November 30, 2004: the prospects in the National Assembly for a bill to abolish the death penalty are looking brighter than ever, as a majority of 152 lawmakers in the 299-seat National Assembly having already put their names to it, The Korea Times wrote on November 24.
Moreover, unlike at the 15th and 16th Assemblies where the bill could not be presented at the plenary session because it failed to pass the Legislation and Judiciary Committee, 10 of the 15 lawmakers in the committee now stand in favor of the bill, which would practically mean a smooth road for the bill, at least in the unicameral legislature.
Considering the nature of politics, the only unstable factor remaining at this point is public opinion.
Rep. Yoo In-tae, who was himself once sentenced to death as a student activist in 1974 under the authoritarian rule of Park Chung-hee, led the bill into the Assembly this time. He admitted the hurdle of public opinion to The Korea Times during a seminar on the abolition of capital punishment and legislation for life imprisonment on November 22 at the Assembly's Members' Office Building.
``In fact, public opinion is still unfavorable toward this move. But as has been the case in other countries that successfully abolished the penalty, I think there is a real possibility (for the bill to pass) this time," he said.
At the seminar organized by the Pan Religious Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty and others who have long been active in the campaign, two unique guests from Japan and the United States drew special attention.
Yoshihiro Yasuda, a Japanese lawyer ardently against capital punishment and in charge of defending Shoko Asahara, founder and leader of Aum Shinrikyo, said he was once against life imprisonment as he considered it a cruel and inhumane punishment. ``But it's still better in that it only takes away freedom instead of life itself. The legislation would also be helpful in persuading the public to agree with the abolishment of the death penalty, in that life imprisonment is as cruel a punishment," he said.
The speech by Renny Cushing, former member of the U.S. House of Representative and now executive director of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights and a steering committee member of the World Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, was perhaps the most moving for audiences as Cushing's father was murdered in 1988.
Stressing the need to not just abolish the death penalty but also help victims, Cushing argued that: ``Our opposition is grounded not so much upon our concern with what the death penalty does to killers, but because of what the death penalty does to us, to society.  We believe that a replication by the state of the deadly violence that took our loved ones from us make us all killers. And from our victim identity, we do not want to be killers."