By Don Southerton, Korea Expert Witness Editor and Chief Blogger
With North Korea‘s love of media attention (missiles, nuclear weapons, etc), the trial should be a real show. This article in Slate shares the dark side of the NK justice system. Sadly, the American reporters, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, face years in a prison labor camp.
How do court trials work in North Korea?
Two American journalists arrested near the North Korean border will go on trial in Pyongyang next month, according to an official news agency. How does a trial work in North Korea?
It’s hard to know—very few, if any, outsiders have ever seen the North Korean legal system in action. The country has never held an official trial for a foreigner, at least as far as anyone outside the country knows: Past American detainees—such as Evan Hunziker, the Christian missionary who swam to North Korea from China in 1996—have been held without legal proceedings. (Hunziker was released after several months in custody and committed suicidesoon thereafter.)
We do have some basic understanding about how the North Korean justice system is organized. The journalists will be tried by the Central Court, the nation’s highest judicial body. Usually, the Central Court only hears appeals cases from the lower, provincial courts, but for grievous cases against the state, it has initial jurisdiction. The Central Court is staffed by judges elected by the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea‘s one-party parliament.The North Korean Constitution stipulates that each trial is to be conducted by one judge and two “people’s assessors”—i.e., lay judges—though special cases may be heard by a three-judge panel. (Appeals cases usually get the panel.) Legal education or experience is not an official prerequisite for becoming a judge, and rulings from the Central Court are not subject to appeal.
North Korean law does recognize the right of the accused to defend herself and to be represented by an attorney. According to the country’s penal code, either the defendant, her family, or her “organizational representatives” may select the defense attorney. As the two arrested journalists were not allowed access to any counsel during pretrial investigation, however, there are doubts that they will actually be allowed to select their own counsel. According to the U.S. State Department, there is “no indication that independent, nongovernmental defense lawyers [exist]” in North Korea in the first place.
The proceedings will be conducted in Korean, but the North Korean Constitution does grant foreign citizens the right to use their own languages during court proceedings. Trials are supposed to be open to the public, unless they might expose state secrets or otherwise have a negative effect on society. According to testimony from North Korean defectors, though, trials are often closed in practice. Announcements of the court’s findings and executions of sentences are often carried out in public as a means of educating the citizenry.
Thursday’s announcement from North Korea‘s news agency did not specify what crime the two journalists are being charged with, though Pyongyang has previously accused them of “hostile acts” and illegal entry into the country. If they were prosecuted under a law regarding foreigners who “abuse” or “provoke national difficulty in order to antagonize” the North Korean people, they would face five to 10 years of “re-education” in a labor camp. Illegal entry carries a sentence of two to three years.
Previously, prisoners could be sentenced to death for a number of vague crimes, such as “ideological divergence” or “opposing socialism.” But subsequent to the enactment of a new penal code in 2004, the death penalty is reserved for four crimes: participating in a coup or a plot to overthrow the state, terrorism, treason, or “suppressing the people’s movement for national liberation.” In practice these four crimes seem to cover a wide range of activities, including, in one reported case from 2007, the making of international phone calls. Judicial proceedings are apparently not required for executions to be carried out.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2218389/
Tags: Euna Lee, Laura Ling, North Korea legal system, Slate
Yonhap and Korea Times note:
The top diplomat in Pyongyang ‘s Swedish embassy met with two detained American journalists Friday on behalf of the U.S. that doesn’t have an official diplomatic channel with North Korea , Yonhap News Agency reported Saturday.
The new development, the first such contact in six weeks, came one day after Pyongyang announced a June 4 trial date for the two journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who are Americans with Asian heritage.
“The Swedish Ambassador to North Korea, acting as the United States ‘ protecting power, met with each of the two detained American citizen journalists on May 15,” Yonhap reported citing State Department spokesman Ian Kelly.
It’s the second consular access to the pair by Ambassador Mats Foyer since March 30 when the envoy met them for the first time.
Kelly did not elaborate on the health or any other information on the journalists who were detained near the Chinese border with North Korea on March 17 when they were reportedly filming the North Korean side for their news coverage of North Korean refugees.
North Korea said Thursday that the reporters will be put to trial on June 4 on charges of illegal entry and unspecified “hostile acts.”
