional Court has dissolved the pro-North Korean Unified Progressive Party (UPP) in the first judiciary move to outlaw a political party since the nation’s Constitution was first drawn up in 1948.
The nine-person panel voted on Friday with an overwhelming 8-1 majority in favor of disbanding the UPP, which was founded in 2011.
The Unified Progressive Party had a hidden agenda to adopt North Korea’s socialism, organizing meetings to plot a rebellion, in violation of the basic democratic order of the Constitution, said the court’s President Park Han-chul when reading the ruling.
Justice Kim voices only opposition
Only one of the nine Constitutional Court justices ― Kim Yi-su ― voted against dissolving the Unified Progressive Party (UPP), Friday.
“The UPP has some 30,000 supporters. Some of its party members holding a view in line with North Korea’s constitution construed as the party’s view as a whole is a misconception, thus lacking justification for dissolving a political party,” Kim said in the verdict.
The government said it welcomed the United Nations’ adoption of a landmark resolution against North Korea for its alleged state-perpetrated violations of human rights.
“The overwhelming support for the resolution shows the will of the U.N. and international community to take firm measures toward Pyongyang’s critical human rights situation,” foreign ministry spokesman Noh Kwang-il said in a statement.
During the U.N. General Assembly in New York Thursday, 116 countries voted for the resolution accusing North Korea of crimes against humanity. Twenty other nations voted against the resolution, while 53 abstained.
U.S. Rep. Mike Honda called Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s attempt to whitewash Japan’s wartime atrocities “nonsense,” Thursday.
“Coercion was there. That’s why girls and women were kidnapped,” said Honda, a crusader for justice against Japanese misdeeds, referring to Japanese assertions that “comfort women” volunteered to work at brothels run by the Japanese imperial army during World War II.
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