In August, the Korean Constitutional Court ruled a provision of the country’s climate law unconstitutional. The verdict, the first of its kind in Asia, will have huge implications for the region, where similar climate litigation cases are underway. Earth.Org spoke with some of the young activists involved in the case and the attorney who represented them about their four-year court battle and the significance of their efforts for South Korea and the region.
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Young activists and environmental groups fighting for a better planet across Asia now have a success story to look up to. In August, a top court in South Korea ruled the country’s measures to fight climate change insufficient for protecting the rights of its citizens, marking the end of a four-year legal battle and Asia’s first climate litigation ruling of its kind.
The implications are huge, as many legal experts have pointed out. But, most importantly, the courageous acts and perseverance demonstrated by the young plaintiffs prove that people’s voice matters – and it can have a remarkable impact.
‘Unconstitutional’
On August 29, the South Korean Constitutional Court declared a provision of the country’s climate law unconstitutional. The court unanimously ruled that Article 8, Paragraph 1 of the Framework Act on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth is not in conformity with the Constitution. It gave the government until February 28, 2026 to amend the law.
The legislation in question contains a series of key policies aimed at addressing climate change and promoting sustainable development, including legally binding emissions reduction targets, renewable energy promotion, energy efficiency and sustainable transportation.
Article 8, Section 1 of the Framework prescribes an emissions reduction target of “not less than 35%” compared to 2018 levels to be reached by decade’s end. However, the framework does not set any legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2031. This absence means the government cannot guarantee the protection of future generations, a right engrained in its Constitution, the court ruled. However, it dismissed other claims challenging the Carbon Neutrality Basic Plan and the enforcement decrees of the Framework Act on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth.
Attorney Sejong Youn, who represented the case, said the ruling of unconstitutionality “has binding authority over all state institutions by law, and it is the duty of the National Assembly and the government as mandated by law.”
“The core reason for the unconstitutionality is the regulation of reduction targets that impose an excessive burden without considering the rights of future generations,” he added.
Young activists wept for joy on the court steps following the verdict. In a joint statement, the plaintiffs said the ruling represented “meaningful progress in protecting everyone’s rights beyond the climate crisis” and marked an “achievement for all those who have been excluded from the national climate response process while confronting the climate crisis.”
In a statement issued shortly after the verdict, the government said it “respected” the decision and it plans to “faithfully implement follow-up measures.”
The Children Behind It All
Nineteen young activists first brought the case to the court in March 2020. They were part of youth environmental organization Youth 4 Climate Action, a group spearheading the Korean segment of the global school climate strike movement, and aged between 14 and 19 at the time of the filing.
Hyunjung Yoon was one of them. She was only 15 when she joined the Youth Climate Litigation as a plaintiff, motivated by the need to “connect with more people” sharing her concerns about the climate crisis.
“I first came face to face with the severity of the climate crisis in the summer of 2019,” Yoon told Earth.Org in an email interview in September. “I happened to watch a documentary about the climate crisis. I was shocked because it was so different from what I had learned about global warming in school. I used to think that global warming was something that would happen in 100 years, that I didn’t need to worry about it, and that it only affected polar bears. But the documentary told me that we have less than 10 years to go, and that meant I couldn’t escape the effects of the climate crisis.”
The eye-opening documentary marked a turning point in the young girl’s life. She became vegan and started picking up trash, but quickly realised that collective action – and not individual practices – was the only way to ignite much needed policy change.
“I looked for something I could do, and when I found out that youths like me were protesting in Korea, I decided to protest in Ulsan, where I live. I picked up boxes from the recycling bin, wrote down what I wanted to say with crayons and paints, and started picketing in front of my school, in front of the city hall, and in front of the park,” she explained. Discussions with the superintendent, city councillors, and the vice mayor in her community all went unheard, she said. “[T]hey weren’t interested in addressing the climate crisis, they just took pictures with me and posted them on Facebook.”
Borim Kim recalled a similar feeling of hopelessness when trying to “spread the word” on climate change. The young activist has been leading Youth 4 Climate Action and working on the litigation since late 2019.
“[W]e have long demanded that policymakers of government, legislative and executive, enact laws to stop the climate crisis,” Kim told Earth.Org in an email interview in September. “Sometimes we picketed in the streets, sometimes we stood to spread the word, sometimes we skipped school and took to the streets, sometimes we organized walkouts led by hundreds of youth. We met with policymakers in person to demand that they reduce fossil fuels, create better-oriented greenhouse gas reduction plans, and secure social safety nets. But the changes were always too small, and relying on their voluntary will was unlikely to solve the problem to the point where we would be safe enough.”
Inspired by climate litigation cases underway around the world, the group began considering doing something similar in their home country, an unprecedented move, and one that many lawyers at first discouraged, Kim said.
“[W]hen we were looking into the possibility of filing a constitutional petition in [2019], we were told that it would be impossible, that it would be difficult to be recognized as a plaintiff, and we were worried that the Constitutional Court would even take up the case because there was no such case in Asia, let alone Korea,” the activist recalled.
A long search for counsels to represent them in the legal claim eventually led to Attorney Youn. He is the director of Plan 1.5, a Seoul-based non-profit that “focuses on aligning the Government’s climate policies with the Paris Agreement climate target” by providing legal support to civil society groups going after big polluters.
