Top Stories 24/04/03 Action sought against Korea's far-right candidate

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Action sought against Korea's far-right candidate

Jayu Party member Park Jin-jae is accused by rights groups of illegally breaking into migrants’ homes

Delivery workers drive forklift trucks along a street in Seoul on Aug. 18, 2023. Korea’s current immigration policy leads to a hateful sentiment against undocumented migrant workers. (Photo: AFP)

By UCA News reporter

Published: April 04, 2024 12:21 PM GMT

Updated: April 04, 2024 12:24 PM GMT

Migrant workers and human rights groups in South Korea have urged the government to arrest and investigate a far-right political candidate for illegally breaking into migrants’ homes.

In a joint press conference in front of the National Police Agency in Seoul, the group called for the arrest and investigation of Park Jin-jae, a minor far-right Jayu Party member, the Korea Times reported on April 3.

The group called Park a “manhunter” who infringed on the police’s authority and alleged him of hate crimes against minorities based on a supremacist agenda like that of the Ku Klux Klan of the United States.

“The government should legalize the status of undocumented migrants and take due administrative procedures to protect their rights,” the group said.

Park and Citizen’s Protection Solidarity, a far-right civic group that he belongs to, have forcibly interrogated and randomly detained foreign nationals they assumed to be unregistered or undocumented migrants, the group alleged.

The illegal detentions and investigations from Park and his team were based on their belief that such illegal migrants needed to be handed over to police.

Reportedly, Park and his supporters had uploaded the videos of the so-called "arrests" on YouTube and TikTok and exposed the identities of the supposedly undocumented migrants without their consent.

Park is a candidate in the upcoming April 10 general elections from Daegu’s Buk A-constituency.

The activist group said that Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon of the Christian Council of Korea who also serves as a pastor for Sarang Jeil Church is the leader of the ultraright group, the Korea Times reported.

Allegedly, Park has made numerous xenophobic comments and has been a vocal opponent of the construction of a mosque in the southern city of Daegu.

Choi Jung-kyu, a lawyer leading the activist group, said that Park’s alleged aggressive and threatening behavior including breaking into people's homes and illegally detaining foreign nationals are all violations of fundamental rights granted in the Korean Constitution.

“Regardless of one’s nationality and infringement of immigration laws, everyone in Korea has the right to human dignity and liberty under the Constitution,” Choi said.

The group noted that Park’s actions could be regarded as a hate crime as he detained and questioned foreign nationals at random and forced them to show him their identification cards.

The group also alleged that Korea’s current immigration policy leads to a hateful sentiment against undocumented migrant workers despite their contribution to the domestic economy.

Udaya Rai, head of the Migrants’ Trade Union, pointed out that migrant workers were in the country because “Korea's society needs them and they are members of this society,” like the rest of the people.

“Yet, Korea’s immigration policies keep them in an undocumented status scenario in inhumane working conditions and treat them as criminals,” Rai alleged.

According to the Ministry of Justice, there are over 400,000 undocumented immigrants in Korea as of 2023.