Greenhouse gas emissions targets violated the government’s duty to protect future generations. The authorities continued to restrict protests by disability activists. National security legislation was used to prosecute individuals expressing support for North Korea. Same-sex couples were legally recognized as being entitled to health insurance benefits. Insufficient action was taken to address technology-facilitated gender-based violence. Migrant workers continued to be subjected to exploitation and unsafe working conditions.
Background
In December, President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law and suspended fundamental rights including to assembly, although the move was reversed within hours by the National Assembly. The president was subsequently impeached, as was his successor, Han Duck-soo, pending a final decision by the Constitutional Court. At year’s end, the political crisis was unresolved with the Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok acting as president.
Early in the year, North Korea defector groups resumed sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets by balloon to North Korea following the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that a law banning such activities was unconstitutional. In response, North Korean authorities launched more than 5,000 excrement-filled balloons across the Demilitarized Zone towards South Korea. Some balloons were equipped with timers and detonators, which caused several fires and disrupted air traffic.
Right to a healthy environment
In August, the Constitutional Court ruled that the 2021 Carbon Neutrality Act did not protect basic rights enshrined in the constitution, including the right to a healthy environment, and that greenhouse gas emissions targets contained in the Act were inadequate to ensure the protection of future generations. The Court ordered the legislature to revise the law by March 2026 to include progressive reduction targets for the years before net zero is achieved in 2050. The decision followed hearings in April and May in four cases in which around 200 people, including more than 60 children, claimed that the government was failing to adequately protect them from climate change-related harms.1
Freedom of expression and assembly
Authorities continued to unlawfully and overly restrict peaceful protests calling for improved access for people with disabilities to the Seoul metro system and against the termination of its job programme for people with severe disabilities. The disability advocacy group, Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination, alleged that police used excessive force to break up a protest on 6 February. On 20 April, four disability activists were arrested at another protest. All were released, but charges against three were still pending at year’s end.
There was an increase in the number of prosecutions under the National Security Law of people accused of contact with or expressing support for the North Korean authorities. In March, a man was found guilty and given a one-year non-custodial sentence for posting comments online that were sympathetic to North Korea. The court ruled that the posts endangered the existence of the Republic of Korea and the liberal democratic order.
LGBTI people’s rights
In March, the Central Military Commission decided that a soldier who died by suicide in 2021 could be buried in the national cemetery as she had died “in the line of duty”. She died after being discharged from the military following gender-affirming surgery. The Commission’s recognition overturned a previous decision that Sergeant Byun Hui-su’s gender reassignment was a “disability” and that her discharge from the military was therefore lawful and unrelated to her death.
In July, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples are entitled to the same health insurance benefits as heterosexual couples. The ruling dismissed an appeal by the National Health Insurance Service against a previous court decision that it should provide health insurance coverage for Kim Yong-min, as a dependent of his same-sex partner.2 Despite this limited administrative recognition of benefits for persons in same-sex relationships, the judgment failed to legally recognize same-sex marriages.
Women’s and girls’ rights
The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family remained under threat of abolition. The Minister, who resigned in February, had not been replaced by year’s end.
Gender-based violence
In August, the President urged government officials to take measures to eradicate “deepfake” sexually explicit images and videos on social media. According to women’s rights activists, the creation and sharing in chatrooms of sexually explicit, AI-generated “deepfake” content had reached the level of a “national emergency” and was part of deep-rooted sexism and misogyny in the country.
Social media companies failed to take effective measures in response to demands by survivors of technology-facilitated gender-based violence to establish a reporting system to trigger immediate removal of abusive content.
Migrants’ rights
Increased reliance on migrant workers in the context of the declining working age population reinforced concerns about conditions for foreign workers. In July, 23 people, the majority of whom were migrant workers, died in a fire in a lithium battery factory in Hwaseong city. The factory owners were criticized for inadequate safety standards.
Women’s rights and labour organizations raised concerns about the treatment of Filipino domestic workers who arrived during the year under a pilot programme established by the Seoul metropolitan government to recruit foreign workers. Their remuneration levels were initially set at below the minimum wage. The workers also complained about delays in payment, lack of rest facilities and the nighttime curfew imposed on them by the authorities.
Right to truth, justice and reparation
In June, in its concluding observations on the ninth periodic report of the Republic of Korea, the CEDAW Committee raised concerns that the government had yet to implement a 2023 Seoul High Court decision to provide compensation to “comfort women” who were subjected to sexual slavery by the Japanese military before and during World War II. The Committee recommended that the government provide survivors with redress and reparations, including access to specialized medical, psychological and social support for the harms resulting from their trauma.
A report published by the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission in September documented evidence of the international adoption of tens of thousands of children between 1961 and 1987 without the consent of their parents. According to NGOs, at least 200,000 South Korean children were adopted abroad, many of them children of mothers detained in government-run welfare centres under the so-called “social purification” policy. The Commission recommended that the authorities issue a formal apology and compensate victims.
Death penalty
In November, 65 opposition lawmakers introduced a bill to the National Assembly to abolish the death penalty. The bill was not expected to be adopted but was regarded as an important symbolic step in increasing pressure on the government to abolish the punishment.
