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The rights of the victim have been a hot topic of discussion in criminal law, but rarely are victims afforded participation or protection in
Lawblrs, if you're interested I wrote a blog post on the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime's report on the Victims Bill of Rights.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called it "such a contrast to the ancient days when [she] was in law school."
“The editors in chief of law journals at the top 16 law schools in the U.S. are women for the first time in history, the Washington Post reports.
The state of play: At an event honoring the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote that brought all of the editors together, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, "It's such a contrast to the ancient days when I was in law school. There really is no better time for women to enter the legal profession."
A woman was not elected to lead the law journal at Harvard Law School, Ginsburg's alma mater, until 20 years after she first arrived on campus.”
Read the full piece here
“Walk a Mile” Series Article 1: International Law and North Korean Defectors
- Jeaneyoung (Jen) Kim, Yonsei University (International Studies)
On November 13th, 2017, a soldier from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (hereinafter, DPRK) was shot multiple times crossing the border into the Republic of Korea (hereinafter, ROK). It is estimated that the number of North Korean defectors (hereinafter, NK defectors) since 1953 is somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000.[1] These defectors risk their lives running away from their motherland for reasons such as extreme poverty, ideological persecution, and oppression in various areas of life. They are risking their lives in all senses of the term because not only is escaping the territorial boundaries of DPRK almost impossible and dangerous, but finding a shelter—permanent or temporary—elsewhere is also a punishing task. The obstacles NK defectors face once they escape DPRK are rooted in two major issues by nature: 1) the lack of a universal classification of NK defectors that leave room for independent interpretation by nations, and 2) the varying ways in which different systems of law perceive and deal with NK defectors.
Through the four articles, this series will delineate the incoherency and inconsistency of the definition of North Korean defectors throughout different legal systems and examine how this makes the defectors vulnerable to arbitrary treatment by the hosting state. Following this review, it will make the argument that NK defectors should be universally and legally considered as refugees or at least refugees sur place. For this purpose, the actors investigated will be the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter, China), ROK, DPRK, and the international community.[2] To clarify, the review of the international community will include not only international treaties and conventions regarding NK defectors, but also that of the legal frameworks of neighbouring states of the Korean peninsula such as Thailand, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Cambodia which serve as transit countries in the defection routes of the NK defectors.
This first article reviews the international legal framework on refugees, mainly focusing on the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The second article explores the legal and political aspects of China’s way of dealing with NK defectors, and the dilemma between China’s national sovereignty and its commitment to international law. The third article takes a close look at the two main legal and political problems in South Korean legislations that put NK defectors in a precarious state: their legal citizenship and their term of address. The fourth and final article problematizes the lack of domestic laws in neighbouring states of the Korean peninsula such as Thailand, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Cambodia which serve as transit countries in the defection routes of the NK defectors that make the defectors vulnerable to arbitrary interpretation of their legal status based on individual political interests. It also offers recommendations for future actions to better protect NK defectors and provide a safe environment for them to recommence their lives.
International Legal Frameworks on Refugees
The most overarching international legal framework on refugees is the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (hereinafter, 1951 Refugee Convention).
With 144 signatories as of 2019, the convention serves as an outline for who qualifies as a refugee is, the rights of those who are given asylum, and the obligations of nations to grant and after granting asylum. Article 1 of the Convention demarcates the definition of the term “refugee” to a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her country of his or her nationality “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”[3] On the subject of refugees who have entered or are staying in a country unlawfully, Article 31 dictates that signatory states “shall not impose penalties… on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of Article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization” as long as they present the justified reasons for their “illegal entry or presence.” The above two articles highlights the international perception of refugees and how they should be treated under difficult circumstances considering their situation. Moreover, Article 33: Prohibition of Expulsion or Return articulates the principle of non-refoulement which comes from the French term refouler which means to make people surrender or repel them, and bars states from expelling refugees from within their jurisdiction or forcefully returning them to their places of origin when it is highly likely that he or she would be subjected to severe punishment or even violations of human rights.[4] The principle of non-refoulement, along with the aforementioned two articles, is a significant element of the international legal framework on refugees in the conversation on NK defectors.
Presenting the Issue of Definition
As previously mentioned, this series will discuss the issue of inconsistency in the categorization of NK defectors internationally. The following articles expand on how different states classify NK defectors; through the series, the authors will illustrate why the universal definition of NK defectors should be from now on, refugees sur place. According to the handbook issued by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a “refugee sur place” is “a person who was not a refugee when he left his country, but who becomes a refugee at a later date.”[5] Refugees sur place are not necessarily refugees when they expatriate; they become a refugee during their time abroad due to a justifiable sense of fear that they will be persecuted if they return to their country of origin. This is precisely the situation of NK defectors that is often overlooked. Article 233 of the Criminal Law of DPRK dictates that anyone who illegally crosses DPRK borders will be punished by “short-term labour” from two years to five years. Article 245 adds that if a North Korean citizen were to have “[damaged] the prestige of the Republic in foreign countries,” they would be sentenced to “reform through labour” for a period between three years and eight years. According to anecdotes from NK defectors, defectors are put into perilous positions if they were to return—forcefully or voluntarily—as they would subject to punishments in the forms of forced labour, torture, or even capital punishment in detention centers, labour camps, or political prisons.[6] These laws clearly stating the intent to legally penalise defectors and the stories from defectors regarding their difficult circumstances should serve as evidence for “well-founded fear” of persecution in an assessment of persons attempting to determine whether they qualify as refugees sur place.[7] That being the case, the authors strongly argue that in order to protect NK defectors from threats such as displacement, exploitation, and persecution, the international society and its laws should declare NK defectors to be classified as refugees sur place.
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[1] “Why This NGO Was Founded,” North Korean Refugees, accessed on August 1st, 2019, http://www.northkoreanrefugees.com/aboutus.html.
[2] China, ROK, and the international society as a whole are the actors that play the largest roles in the defecting routes of NK defectors and in the process of NK defectors finding a place of refuge outside DPRK.
[3] Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Geneva, July 28, 1951, United Nations Treaty Series vol. 189, no. 2545, Article 1, available at https://www.refworld.org/docid/3be01b964.html.
[4] United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR Note on the Principle of Non-Refoulement, November 1997, available at https://www.refworld.org/docid/438c6d972.html.
[5] United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status Under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, reedited on January 1992, Paragraph 94, available at https://www.unhcr.org/4d93528a9.pdf.
[6] Harrison Jacobs and Pat Ralph, “‘Treated Like Animals’: A North Korean Defectors Tells the Brutal Story of What Happened to Him After He Was Caught Trying to Escape,” Business Insider, published on January 15, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happened-when-north-korean-defector-tried-to-escape-2018-6.
[7] UNHCR, Handbook, Paragraph 83.
Sample design work for the cover of the UA&P Law Journal using Canva.
A great pic of me at work!
Submitted a law journal article for publication and now I live in the suffering phase where I await rejection. I hate it.
In the information age, identity is deemed as one of the most crucial aspects for truly reaping the privileges of being born as a human – every aspect of human life, be it the inclusion or respect in the society, working, making money, educating, travelling etc., revolve around a few documents, so attested by the State, which proves the existence of an individual.
Law Colloquy - LCJLS has been created for documenting short precise and substantive articles/notes/ videos/news on perceptions regarding various important topics of law.
