Analysis and Prospect of North Korean Legislation System - Focused on the 'Legislation Law' of North Korea - (북한의 법제정(입법) 체계의 분석 및 전망 - '법제정법'을 중심으로 -)
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- Journal of Legislation Research
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- no.53
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- pp.9-59
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- 2017
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Recently, the aspect of regulating the legal system in North Korea has increased in quantity and shows the improvement of the evaluation of the lack of systematic consistency in the past. North Korean legislation has been negatively criticized for its lack of function and role of the legislative body and ambiguity of the legal system. In particular, the newly adopted "Legislation Law" in relation to the revision of the legislative system of North Korea contains important and clear contents to understand the legislative system and procedures of North Korea. The contents of the "Legislation Law" can be found a glimpse of the process by which the framework and procedures of the North Korean legislative process are organized more systematically. The North Korean legislation provides legal and institutional grounds for promoting internal and external policies under the Kim jong-un's regime. North Korea is focused on the nuclear issue, so there is limited information on other areas. In light of this, the purpose of this study is to examine the legislative theory and system of North Korea, and outline the theoretical basis of North Korea's emphasis on strengthening socialist judicial life, the socialist legal system, and the state theory of socialist rule of law. In addition, it can be analysed the content of actual legal reform in light of North Korea's legislative theory and system. In the study, it will examine the legislative system of North Korea and its characteristics by examining the legislative process and legislative process of North Korea. Moreover, it can be compared the contents of the Legislative Law of China with the legislative process of the DPRK and examine its characteristics. We will look at the challenges to the legislative system in North Korea and look into the future direction of the legislation. Kim jong-un's announcement of the revised legislation until recently through the publication of the 2016 Supplementary Codes is an important data for the current state of the North Korean legislation. This is because it confirms the content of the laws and regulations already known through "Democratic Chosun(a newspaper issued by North Korea Cabinet)'s statutory interpretation." However, in the case of laws and regulations related to the North Korean political system, it is still a remnant of the lagging legislation that the announcement is delayed, or it remains undisclosed or confidential. North Korean laws are developed and changed according to the changes of the times. In particular, the contents of the maintenance of foreign investment and the foreign economic law system and related internal legal system are found to change in accordance with the development direction of the socioeconomic system. If the direction of Kim jong-un's regime is to be expanded to the path of reform and opening up in the economic sector, the revision of the related laws and regulations will accelerate. Securing the transparency and objectivity of the North Korean legislative process and procedures will help to broaden the understanding of the inter-Korean legal system and to seek institutional measures for inter-Korean integration. In the future, in-depth research on the North Korean legal system will be emphasized as a basis for ultimately forming a unified Korea's legal system.
Hong Kong's protests, which began in June 2019 with Anti-Extradition Bill Protests, have already lasted for months, and the demonstrations have a significant impact on China and Hong Kong as a whole. The protests began in opposition to the Hong Kong government's revision of the extradition bill, but in substance, it has a strong nature as a test of China's "One Country Two Systems" policy. Since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative District on July 1, 1997, the primary legal norm between China and Hong Kong is the Basic Law of Hong Kong. However, conflicts of legal standards have occurred frequently due to the difference between socialism and the capitalist legal system, and there has been a continuous controversy over the interpretation of the Basic Law of Hong Kong. Moreover, the core of the legal conflict between China and Hong Kong has always been China's "One Country Two Systems" policy. This paper examined the issues related to the "Right of Legal Interpretation" of Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the characteristics and interpretation rights of the Basic Law of Hong Kong, the direct election system of the administrative minister, the implementation of the universal suffrage, and the legislative issues of the application of Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law. Furthermore, this paper also investigated the laws and systems newly introduced by China to solve these legal conflicts. The integration of the legal system of the divided state is a complicated process beyond the combination of the legal system by integrating the multiple legal systems that have separated for a long time under heterogeneous political, economic, and social networks. Moreover, the adjustment and integration of various legal systems under the premise of a single Constitution is the starting point for the actual inclusion of various fields after the unification as well as unification process and provides a basis for achieving full integration. Therefore, the unification of the divided countries should be the first step in a long journey toward becoming a practical one, not a goal itself. It is crucial to reduce trial and error and cost, and achieve stable unification in our unification process in Korea, by learning lessons from the contradictions and conflicts that appear in the "One Country Two Systems" unification between China and Hong Kong.
