For Press release
March 28, 2019
On Indicting Kim Jong Un
on Charges of Human Rights Violations
1. Altogether 40 patriotic civic organizations of the Republic of Korea (ROK) that include the Emergency National Congress for the Safeguard of the ROK∙the Retired Generals for the Safeguard of the ROK∙the Alliance of High School Alumni for the Safeguard of the Nation∙the Comades-in-Arms of the Armed Services of the ROK to Safeguard the Nation∙the National Alliance for Freedom and Democracy and the Attorneys for Human Rights and National Unification as well as 16 organizations of North Korean defectors spearheaded by the Committee for Democratization of North Korea have banded together today, on March 28, 2019, jointly to submit a bill of indictment to the Metropolitan Office of Prosecution
of the Special City of Seoul, requesting that, in accordance with pertinent articles of the 'Act on the Punishment of Crimes within the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court' (hereinafter The Act), a domestic law of the ROK that has been in force since December 21, 2007, the law enforcement authorities of the ROK arrest Kim Jong Un, North Korea's "deified" dictator, and criminally investigate and prosecute him on charges of human rights crimes that the United Nations (UN) Commission of Inquiry (COI) accused him as having committed in violation of a plurality of provisions in the 'Statute of Rome of the International Criminal Court (ICC)' (hereinafter The Statutue).
2. As is publicly known, the "COI on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK∙North Korea)," a three-member investigative body created on April 9, 2013, by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), undertook an extensive year-long probe into the human rights situations in North Korea, resulted in the submission to the UNHRC, and the subsequent publication, on February 7, 2014, of a landmark report on the findings of its probe, in which it concluded that "systematic, widespread and gross" crimes against humanity were found by the COI as "having been, and still being, committed" in North Korea in violation of The Statute. The COI held, in the report, not only the North Korean
regime as a whole but also Kim Jong Un in person as well, in his capacity as the "omnipotent supreme leader" of the totalitarian state, responsible for the human rights atrocities committed by North Korea, recommending two options - one Kim Jong Un's referral to the ICC and/or the other trial of Kim Jong Un by an ad hoc special international tribunal to be established by the UN General Assembly - to hold him accountable for his crimes.
3. The Statute restrains the ICC, under Article #13/A/(a)&(b), from exercising criminal jurisdiction over any of the four criminal categories stipulated in The Statute - namely ① genocide, ② crimes against humanity, ③ war crimes and ④ crimes of aggression - unless the crimes were committed within the territory of a state signatory to The Statute by a national of the state signatory. Thus, as the ICC was unable to pick up, on its own, the case of Kim Jong Un for prosecution because of North Korea's being a non-signatory to The Statue, the ICC attempted to try a UN Security Council track under Article 13/B that authorizes the Council to consummate the referral of any issue to the ICC. However
, while the report had managed to be placed on the Council's agenda, thanks to the courtesy of the General Assembly that made it an annual event to pass a resolution to that effect for four consecutive years, 2014∼2017, the Council failed, too, to consummate Kim Jong Un's referral to the ICC because China and Russia, North Korea's two veto-powered patrons in the Council, objected to having the North Korean dictator referred to the ICC.
4. In the meantime, as one of the 123 states signatory to The Statute, the ROK enacted on October 21, 2007, the "Act on Punishment of Crimes within the Jurisdiction of the ICC" (The Act), which still remains in force after a revision on April 12, 2011. By stipulating, in Article #2/A, that "genocide and other crimes" provided for in The Act, means "crimes stipulated in Articles #8 through #14," The Act makes it clear that it covers not only "crimes of genocide" but also the other three crime categories as well, namely "crimes against humanity," "war crimes" and "crimes of aggression." Furthermore, by stipulating, in Article #4, that the "foreigner(s)" in The Act means "any one who is not a
national of the ROK," while stipulating at the same time, in Article #3, that The Act shall be "applied to a 'foreigner' who is physically inside the ROK territory after having committed crimes stipulated in The Act away from the territory of the ROK," The Act makes it irrefutably manifest that, in case Kim Jong Un, and his North Korean accomplices as well, set their feet on the "soil under the territorial jurisdiction" of the ROK. the law enforcement authorities of the ROK are authorized to arrest and prosecute them under The Act.
6. According to the COI report, North Korea was found ① subjecting all of its people, beginning from the time of their births, to a sweeping system of brainwashing and surveillance resulting in the total deprivation of their fundamental freedoms of thought, conscience, speech and religion, ② imposing on them a total system of discrimination with respect to residence, occupation, education, food-rationing and marriage based on a songboon system, with its people classified on the basis of State-assigned social class and birth, ③ designating arbitrarily where to live and work on the basis of songboon, while forbidding not only movement within the country but also inflow of information and trav
el to and from foreign countries, ④ using songboon and class as determinants in food rationing, and ⑤ allowing a variety of state security outfits to arrest, detain and torture people at will together with the operation of the infamous political prison camps while ⑥ disallowing those ethnic Koreans deported to North Korea from Japan in late 1950s as well as those nationals of other countries, including South Korea and Japan, abducted to North Korea to return to their places of origin.
7. In addition to the COI report, there are other publications such as the three "White Books on Human Rights in North Korea" published in 2018 respectively by three highly credited ROK research institutes, the Research Institute on National Unification, the Center for Information on Human Rights in North Korea and the ROK Bar Association, plus the "White Paper on the 5 Years of Misrule in North Korea since Kim Jong Un's Rise to Power" published in 2016 by the Research Institute on National Security Strategies, a subordinate think tank of the National Security Agency, that have documented a long list, each, of human rights crimes committed by North Korea under Kim Jong Un.
8. The plaintiffs are mindful about the recent reports about the possibility that Kim Jong Un is likely to make a trip to the ROK with the purpose of conducting a meeting with President Moon Jae In of the ROK sooner or later.
9. It is in the context of a review of the situations of human rights in North Korea as well as the developments in the relations between the two sides of Korea that, today, the patriotic civic organizations of the ROK and organizations of North Korean defectors have decided, for the causes of preservation of freedom and democracy, the central constitutional values of the republic, peace on the peninsula and democratization of North Korea, to band together to jointly request the law enforcement authorities of the ROK to arrest Kim Jong Un instantly upon his entry into the territory under the jurisdiction of the ROK and subject him to a thorough investigation into the charges of crimes under
The Act that he is accused to have committed, ultimately leading to a due punishment in accordance with the provisions of The Act.
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