“[W]hen we met [the plaintiffs], it did not take long to understand that this is not something we can say no to just because it was a difficult case,” Youn told Earth.Org in September. “It was challenging in the legal sense, but all of the fact and the arguments were undeniably legitimate.”
Refining the lawsuit took “a little over a year and a half,” Kim recalled, adding that lawyers and media partners were involved in the process.
“The lawyers we met in the process of creating the campaign believed in the possibility of change, and naturally, the discussion about whether climate litigation was possible in Korea began,” she said. “We realized that while there are many different types of judicial actions we could take, we could clearly argue that the fact that the country’s emissions reductions were not properly set and implemented violated our fundamental rights. I didn’t think a constitutional challenge was a sure thing, but I also didn’t think it was a lost cause.”
The team referred back to previous climate litigation in the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, and the United States, though it had to find a way to create a case in line with the Korean context – something that was never attempted before, Kim said.
“We spent a lot of time organizing and researching the history of the Constitutional Court, the justices’ precedents, and so on, which often coincided with the time I spent outside of the courtroom building the campaign, and it was exciting to see the potential for change that a constitutional complaint could create in the face of no change,” the activist said, recalling the hardships of familiarizing with legal and bureaucratic processes paired with the excitement of seeing the case take shape.
“We were really happy when the case was referred to the court shortly after we filed it. It felt like the case was really starting to take off,” she told Earth.Org. Their claim was later combined with three additional lawsuits filed by civil society groups, bringing the total number of plaintiffs to 255.
‘Only the Beginning’
According to Attorney Youn, the ruling “opens up important opportunity to enhance the overall climate action in Korea” and will likely “trigger a broader and stronger trend of judicial victories on climate change.”
Pointing at the anti-dictatorship and democracy movements of the 1980s, and at the civil, labor, and gender rights movements in the 1990s and 2000s, Youn said he is hopeful the South Korean civil society will once again succeed in “leading and pushing” for change, this time in the name of climate justice.
For the young plaintiffs, the verdict is only the beginning.
“The Constitutional Court’s ruling was necessary because we need to strengthen our national climate action to a level that protects our fundamental rights,” said Yoon. “Now that the ruling has given us more opportunities to improve our climate response, we will work to move beyond the ways in which we have failed. We still have opportunities to reduce the risks of the climate crisis, and there are things we can do. I want to continue this movement for as long as I can.”
Kim echoed a similar sentiment. He told Earth.Org that while “the ball is now in the court of legislation and administration” to ensure the law is amended accordingly, Youth 4 Climate Action’s efforts to raise public awareness on the climate crisis will continue.
“We will work to ensure that we do not repeat the failed approach of the past, where national reductions are made in a way that removes the context of people’s lives,” the activist said, adding that “only a climate movement organized in this way can make a difference.”
The case’s impact on public opinion in South Korea has been huge, as demonstrated by the more than 30,000 people that took to the streets in Seoul days after the verdict to demand more action on climate change.
They marched under the slogan “Let’s Change the World, Not the Climate,” which is representative of what the ruling may signify not just for South Korea but also for Asia, where similar cases are under way.
“South Korea’s Constitutional Court has sent an unequivocal message that climate action is a legal duty,” said Co-Director of the Climate Litigation Network Sarah Mead. “As the first ruling of its kind in Asia, this hugely significant victory will have a positive ripple effect throughout the region and provide further support to the dozens of similar cases that are currently pending across the world.”
Japan, where climate litigation is still a novelty, last month saw a group of young activists file its first-ever youth climate lawsuit. The 16 plaintiffs, aged between 15 and 29, argue that 10 major Japanese thermal power companies contribute to climate change and thus infringe upon some fundamental human rights.
In Taiwan, a climate litigation case is awaiting resolution in its Constitutional Court. The lawsuit was filed in 2021 by Greenpeace East Asia, the Environmental Jurists Association, and four individual plaintiffs, who accuse Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs’ (MOEA) Regulation for Large Power Consumers of being unambitious and in breach of the country’s climate laws. According to the regulation, high electricity users are obliged to shift 10% of their contracted capacity to renewable energy.
In Indonesia, 14 individuals have lodged a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission, alleging that the government is infringing on their constitutional rights by not implementing adequate mitigation and adaptation measures as well as measures to limit the temperatures rise to below 1.5C, as set in the legally binding Paris Agreement. The plaintiffs, aged between 7 and 59, claim to have faced “life-threatening hazards, reduced physical and mental well-being, increased health risks, food and water insecurity, along with disruption to their education and livelihoods” because of climate change.
For the two young Korean activists, there is no doubt that the South Korean case will have a snowball effect.
“We hope that seeing change happen in South Korea will inspire others who are pursuing similar judicial action for climate justice,” said Kim. “In fact, our case was built on the victories of other countries that came before us, so we’re hopeful that there will be examples of change that will be even better than ours.”
“Young climate activists around the world are building their own movements in different environments, but I believe we are in this together,” said Yoon. “Without the victories of other climate lawsuits in the Netherlands, Germany, Montana, and elsewhere, the victory of the Korean climate lawsuit would not have been possible.”
Featured image: Youth4ClimateAction.
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