KOREA PUSHING FOR OFFICIAL DECLARATION ON ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY

South Korea is pushing for a presidential declaration on the abolition of capital punishment, the state human rights watchdog said, resuming efforts toward doing away with the long-disputed measure, in step with the growing international trend.
"We are working to bring an announcement by President Moon Jae-in on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty around the time of this year's 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," Shim Sang-don, chief of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)'s policy and education bureau, told reporters.
Such a moratorium would be one step in the formal process toward abolition. The watchdog has started working-level discussion with the Ministry of Justice for action plans, Shim added. South Korea retains capital punishment as part of state-sanctioned practices for punishing serious crimes. But it has not carried out a death sentence on prisoners on death row since December 1997, nor has the country officially declared its discontinuance.