SW News: Church representatives in South Korea have joined other religious and civil organizations to call on the government to pass bills that would abolish the death penalty that is currently before the parliament.

At a joint news conference, religious and civic organizations urged the government to transform South Korea into a truly abolitionist country, the Catholic Peace Broadcasting Corporation said on January 2.

The news conference commemorated the last execution of 23 prisoners, which took place on December 30, 1997, and the subsequent moratorium on executions in South Korea.

“A total of nine proposed laws were pending with the Legislation and Judiciary Committee of the National Assembly,” the group said in a press release.

The Special Bill on the Abolition of the Death Penalty was tabled at the National Assembly on October 7, 2021, for the ninth time since it was first proposed on December 7, 1999. Only some 30 of the 300 parliamentarians supported the bill.

As many as 61 people are still on death row in South Korea, according to the New York-based rights organization Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA), which reported one death sentence in 2018.

South Korea joined the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1990, but the Second Optional Protocol, which seeks to abolish the death sentence, has not yet been ratified, according to PGA.