• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.115-162
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• 2022

The Rules of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), revised at the eighth Party Congress in 2021, reflect the Kim Jong Un regime's changes in strategic lines and ideological justifications on North Korea's socialism and communism, and its recent stances against the external environment. Moreover, they contain critical changes in the party's organizational system encompassing the central and the provinces. This study explores the organizational changes of the "monolithic guidance system of the party core" stipulated by the new party rules in January 2021, based on the analysis of the entire nine revised rules of the WPK since 1945. In the 2021 Party Congress, the Kim Jong Un regime, which officially came to power after the fourth Party Conference in 2012, has institutionalized the monolithic guidance system centered on the party core, or the head of state, Kim Jong Un. The newly set leadership and execution system, which reorganized party, government, and military organizational structure and accompanied the relevant personnel changes, was derived from the attempts for reinstating the Kim Jong Un regime as a more normalized party-state structure before its 10th year in power in April 2022. The "monolithic leadership system of the party core" established a system of "organizational leadership" through the organization of the Central Committee, directed by the Party Head, or General Secretary. The institutionalization of the new system resulted from the ten-year development of the revival of the party-state structure, which compromised the status of the military and reconfirmed the party's control of the military. This study explains the new system from the perspectives of both institutionalization and top-down unity, shedding light on the new party-military-government relations of the Kim Jong Un regime. The analysis contributes to a better understanding and forecasting of the Kim Jong Un regime's governance, which currently strengthens the monolithic leadership system as a crisis management system in the face of the "triple hardships" of sanctions, Covid and disaster.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.69-114
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• 2022

This paper analyzes Taiwan's 「New Southbound Policy」 from the perspective of 'balancing' and 'bandwagoning' in international politics. Specifically, it examines the changes and characteristics of 'Southbound policies' that have continued since the period of the Lee Teng-hui(李登輝) administration, and examines the meaning of the New Southbound Policy promoted by the Tsai Ing-wen(蔡英文) administration. Taiwan's foreign policy has been strongly influenced by external variables such as U.S.-China relations. Previous Taiwanese governments have actively promoted Southbound policies to advance to Southeast Asian countries such as ASEAN with the aim of 'De-Sinicization', but have not achieved much results. This is because variables such as cooperative U.S.-China relations and strong checks from China played a role at the time. In this environment, Taiwan had to pursue an appropriate 'balancing' between the United States, China, and Southeast Asian countries. However, since the inauguration of the Trump administration, strategic competition between the U.S. and China has been maximized, creating a new space for Taiwan's foreign policy. This is because the U.S. valued cooperation with Taiwan in the process of embodying the 'Indo-Pacific Strategy' to curb China's rise. The New Southbound Policy promoted by the Tsai Ing-won administration is different from the existing Southbound policies in that it seeks to link with the U.S. India-Pacific Strategy and attempts to advance to South Asian countries such as India. From an international political point of view, the Tsai Ing-won administration's New Southbound Policy can be interpreted as a 'bandwagoning' to the United States, not a balanced strategy between the U.S. and China. Strategic competition between the U.S. and China is expected to intensify for a considerable period of time in the future, and honeymoon between Taiwan and the U.S. are also expected to continue. Taiwan's bandwagoning strategy, which actively pursues a link between the New Southbound Policy and the India-Pacific Strategy, is also expected to be maintained.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.35-77
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• 2023

As the amendment to the Personal Information Protection Act, which newly established the basis for the right to request transmission of personal information, was promulgated through the plenary session of the National Assembly, MyData, which was previously applied only to the financial sector, could spread to all fields. The right to request transmission of personal information is the right of the information subject to be guaranteed for the realization of MyData. However, since the right to request transmission of personal information stipulated in the Personal Information Protection Act is designed to be applied to all fields, not a special field such as the medical field, it has many shortcomings to act as a core basis for implementing MyData in Medicine. Based on this awareness of the problem, this paper compares and analyzes major legal trends related to the right to portability of personal health information at home and abroad, and examines the limitations of Korea's Personal Information Protection Act and Medical Act in realizing Medical MyData. Under the Personal Information Protection Act, the right to request transmission of personal information is insufficient to apply to the medical field, such as the scope of information to be transmitted, the transmission method, and the scope of the person obligated to perform the transmission, etc.. Regulations on the right to access medical information and transmission of medical records under the Medical Act also have limitations in implementing the full function of Medical My Data in that the target information and the leading institution are very limited. In order to overcome these limitations, this paper prepared a separate and independent special law to regulate matters related to the use and protection of personal health information as a measure to improve the legal system that can effectively guarantee the right to portability of personal health information, taking into account the specificity of the medical field. It was proposed to specifically regulate the contents of the movement and transmission system of personal health information.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.105-162
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• 2020

In the pandemic of infectious disease, restrictions of individual liberty have been justified in the name of public health and public interest. In March 2020, the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea passed the revised bill of the 「Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act.」 The revised bill newly established the legal basis for forced testing and disclosure of the information of confirmed cases, and also raised the penalties for violation of self-isolation and treatment refusal. This paper examines whether and how these individual liberty limiting clauses be justified, and if so on what ethical and philosophical grounds. The authors propose the theories of the philosophy of law related to the justifiability of liberty-limiting measures by the state and conceptualized the dual-aspect of applying the liberty-limiting principle to the infected patient. In COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the infected person became the 'Patient as Victim and Vector (PVV)' that posits itself on the overlapping area of 'harm to self' and 'harm to others.' In order to apply the liberty-limiting principle proposed by Joel Feinberg to a pandemic with uncertainties, it is necessary to extend the harm principle from 'harm' to 'risk'. Under the crisis with many uncertainties like COVID-19 pandemic, this shift from 'harm' to 'risk' justifies the state's preemptive limitation on individual liberty based on the precautionary principle. This, at the same time, raises concerns of overcriminalization, i.e., too much limitation of individual liberty without sufficient grounds. In this article, we aim to propose principles regarding how to balance between the precautionary principle for preemptive restrictions of liberty and the concerns of overcriminalization. Public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic requires a population approach where the 'population' rather than an 'individual' works as a unit of analysis. We propose the second expansion of the harm principle to be applied to 'population' in order to deal with the public interest and public health. The new concept 'risk to population,' derived from the two arguments stated above, should be introduced to explain the public health crisis like COVID-19 pandemic. We theorize 'the extended harm principle' to include the 'risk to population' as a third liberty-limiting principle following 'harm to others' and 'harm to self.' Lastly, we examine whether the restriction of liberty of the revised 「Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act」 can be justified under the extended harm principle. First, we conclude that forced isolation of the infected patient could be justified in a pandemic situation by satisfying the 'risk to the population.' Secondly, the forced examination of COVID-19 does not violate the extended harm principle either, based on the high infectivity of asymptomatic infected people to others. Thirdly, however, the provision of forced treatment can not be justified, not only under the traditional harm principle but also under the extended harm principle. Therefore it is necessary to include additional clauses in the provision in order to justify the punishment of treatment refusal even in a pandemic.