By almost any measure, South Korea is a thriving liberal democracy. It has held free and fair elections since 1987. Raucous, if peaceable, protests routinely fill its streets. But one measure is far from liberal: its National Security Law punishes, with up to seven years in prison, anyone who praises the gangster regime to the north. The law was adopted in 1948 to safeguard the new country from communist infiltration from North Korea. Under Park Geun-hye, the country's conservative president who took office in 2013, 119 were arrested on suspicion of breaking the law in her first year. The continued use of such draconian powers has prompted calls from the un to abolish them.
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