Human Rights Questionnaire for 2025 South Korea Presidential Candidates

Dear Presidential Candidates,

Human Rights Watch is an international nongovernmental organization that monitors and advocates for human rights in more than 100 countries. We have been working on human rights issues in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) for more than 30 years.

To ensure that human rights issues and concerns receive the attention they deserve in the presidential election campaign, we are submitting the following 16 questions to the Democratic Party of Korea, the New Reform Party, and People Power Party.

The goal of the questionnaire is to give each of the campaigns the opportunity to provide South Korean voters with the views of their candidate on issues concerning the protection of human rights in South Korea, as well as the human rights of North Koreans.

We hope that you can complete this questionnaire in as much detail as possible to provide voters with your perspectives on these issues.

Please respond by May 20, 2025. After which, we will publish the responses received. Please address any questions and responses about this request (in either Korean or English) to Lina Yoon, Senior Korea Researcher, Human Rights Watch at [contact information redacted].

Thank you very much for your participation in this questionnaire. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours, 

Lina Yoon
Senior Korea Researcher
Asia Division

Human Rights Watch Questions to

Republic of Korea Presidential Candidates

Ahead of June 2025 Election

Emergency Powers and Democratic Safeguards

1. Former President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law on December 3, 2024.
   1. What is your position on the scope of presidential emergency powers under South Korean law?
   2. What legal or constitutional reforms will your government make to the laws related to emergency powers to best protect human rights and democratic institutions? 
       

Freedom of Expression and Media Freedom

2. South Korea’s press-freedom ranking by Reporters Without Borders slipped to 62nd in 2024 from 43rd in 2022.
   1. What are the greatest threats to freedom of expression and media freedom in South Korea, and what steps will your government take to address them?
   2. South Korea’s National Security Law criminalizes positive comments about North Korea and the dissemination of North Korean propaganda. Defamation is a criminal offense focused on whether the statement was in the public interest. How do you assess the National Security Law and criminal defamation laws and their impact on freedom of expression and media freedom?
       

Rights of Women and Girls

3. Gender-based violence, including digital sex crimes, against women and girls is pervasive in South Korea. The abrupt rise of nonconsensual imagery and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled sexual abuse material, or deepfakes, have prompted mass protests; registered cases relating to sexually abusive deepfakes increased 227 percent in 2024. Impunity for digital sex crimes persists despite tougher penalties. Conviction rates remain low, victims often face mistreatment in the criminal legal system, and support services are inadequate.

   What is your proposed policy to ensure women and girls can live free from all forms of violence and harassment, including digital sex crimes? Please detail planned measures to address gender-based violence.

4. In 2024, South Korea retained the widest gender wage gap in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) at 31 percent. The World Economic Forum found that in South Korean women hold fewer than 13 percent of board seats.
   1. What is your position on the country’s gender wage gap and leadership imbalance? What policies will your government implement to end discrimination against women and increase women’s economic and leadership opportunities?
   2. What is your position on the ratification of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention No. 190 on Violence and Harassment?
5. The proposal to abolish the Ministry of Gender and Family was an important campaign issue in 2022.
   1. What is your position on abolishing the ministry?
   2. What policies will you adopt to ensure compliance with South Korea’s international obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), regardless of the Ministry of Gender and Family’s institutional future?
       

Economic Insecurity

6. Household debt in the last quarter of 2024 stood at 91.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), second among 38 major economies. Youth unemployment as of March 2025 reached 7.5 percent. Recent studies show the top 10 chaebols (family-run conglomerates) account about 60 percent of South Korea’s GDP.
   1. What is your diagnosis of the key drivers of South Korea’s rising economic insecurity and inequality?
   2. What concrete measures, such as those related to wages, taxation, housing affordability, and social security, will your government take to reduce inequality and improve people’s economic, social, and cultural rights?
       

Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Law

7. South Korea does not have a single statute protecting people who often face discrimination, including women, older people, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, people with disabilities, and migrants such as North Korean escapees, refugees, and economic migrants. What is your position on enacting a nationwide anti-discrimination act?
    

LGBT Rights

8. Article 92-6 of the Military Criminal Act criminalizes same-sex sexual acts with “a military person” regardless of whether the acts are consensual or happened within or outside of military facilities. What is your position on article 92-6 of the Military Criminal Act?
9. The Supreme Court in 2024 ordered equal health-insurance coverage for same-sex partners. What’s your position on same-sex partnerships for purposes such as health insurance, housing, and taxation?
    

Children’s Rights

10. Discrimination in access to education affects children’s right to education, including children who are refugees, migrants, from North Korea, LGBT, or have disabilities.
    1. What actions will your government take to ensure all children in South Korea have access to inclusive, quality and free primary and secondary education?
    2. What legal, budgetary, and administrative steps will your government take to ensure at least one year of free pre-primary education to fulfill the commitment made as part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals?
11. Girls in South Korea are vulnerable to misinformation, gender-based violence, discrimination, and abuse, early and unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, harmful sexual behavior, and sexual exploitation. Since 2024, South Korean girls were overwhelmingly the target of sexually explicit AI deepfakes.
    1. Should South Korea have comprehensive sexuality education in schools and what steps would you take to achieve this?
    2. What steps will you take to ensure that schools are safe, inclusive environments?
    3. How will your government regulate AI to ensure that technology protects all children’s rights, and is not misused to exploit children?
        

Online Safety, Digital Literacy and Privacy

12. In December 2024, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the UN Convention against Cybercrime. The private sector, human rights organizations, and the UN human rights office expressed widespread concern that the treaty could be used to facilitate human rights violations. The convention will be open for signature at a signing ceremony planned for October 2025 in Vietnam.
    1. What is your position regarding South Korea signing and ratifying the UN Convention against Cybercrime?
    2. What measures will you support to safeguard human rights while countering cybercrime?
        

Rights of Older People

13. South Korea has the highest poverty rate among older people in the OECD.
    1. What will you do to reduce poverty among older people?
    2. What specific measures will you put in place to ensure social security programs are adequate to guarantee every older person an income of at least a living wage?
        

Climate Justice and Environmental Rights

14. Fossil fuels remain South Korea’s main source of carbon emissions. In August 2024, the Constitutional Court ruled that South Korea, the world’s nineth largest carbon emitter in 2023, was violating young people’s rights with its mid-term emission targets.
    1. What emissions-reduction pathway and accountability mechanisms will your government adopt to comply with the ruling? What is your position on South Korea’s reliance on fossil fuels in its power mix?
    2. What is your position regarding South Korea’s responsibility for global deforestation, which is linked to the country’s demand for wood pellets that power its biomass power plants?
        

Human Rights Policy toward North Korea

15. The South Korean National Assembly passed the North Korean Human Rights Act in March 2016, but the North Korean Human Rights Foundation has not been established. North Korean human rights issues remain deeply politicized in the country.
    1. What is your overarching approach to advancing human rights in North Korea while engaging on security and humanitarian issues with the country?
    2. How will you operationalize the North Korean Human Rights Act, including by establishing the foundation, and ensure a depoliticized, consistent policy toward North Korea?
        

Death Penalty

16. South Korea carried out its last execution in 1997, but retains the death penalty in various laws.
    1. What is your position on the death penalty? Will your government repeal or amend laws that prescribe the death penalty for various criminal offenses?
    2. Will your government ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty?