Civil Rights
Citizens of the Republic of Korea are guaranteed several rights by Chapter II of the Constitution. These rights include (but are not limited to):
- freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and the press;
- the rights to vote, hold public office, and petition the government;
- protections against double jeopardy, involuntary labor, ex post facto laws, and warrantless searches of residences; and
- the rights of education, work, marriage, and health
In addition to the rights granted in this section of the Constitution, two duties are imposed upon citizens of the Republic of Korea: the duty to pay taxes and the duty to enter into military service. In addition, Article 37(2) provides that the "freedoms and rights of citizens may be restricted by law only when necessary for national security, the maintenance of law and order, or for public welfare."
One limitation placed on civil rights in South Korea is the National Security Act, which limits "anti-government activities." In particular, the National Security Act criminalizes activities such as promoting anti-government ideologies (especially communism) or joining anti-government organizations. The Constitutional Court has narrowed the applicational scope of the National Security Act over the years.
Nevertheless, Korean activist lawyers had managed to become a formidable institution within Korea's legal system, in part due to the election of Roh Moo-hyun as president.
Read more about this topic: Korean Law
Famous quotes containing the words civil rights, civil and/or rights:
“The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman’s soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify every page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“In the course of the actual attainment of selfish ends—an attainment conditioned in this way by universality—there is formed a system of complete interdependence, wherein the livelihood, happiness, and legal status of one man is interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all. On this system, individual happiness, etc. depend, and only in this connected system are they actualized and secured.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)