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NHRCK Proactively Approves Enactment of Special Bill to Support Landmine Victims
Date : 2007.02.28 00:00:00
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The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) reviewed the special bill on support for landmine victims (“landmine victim support bill” proposed by Chan-Seok Park, Uri Party), for which the National Defense Committee of the National Assembly requested an opinion. The NHRCK stated that it fully approved the bill because “enactment of a special law to support landmine victims who could not receive legitimate compensation for damages due to legal and realistic constraints is in full conformity with the Korean Constitution’s spirit to guarantee people’s basic rights to the utmost possible extent.”
The purport of the landmine victim support bill is to provide some modicum of medical assistance and compensation to victims or their bereaved families and thus help ensure their livelihood in cases where people who were injured or family members of people who died after the truce of the Korean War due to landmines failed to exercise their rights to receive compensation or received insufficient compensation from the state. On December 22, 2006, the National Defense Committee of the National Assembly requested an opinion from the NHRCK prior to legislating the bill.
The bill (i) defines subjects as persons who died or were injured due to landmine accidents from the ceasefire of the Korean War to three years before the date of promulgation of the act and limits the scope of bereaved family members to the spouses and lineal descendants and ascendants of the victims who died; (ii) installs the Victim Support Deliberation Committee under the Minister of National Defense for deliberation and decision-making on matters pertaining to support for landmine victims; (iii) pays medical assistance to those who received treatment or need continued treatment because of injuries from landmine accidents and pays compensation to the bereaved families of dead victims; (iv) pays reduced compensation, etc. according to the degree of negligence on the part of victims concerning landmine accidents; and (v) subtracts a certain amount from assistance in consideration of the amount of compensation and the ratio of acknowledged damage in the cases of those who received previous compensation from the state in connection with landmine accidents.
The NHRCK reviewed the landmine victim support bill on the basis of applicable laws including the Constitution and State Compensation Act. Based on such review, it was in full favor of legislation of the bill because enactment of a special act to provide relief and support to landmine victims who were unable to receive due compensation because of legal and realistic limitations is consistent with the Constitution’s spirit to guarantee the people’s basic rights to the maximum extent. However, the NHRCK opined that it was advisable to modify and supplement some provisions to include passages for such purposes as (i) specifically stipulating in the special act the compensation calculation standards; and (ii) expanding the scope of bereaved family members to include heirs to property under the Civil Act.
Compensation under the landmine victim support bill is similar in nature to monetary compensation under other comparable special laws (Democratization Compensation Act, Samcheong Education Unit Compensation Act, and so on). Accordingly, the Commission determined that it would be desirable to specifically provide for the standards to calculate compensation [Article 4(2) of the bill], as in the case of other special laws, rather than commissioning full power to the chairperson. In addition, the NHRCK decided that it would be advisable to expand the scope of members of bereaved families to include heirs to property under the Civil Act as in the case of other similar special laws because there exists no special reason to include only spouses and linear ascendants and descendants in this bill.
