Defending women in Korean courts
▻http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=272899
“As long as I can remember, women were always a socially disadvantaged group in Korea,” Kim said in an interview at her office in Seocho, southern Seoul, Wednesday. “Being a female lawyer, it was just something I had to do.”
After passing the bar exam, Kim joined a legal team that was pushing to abolish the country’s patriarchal family registry system, or “hojuje,” while still at the two-year judicial training institute. Kim and her team eventually won the case at the Constitutional Court in 2004. From there, it was a natural transition to other gender issues that remain unsolved in the legal realm.
The most prominent case Kim represented recently was the landmark Constitutional Court ruling against the country’s abortion ban in April. Kim and a group of female lawyers at Lawyers for a Democratic Society ― representing an ob-gyn doctor in Gwangju who was criminally charged for carrying out abortions ― argued the 66-year-old abortion ban acted as a tool of oppression, citing real-life examples of how the ban exposed women to overpriced and dangerous medical procedures as well as blackmail from ill-wishing partners.
#avortement #Corée #femmes #droit