Legal Mechanisms of Thought Control Through Anticommunism in South Korea: Focusing on the National Security Law

Abstract

This article examines South Korea’s National Security Law (NSL) as a legal mechanism of thought control and repression. Despite the country’s democratic transition since 1987, the NSL has remained intact as a tool for suppressing political dissent and institutionalizing state violence. The Korean Constitutional Court has played a pivotal role in legitimizing this system by interpreting the basic free and democratic order as an ideology that merges liberal democracy with a market economy, while simultaneously restricting freedom of thought and expression. Thus, the Court’s adoption of militant democracy (jeontujeok minjujuui) has enabled the dissolution of political parties, criminalization of dissent, and reinforcement of authoritarian legal structures. The NSL, which originates from the Public Order Preservation Law of the Japanese colonial era, and its postwar function in suppressing leftist movements, unionization, and civil liberties, extends its repressive reach beyond criminal law to encompass state surveillance, coercive ideological conversion, and mass purges. This article also addresses the failure of transitional justice in South Korea, which continues to uphold the NSL, reproducing the conditions for ideological stigmatization. Ultimately, this article argues that South Korea’s legal and constitutional order must undergo a fundamental transformation. The abolition of the NSL alone is insufficient; a broader dismantling of anticommunist thought control mechanisms is imperative. Without this comprehensive restructuring, South Korea will remain trapped in a dual-state, where nominal rule of law coexists with coercive thought control.