March 13-19
China
China’s Supreme People’s Court released nine typical cases involving the protection of minors’ rights and interests. The court has issued many typical cases to guide lower courts, but this is the first time it has released a special batch focused on minors. China has amended and publicized a series of laws in recent years to enhance the judicial protection of minors’ rights and interests. The amended Law on the Protection of Minors that took effect last June and the Law on Promoting Family Education that took effect this year are both repeatedly cited in the cases.
China’s Cybersecurity Administration released draft Rules for the Protection of Minors Online to solicit public comment. China Law Translate (pay walled) published a quick take on the draft.
Hong Kong
The U.K.-based NGO Hong Kong Watch received a formal warning from Hong Kong police accusing it of “seriously interfering” in Hong Kong affairs and jeopardizing China’s national security by lobbying foreign countries to impose sanctions against China or Hong Kong. In a letter, police said the group could face a fine of HK$100,000 and its chief executive, Benedict Rogers, could face three years in prison under the National Security Law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 after months of anti-government protests.
Japan
Japanese prosecutors have appealed against a court’s verdict in the case of former senior Nissan executive Greg Kelly. The Tokyo District Court recently cleared Kelly of most of the charges he faced related to alleged under-reporting of the compensation of his former boss, Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn. The court convicted Kelly of under-reporting Ghosn’s compensation for just one of the eight years cited in the charges, and sentenced him to a suspended six-month sentence. Kelly, who claimed his innocence, also has appealed. Since the sentencing, he has returned to his home in Nashville.
Koreas
Willem Adema, senior economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), said it is “premature“ for South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol to disband the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, one of his key election pledges. Yoon has said that the ministry is no longer needed because “women being discriminated against while men are being given better treatment has become a thing of the past.” However, Adema said that while not all other OECD countries have ministries of gender equality, “gender inequalities in other OECD countries are often not as large as in Korea. Hence, the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality seems rather premature and gives completely the wrong policy signal.”
Taiwan
Taiwan’s Supreme Court upheld a High Court decision to sentence a man convicted of soliciting nude photographs from more than 80 underage girls to 104 years and 2 months in prison. The defendant, Lin Ho-chun (林和駿), 26 years old, was enrolled in a post-graduate program at National Taiwan University’s College of Medicine when the allegations first surfaced in 2017. The Taipei District Court originally sentenced him to 3 years and 4 months in prison, treating multiple violations of the same law as one offense under the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act (兒童及少年性剝削防制條例). However, the High Court ruled that each solicitation for nude photos constituted a separate offense, and Lin was found to have violated the act 80 times.
Labor advocacy groups demonstrated outside the Ministry of Labor to demand improved family care leave. Tsai Ing-wen promised when campaigning for president that she would equalize family care leave between the public and private sectors, but her administration has failed to do so. The protesters called for increasing paid family care leave in the private sector from seven days a year to 14 days and revising the 2002 Act of Gender Equality in Employment (性別工作平等法). However, the Ministry of Labor has said that this would impose a heavy burden on Taiwan’s many medium-sized and small enterprises. A parallel demonstration outside the ministry at the same time demanded better treatment of live-in migrant caregivers.