The Preservation Decree (1933) is the basic law relevant to the conservation of cultural property of colonial Chosun, and invoked clauses from the Old History Preservation Act (1897), the Historic Scenic Sites Natural Monument Preservation Act (1919), and the National Treasure Preservation Act (1929), which were all forms of Japanese Modern Cultural Heritage Law, and actually used the corresponding legal text of those laws. Thus, the fact that the Preservation Decree transplanted or imitated the Japanese Modern Cultural Heritage Law in the composition of the constitution can be proved to some extent. The main features and characteristics of the Preservation Decree are summarized below. First, in terms of preservation of cultural property, the Preservation Decree strengthened and expanded preservation beyond the existing conservation rules. In the conservation rules, the categories of cultural properties were limited to historic sites and relics, while the Preservation Decree classifies cultural properties into four categories: treasures, historic sites, scenic spots, and natural monuments. In addition, the Preservation Decree is considered to have advanced cultural property preservation law by establishing the standard for conserving cultural property, expanding the scope of cultural property, introducing explicit provisions on the restriction of ownership and the designation system for cultural property, and defining the basis for supporting the natural treasury. Second, the Preservation Decree admittedly had limitations as a colonial cultural property law. Article 1 of the Preservation Decree sets the standard of "Historic Enhancement or Example of Art" as a criteria for designating treasures. With the perspective of Japanese imperialism, this acted as a criterion for catering to cultural assets based on the governor's assimilation policy, revealing its limitations as a standard for preserving cultural assets. In addition, the Japanese imperialists asserted that the cultural property law served to reduce cultural property robbery, but the robbery and exporting of cultural assets by such means as grave robbery, trafficking, and exportation to Japan did not cease even after the Preservation Decree came into effect. This is because governors and officials who had to obey and protect the law become parties to looting and extraction of property, or the plunder and release of cultural property by the Japanese continued with their acknowledgement,. This indicates that cultural property legislation at that time did not function properly, as the governor allowed or condoned such exporting and plundering. In this way, the cultural property laws of the Japanese colonial period constituted discriminative colonial legislation which was selected and applied from the perspective of the Japanese government-general in the designation and preservation of cultural property, and the cultural property policy of Japan focused on the use of cultural assets as a means of realizing their assimilation policy. Therefore, this suggests that the cultural property legislation during the Japanese colonial period was used as a mechanism to solidify the cultural colonial rules of Chosun and to realize the assimilation policy of the Japanese government-general.
Summer crops grown in uplands are greatly diversified and show a large variation in difference with year and location in Korea. The principal factor for the variation is weather, in which precipitation and temperature play a leading role and such a weather factors as wind, sun lights also influence production of the summer crops. Since artificial control of weather conditions as a main stress factor for crop production is almost impossible, it must be minimized only by an improvement of cultivation techniques and crop improvement. Precipitation plays a role as one of the most important factor for production of the summer crops and it is considered in two aspects, drought and excess moisture. This country, which belongs to monsoon territory, necessarily encounter one of this stress almost every year, even though the level is different. Therefore, the facilities for both drought and excess moisture are required, but actually it is not easy to complete for them. On this account, crops tolerant to drought, excess moisture and pests should be considered for establishing summer crops. For the districts damaged habitually every season, adequate crops should be cultured and appropriate method of planting, drainage and weed control should be applied diversely. Injuries by temperature is mainly attributed to lower temperature particularly in late fall and early spring, although higher temperature often causes some damages depending upon the kind of crops. Sometimes, lower temperature in summer season playa critical role for yield reduction in the summer crops. However, certain crops are prevented to some extent from this kind of stress by improving varieties tolerant to cold, hot weather or early maturing varieties. As is often the case, control of planting time or harvesting is able to be a good management for escaping the stress. Lodging, plant diseases and pests are considered as a direct or indirect damage due to weather stress, but these are characters able to be overcome by means of crop improvement and also controlled by other suitable methods. In addition, polytical supports capable of improving constitution of agriculture into modern industry is urgently required by programming of data for the damages, establishment of damage forecasting and compensation system.
