Enforcement Decrees are Becoming more Common in South Korea

The Park Administration’s usage of enforcement decrees, an executive decision-making process that allows the administration to bypass the National Assembly, has been steadily increasing according to a new article from The Hankyoreh.

The article mentions that appeals filed at the Constitutional Court seeking relief from enforcement decrees have shot up from a low of 46 in 2006 to 87 in 2012. From the article:

“Enforcement decrees are often used to overpower the law for political ends. Perhaps the most prominent recent case of this was the decision to strip the Korean Teachers’ and Education Workers’ Union (KTU) of its legal status. That Oct. 24 decision by the Ministry of Employment and Labor was based on Article 9, Item 2 of the enforcement decree for the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act, which states that an established union ‘must be notified that it is not viewed as a labor union according to the law’ if grounds for rejecting its application are discovered and it does not respond within 30 days to a request to take corrective action.”

The article concludes with a quote by President Park Chung-hee, whereby he uses the term ‘administrative democracy’ to describe many of his actions.

It appears as though his daughter may be following the same course. Be sure to check out the original article here: Administrations’ Expediency Shaking the Rule of Law in S. Korea.
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Sean Hayes may be contacted at: [email protected]

Sean Hayes is co-chair of the Korea Practice Team and Entertainment, Media and New Tech Law Team at IPG Legal. He is the first non-Korean attorney to have worked for the Korean court system (Constitutional Court of Korea) and one of the first non-Koreans to be a regular member of a Korean law faculty.

He assists clients in their contentious, non-contentious and business developments needs in Korea and China.