Here is the latest of the North Korea restaurant worker defector case:
Attorneys from the Lawyers for a Democratic Society hold a press conference outside the Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday. [SHIN IN-SEOP]A Seoul court held a hearing Tuesday after a group of lawyers challenged the legitimacy of the South Korean government holding a group of North Korean restaurant workers who defected in April in a state protection facility.
Last month, the Lawyers for a Democratic Society, also referred to as Minbyun, filed a petition with the Seoul Central District Court questioning whether the defectors came to the South out of their own free will, after the country’s top spy agency denied an interview with the defectors.
The defectors themselves did not attend the first hearing at the Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday afternoon, but their legal representatives did. On the same day, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) decided that the 13 North Korean restaurant workers would not be sent to a defector resettlement facility but rather be kept in a protection facility that it operates.
The group of 12 female workers and their male manager who worked at Ryugyong in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, one of Pyongyang’s many overseas restaurants in China, defected to the South in early April. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but I am still suspicious of these progressive lawyers who seem like they are more about representing North Korean interests than the best interests of these defectors.
The ROK has a history of protectionism and it appears that is what they are trying to do with their legal services sector to protect them from foreign competition:
A bill to open Korea’s legal services market to law firms based in the European Union and the United States was put on hold a day ahead of the final vote by the Legislation and Judiciary Committee due to strong backlash from those countries’ ambassadors.
On Thursday, ambassadors from the European Union, United States, United Kingdom and Australia visited the committee chairman and strongly protested that the bill goes against the free trade agreements between those countries and Korea. They said Korea would even risk trade conflicts if the bill is passed without amendments.
The Foreign Legal Consultant Act, which would allow the final stage of opening the local legal services market, was scheduled to be up for vote at the committee on Friday, the last step before submitting the bill to a plenary session of the National Assembly.
The four ambassadors, including U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert and U.K. Ambassador Charles Hay, pointed to a clause banning foreign law firms from owning a stake greater than 49 percent in a joint venture as unfair, arguing that the rule would unfairly protect Korean law firms.
They also urged lawmakers to ease or abolish a qualification requirement for foreign law firms. Under the current bill, a foreign law firm hoping to launch a joint venture with a Korean law firm is required to have more than three years of experience in legal services. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