They will face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of espionage under the North Korean criminal code, unlike illegal entry, which is punishable by a few years’ imprisonment.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Thursday called on North Korea to immediately release the two American journalists, hoping the North’s decision to try them next month signaled their early release.
“We believe that the charges are baseless and should not have been brought, and that these two young women should be released immediately,” Clinton said.
“The trial date being set we view as a welcome time frame. But the fact that they are now going to have some process we believe is a signal that there can be, and I hope will be, a resolution as soon as possible,” she said.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/05/113_45012.html
More news… I didn’t know that both journalists work for Al Gore’s San Francisco-based Current TV.
U.S. envoy will not visit N. Korea until U.S. journalists are freed
SEOUL, May 17 (Yonhap) — The U.S. special envoy for North Korea policy, Stephen Bosworth, will visit Pyongyang to seek ways to revive stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks >>>only after two American journalists detained there are released, a South Korean government official said Sunday.
The six-party talks, which began in 2003, have been in jeopardy since North Korea vowed to quit them to protest what it called the “unfair” condemnation by the U.N. Security Council of its April 5 rocket launch. The North expelled outside monitors and threatened to conduct a second nuclear test.
North Korea has confirmed that Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are accused of “illegally” entering the North’s territory by crossing into the communist country from China, have been detained there since March 17. Both journalists work for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s San Francisco-based Current TV.
“We understand Bosworth is pushing through a visit to North Korea,” said the government official. “He may decide on the visit after the issue of the two U.S. female journalists detained by the North is resolved.”
If Bosworth visits North Korea before the Americans are released, North Korea may use them as a bargaining chip in the six-party talks, the official said.
“If so, the situation would get complicated,” the official told reporters.
During a recent visit to South Korea, Bosworth said Seoul and Washington will keep the door to dialogue with North Korea open, but warned that Pyongyang will face “consequences” if it takes extreme actions, such as another nuclear test.
Pyongyang detonated a nuclear device in 2006, prompting the U.N. council to adopt a sanctions resolution.
SEOUL, June 5 (Yonhap) — North Korea remained silent Friday about two U.S. journalists involved in a high-profile trial at Pyongyang’s top court a day earlier on charges of illegal entry and hostile acts.
Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency has yet to release the verdicts, although it sent an unusual dispatch Thursday saying the trial would begin at 3 p.m. that day at the Central Court.
Korean-American Euna Lee and Chinese-American Laura Ling, journalists from Current TV, a San Francisco-based Internet outlet co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, were detained near the North Korean border with China on March 17 while working on a story about North Korean defectors.
North Korean criminal law stipulates a maximum of 10 years in a labor camp for hostile activities or espionage. A ruling by the top court would be final, as it does not allow appeals, Seoul officials say.
U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said no observers were allowed at the trial. The Swedish ambassador in Pyongyang, Mats Foyer, who handles consular affairs involving American citizens in North Korea and met with the journalists three times each since their detention, was denied access to the trial, Kelly said.
It was not known whether the trial ended or is ongoing.
Washington did not rule out the possibility of Gore flying to North Korea to negotiate their release.
“This is such a sensitive issue, I’m just not going to go into those kinds of discussions that we may or may not have had,” Kelly said Thursday (Washington time), when asked about Gore’s possible trip to Pyongyang.
Negotiations have won releases in previous cases. Bill Richardson, a former New Mexico governor, flew to Pyongyang to win the release of Evan Hunziker, a U.S. citizen who was detained for three months in the North in 1996 after swimming across the river that borders China.
U.S. Army helicopter pilot Bobby Hall was released 13 days after his helicopter strayed into North Korea in 1994. The two cases did not involve trials.
North Korea has also been holding a South Korean citizen for months. The Hyundai Asan Corp. employee was detained at a joint industrial park in the North’s border town of Kaesong on March 30 for criticizing the North’s political system and trying to incite the defection of a local female worker. The North has neither allowed access to him nor said how the case will be handled.
SEOUL, June 8 (Yonhap) — North Korea’s highest court sentenced two detained U.S. journalists to 12 years in labor camps Monday for a “grave crime” and illegal entry, Pyongyang’s news agency said, a heavy verdict that watchers say may extract direct action from Washington.
The U.S. said it is “deeply concerned” and will use “all possible channels” to win the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee.
After a trial that began Thursday, the Central Court in Pyongyang sentenced each of them to “12 years of reform through labor,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.