The current state of performance halls in South Korea is closely related to the performance art and culture of the nation as the culture of putting on and enjoying a performance is deeply rooted in public culture and arts halls representing each area at the local government level. Today, public culture and arts halls have multiple management purposes, and the subjects of their management are in the public domain including the central and local governments or investment and donation foundations in overwhelming cases. Public culture and arts halls thus have close correlations with the institutional aspect of cultural policies as the objects of culture and art policies at the central and local government level. The full-blown era of public culture and arts halls opened up in the 1980s~1990s, during which multi-purpose performance halls of a similar structure became universal around the nation. Public culture and arts halls of the uniform shape were distributed around the nation with no premise of genre characteristics or local environments for arts, and this was attributed to the cultural policies of the military regime. The Park Chung-hee regime proclaimed Yusin that was beyond the Constitution and enacted the Culture and Arts Promotion Act(September, 1972), which was the first culture and arts act in the nation. Based on the act, a five-year plan for the promotion of culture and arts(1973) was made and led to the construction of cultural facilities. "Public culture and arts" halls or "culture" halls were built to serve multiple purposes around the nation because the Culture and Arts Promotion Act, which is called the starting point of the nation's legal system for culture and arts, defined "culture and arts" as "matters regarding literature, art, music, entertainment, and publications." The definition became a ground for the current "multi-purpose" concept. The organization of Ministry of Culture and Public Information set up a culture and administration system to state its supervision of "culture and arts" and distinguish popular culture from the promotion of arts. During the period, former President Park exhibited his perception of "culture=arts=culture and arts" in his speeches. Arts belonged to the category of culture, but it was considered as "culture and arts." There was no department devoted to arts policies when the act was enacted with a broad scope of culture accepted. This ambiguity worked as a mechanism to mobilize arts in ideological utilizations as a policy. Against this backdrop, the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, a multi-purpose performance hall, was established in 1978 based on the Culture and Arts Promotion Act under the supervision of Ministry of Culture and Public Information. There were, however, conflicts of value over the issue of accepting the popular music among the "culture and arts = multiple purposes" of the system, "culture ≠ arts" of the cultural organization that pushed forward its establishment, and "culture and arts = arts" perceived by the powerful class. The new military regime seized power after Coup d'état of December 12, 1979 and failed at its culture policy of bringing the resistance force within the system. It tried to differentiate itself from the Park regime by converting the perception into "expansion of opportunities for the people to enjoy culture" to gain people's supports both from the side of resistance and that of support. For the Chun Doo-hwan regime, differentiating itself from the previous regime was to secure legitimacy. Expansion of opportunities to enjoy culture was pushed forward at the level of national distribution. This approach thus failed to settle down as a long-term policy of arts development, and the military regime tried to secure its legitimacy through the symbolism of hardware. During the period, the institutional ground for public culture and arts halls was based on the definition of "culture and arts" in the Culture and Arts Promotion Act enacted under the Yusin system of the Park regime. The "multi-purpose" concept, which was the management goal of public performance halls, was born based on this. In this context of the times, proscenium performance halls of a similar structure and public culture and arts halls with a similar management goal were established around the nation, leading to today's performance art and culture in the nation.
Land was originally communized by a community in the primitive society of Korea, and in the age of the ancient society SAM KUK-SILLA, KOKURYOE and PAEK JE-it was distributed under the principle of land-nationalization. But by the occupation of the lands which were permitted to transmit from generation to generation as Royal Grant Lands and newly cleared lands, the private occupation had already begun to be formed. Thus the private ownership of land originated by chiefs of the tribes had a trend to be gradually pervaded to the communal members. After the, SILLA Kingdom unified SAM KUK in 668 A.D., JEONG JEON System and KWAN RYO JEON System, which were the distribution systems of farmlands originated from the TANG Dynasty in China, were enforced to established the basis of an absolute monarchy. Even in this age the forest area was jointly controlled and commonly used by village communities because of the abundance of area and stocked volume, and the private ownership of the forest land was prohibited by law under the influence of the TANG Dynasty system. Toward the end of the SILLA Dynasty, however, as its centralism become weak, the tendency of the private occupancy of farmland by influential persons was expanded, and at the same time the occupancy of the forest land by the aristocrats and Buddhist temples began to come out. In the ensuing KORYO Dynasty (519 to 1391 A.D.) JEON SI KWA System under the principle of land-nationalization was strengthened and the privilege of tax collection was transferred to the bureaucrats and the aristocrats as a means of material compensation for them. Taking this opportunity the influential persons began to expand their lands for the tax collection on a large scale. Therefore, about in the middle of 11th century the farmlands and the forest lands were annexed not only around the