24 August 2013

Stories from 24 August 2013

Prison Overcrowding in Indonesia

  24 August 2013

Leopold Sudaryono tackles the problem of prison overcrowding in Indonesia. In 2011, there were 144,000 prisoners in the country. Prisons were reported to be overcrowded by 45 per cent on average. Among the factors contributing to the problem are lack of alternative sentencing options at trial and delays in the...

Charges Dropped for South Korean Indicted for Retweeting North Korean Messages

  24 August 2013

Park Jeong-geun, a photographer/activist who was sentenced to 10 months jail term for satirically re-tweeting messages from a North Korean official account, was found not guilty [ko]. A flurry of tweets congratulating him were sent to Park's Twitter account (@seouldecadence), who tweeted after the verdict [ko] that there is a chance the prosecutor may...

Suspicions Arose Over North Korean Defector-Turned-Lawmaker

  24 August 2013

During a parliamentary hearing on the spy agency election interference scandal, Cho Myung-chul, a ruling party lawmaker famous for being the first North Korean defector to take a senior government post in South Korea, went under fire for making snide and offensive remarks discriminating against people from certain province. More criticisms mount as...