HELPING SOUTH KOREA ON ITS SLOW PROGRESS TOWARDS ABOLITION

on World Day Against the Death Penalty, the World Coalition took part in a South Korean event aimed at bringing lawmakers closer to the abolition of capital punishment. Parliamentarians, religious leaders and members of human rights organisations including Amnesty International gathered at the National Assembly Library in Seoul to discuss the prospect of abolishing capital punishment in South Korea. American law professor Speedy Rice represented the World Coalition. In an unusual move, National Assembly Speaker Kim Hyong O opened the event. The speaker, who is bound to represent the legislature as a whole, would not have attended an abolitionist event a few years ago, Prof. Ahn Kyong-When, Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (above), told Rice. "It would have amounted to taking sides", Rice explained. South Korea's top Christian and Buddhist clerics, who have formed a multi-denominational religious groups against the death penalty, also took part.