This Week in Asian Law

May 8-14


China

Hong Kong

Japan

  • The discovery of numerous forged signatures in a petition calling for the resignation of Governor Hideaki Omura of Aichi Prefecture has raised concerns about personal information protection in the context of political petitioning. A police investigation found that 83% of the signatures on a petition for Omura’s resignation were invalid, of which about 90% may have been written by the same people. An executive of the group spearheading the recall petition admitted to forging finger stamps and signatures.

  • A Japanese man has been arrested for posting female athletes’ pictures taken from a sports TV program onto his porn website without permission. In November 2020, the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) and six other sporting bodies set up call centers to collect information about the distribution of sexually suggestive images of athletes. Police said this is their first arrest based on a JOC report.

  • The Lower House of Japan’s Diet passed a bill that would make it easier to hold a national referendum to amend the constitution. The bill goes next to the Upper House where it is expected to be approved and become law by next month. The revisions include increasing the number of polling stations, allowing people to cast their ballots at railway stations and commercial facilities. It also includes a mandate for enacting legislative restrictions within three years on the amount of money that can be spent on referendum-related advertising. But any revisions eventually presented in a referendum would first have to be approved by the Commission on the Constitution, a powerful Diet group tasked with debating constitutional issues.

  • The Tokyo High Court found an Oita man liable for racial discrimination by posting vicious racist comments about Koreans living in Japan on his blog, and ordered him to pay ¥1.3 million in damages. The plaintiff’s lawyer said the ruling is expected to have a deterrent effect on hate speech.

Koreas

  • According to an analysis of Google’s 2020 Transparency Report, Google removed 54,330 pieces of content at the request of the South Korean government last year, nearly six times as much as it removed in the United States and over 50 times as much as in Japan, raising concerns about excessive state meddling in online expression. Experts said that requests for content deletion are rising in Korea because of the country’s system allowing pursuit of private relief through administrative agencies (in Korean).

  • A survey found that migrant laborers in South Korea work an average of 50 hours a week, and receive lower monthly pay than they did last year. Women migrant workers are among the most disadvantaged in terms of working hours, wages, and working conditions, and 2.3% reported being sexually harassed or assaulted at work. The Korea Institute of Health and Social Affairs surveyed close to 1,500 people who were selected based on nationality, gender, and line of work.

  • South Korea's oceans ministry rolled out tougher regulations of whale sales in line with its efforts to curb illegal whaling activities in local waters. Under the new rules, all whales captured illegally will be destroyed; whales found ashore will be banned from being sold and can only be used for education and research purposes. South Korea has been trying to curb commercial whaling activities as a member of the International Whaling Commission.

Taiwan

  • Taiwan’s Control Yuan called on the Cabinet and several government agencies to address the issue of human rights violations on Taiwanese fishing vessels flying a flag of convenience (FOC). Control Yuan member Wang Mei-yu (王美玉) cited cases of human rights violations last year against migrant crew members on two Taiwanese FOC fishing boats as a result of Covid-19 pandemic-related measures. Migrant crew members were subject to long-term confinement due to a lack of proper quarantine guidelines for FOC vessels. FOC is a business practice whereby merchant ship owners register their vessels in a country other than their own to reduce operating costs, avoid higher taxes, and bypass laws that protect the wages and working conditions of the crew.

  • Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed legal amendments expanding the role of students in school management. Senior high school students now must make up at least 8% of the participants at school management meetings. The amendments expand a system through which students can appeal policies that they believe harm their interests. The changes follow the “spirit” of the Constitutional Court's Interpretation No. 784 (in Chinese), which affirmed students' right to file legal or administrative appeals against school decisions that affect their rights and interests.