vicinity of the capital but also in the border area by influential persons. Toward the end of the KORYO Dynasty the royal families, the bureaucrats and the local lords all possessed manors and occupied the forest lands on a large scale as a part of their farmlands. In the KORYO Dynasty, where national economic foundation was based upon the lands, the disorder of the land system threatened the fall of the Dynasty and so the land reform carried out by General YI SEONG-GYE had led to the creation of ensuing YI Dynasty. All systems of the YI Dynasty were substantially adopted from those of the KORYO Dynasty and thereby KWA JEON System was enforced under the principle of land-nationalization, while the occupancy or the forest land was strictly prohibited, except the national or royal uses, by the forbidden item in KYEONG JE YUK JEON SOK JEON, one of codes provided by the successive kings in the YI Dynasty. Thus the basis of the forest land system through the YI Dynasty had been established, while the private forest area possessed by influential persons since the previous KORYO Dynasty was preserved continuously under the influence of their authorities. Therefore, this principle of the prohibition was nothing but a legal fiction for the security of sovereign powers. Consequently the private occupancy of the forest area was gradually enlarged and finally toward the end of YI Dynasty the privately possessed forest lands were to be officially authorized. The forest administration systems in the YI Dynasty are summarized as follows: a) KEUM SAN and BONG SAN. Under the principle of land-nationalization by a powerful centralism KWA JEON System was established at the beginning of the YI Dynasty and its government expropriated all the forests and prohibited strictly the private occupation. In order to maintain the dignity of the royal capital, the forests surounding capital areas were instituted as KEUM SAN (the reserved forests) and the well-stocked natural forest lands were chosen throughout the nation by the government as BONG SAN(national forests for timber production), where the government nominated SAN JIK(forest rangers) and gave them duties to protect and afforest the forests. This forest reservation system exacted statute labors from the people of mountainious districts and yet their commons of the forest were restricted rigidly. This consequently aroused their strong aversion against such forest reservation, therefore those forest lands were radically spoiled by them. To settle this difficult problem successive kings emphasized the preservation of the forests repeatedly, and in KYEONG KUK DAI JOEN, the written constitution of the YI Dynasty, a regulation for the forest preservation was provided but the desired results could not be obtained. Subsequently the split of bureaucrats with incessant feuds among politicians and scholars weakened the centralism and moreover, the foreign invasions since 1592 made the national land devasted and the rural communities impoverished. It happned that many wandering peasants from rural areas moved into the deep forest lands, where they cultivated burnt fields recklessly in the reserved forest resulting in the severe damage of the national forests. And it was inevitable for the government to increase the number of BONG SAN in order to solve the problem of the timber shortage. The increase of its number accelerated illegal and reckless cutting inevitably by the people living mountainuos districts and so the government issued excessive laws and ordinances to reserve the forests. In the middle of the 18th century the severe feuds among the politicians being brought under control, the excessive laws and ordinances were put in good order and the political situation became temporarily stabilized. But in spite of those endeavors evil habitudes of forest devastation, which had been inveterate since the KORYO Dynasty, continued to become greater in degree. After the conclusion of "the Treaty of KANG WHA with Japan" in 1876 western administration system began to be adopted, and thereafter through the promulgation of the Forest Law in 1908 the Imperial Forests were separated from the National Forests and the modern forest ownership system was fixed. b) KANG MU JANG. After the reorganization of the military system, attaching importance to the Royal Guard Corps, the founder of the YI Dynasty, TAI JO (1392 to 1398 A.D.) instituted the royal preserves-KANG MU JANG-to attain the purposes for military training and royal hunting, prohibiting strictly private hunting, felling and clearing by the rural inhabitants. Moreover, the tyrant, YEON SAN (1495 to 1506 A.D.), expanded widely the preserves at random and strengthened its prohibition, so KANG MU JANG had become the focus of the public antipathy. Since the invasion of Japanese in 1592, however, the innovation of military training methods had to be made because of the changes of arms and tactics, and the royal preserves were laid aside consequently and finally they had become the private forests of influential persons since 17th century. c) Forests for official use. All the forests for official use occupied by government officies since the KORYO Dynasty were expropriated by the YI Dynasty in 1392, and afterwards the forests were allotted on a fixed standard area to the government officies in need of firewoods, and as the forest resources became exhausted due to the depredated forest yield, each office gradually enlarged the allotted area. In the 17th century the national land had been almost devastated by the Japanese invasion and therefore each office was in the difficulty with severe deficit in revenue, thereafter waste lands and forest lands were allotted to government offices inorder to promote the land clearing and the increase in the collections of taxes. And an abuse of wide occupation of the forests by them was derived and there appeared a cause of disorder in the forest land system. So a provision prohibiting to allot the forests newly official use was enacted in 1672, nevertheless the government offices were trying to enlarge their occupied area by encroaching the boundary and this abuse continued up to the end of the YI Dynasty. d) Private forests. The government, at the bigninning of the YI Dynasty, expropriated the forests all over the country under the principle of prohibition of private occupancy of forest lands except for the national uses, while it could not expropriate completely all of the forest lands privately occupied and inherited successively by bureaucrats, and even local governors could not control them because of their strong influences. Accordingly the King, TAI JONG (1401 to 1418 A.D.), legislated the prohibition of private forest occupancy in his code, KYEONG JE YUK JEON (1413), and furthermore he repeatedly emphasized to observe the law. But The private occupancy of forest lands was not yet ceased up at the age of the King, SE JO (1455 to 1468 A.D.), so he prescribed the provision in KYEONG KUK DAI JEON (1474), an immutable law as a written constitution in the YI Dynasty: "Anyone who privately occupy the forest land shall be inflicted 80 floggings" and he prohibited the private possession of forest area even by princes and princesses. But, it seemed to be almost impossible for only one provsion in a code to obstruct the historical growing tendecy of private forest occupancy, for example, the King, SEONG JONG (1470 to 1494 A.D.), himself granted the forests to his royal families in defiance of the prohibition and thereafter such precedents were successively expanded, and besides, taking advantage of these facts, the influential persons openly acquired their private forest lands. After tyrannical rule of the King, YEON SAN (1945 to 1506 A.D.), the political disorder due to the splits to bureaucrats with successional feuds and the usurpations of thrones accelerated the private forest occupancy in all parts of the country, thus the forbidden clause on the private forest occupancy in the law had become merely a legal fiction since the establishment of the Dynasty. As above mentioned, after the invasion of Japanese in 1592, the courts of princes (KUNG BANGG) fell into the financial difficulties, and successive kings transferred the right of tax collection from fisherys and saltfarms to each KUNG BANG and at the same time they allotted the forest areas in attempt to promote the clearing. Availing themselves of this opportunity, royal families and bureaucrats intended to occupy the forests on large scale. Besides a privilege of free selection of grave yard, which had been conventionalized from the era of the KORYO Dynasty, created an abuse of occuping too wide area for grave yards in any forest at their random, so the King, TAI JONG, restricted the area of grave yard and homestead of each family. Under the policy of suppresion of Buddhism in the YI Dynasty a privilege of taxexemption for Buddhist temples was deprived and temple forests had to follow the same course as private forests did. In the middle of 18th century the King, YEONG JO (1725 to 1776 A.D.), took an impartial policy for political parties and promoted the spirit of observing laws by putting royal orders and regulations in good order excessively issued before, thus the confused political situation was saved, meanwhile the government officially permittd the private forest ownership which substantially had already been permitted tacitly and at the same time the private afforestation areas around the grave yards was authorized as private forests at least within YONG HO (a boundary of grave yard). Consequently by the enforcement of above mentioned policies the forbidden clause of private forest ownership which had been a basic principle of forest system in the YI Dynasty entireely remained as only a historical document. Under the rule of the King, SUN JO (1801 to 1834 A.D.), the political situation again got into confusion and as the result of the exploitation from farmers by bureaucrats, the extremely impoverished rural communities created successively wandering peasants who cleared burnt fields and deforested recklessly. In this way the devastation of forests come to the peak regardless of being private forests or national forests, moreover, the influential persons extorted private forests or reserved forests and their expansion of grave yards became also excessive. In 1894 a regulation was issued that the extorted private forests shall be returned to the initial propriators and besides taking wide area of the grave yards was prohibited. And after a reform of the administrative structure following western style, a modern forest possession system was prepared in 1908 by the forest law including a regulation of the return system of forest land ownership. At this point a forbidden clause of private occupancy of forest land got abolished which had been kept even in fictitious state since the foundation of the YI Dynasty. e) Common forests. As above mentioned, the forest system in the YI Dynasty was on the ground of public ownership principle but there was a high restriction to the forest profits of farmers according to the progressive private possession of forest area. And the farmers realized the necessity of possessing common forest. They organized village associations, SONGE or KEUM SONGE, to take the ownerless forests remained around the village as the common forest in opposition to influential persons and on the other hand, they prepared the self-punishment system for the common management of their forests. They made a contribution to the forest protection by preserving the common forests in the late YI Dynasty. It is generally known that the absolute monarchy expr opriates the widespread common forests all over the country in the process of chainging from thefeudal society to the capitalistic one. At this turning point in Korea, Japanese colonialists made public that the ratio of national and private forest lands was 8 to 2 in the late YI Dynasty, but this was merely a distorted statistics with the intention of rationalizing of their dispossession of forests from Korean owners, and they took advantage of dead forbidden clause on the private occupancy of forests for their colonization. They were pretending as if all forests had been in ownerless state, but, in truth, almost all the forest lands in the late YI Dynasty except national forests were in the state of private ownership or private occupancy regardless of their lawfulness.