As 5 women were executed on 30 December, Amnesty International condemned
South Korea's secretive and arbitrary death penalty system and called on
the President-elect to take steps to abolish the death penalty.

The women were executed, alongside 17 men, without advance warning in prisons
across the country. It is unclear why the authorities chose 30 December to
carry out mass hangings, after a two-year period without executions.

Ministry of Justice officials are reported to have said that the executions
were needed to maintain security and that there were too many prisoners
under sentence of death.

"The selection of prisoners for execution appears to be arbitrary and the
lack of advance warning is extremely cruel, both to the prisoners and to
their families," Amnesty International said.

The organization is calling on President-elect Kim Dae-jung, who takes
office next February, to support the abolition of the death penalty in law.
Pending abolition, Amnesty International urges the authorities to end the
secrecy surrounding executions.

Some 50 prisoners are under sentence of death in South Korea, most of them
convicted of murder. They include prisoners said to have been ill-treated
during police questioning and who may not have had a fair trial.
Executions are carried out sporadically and prisoners live in constant
fear, never knowing when they will be executed.

Former President Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death in August 1996,
partly for the killings of pro-democracy protesters at Kwangju in 1980. His
sentence was later commuted and in December 1997 he was released from
prison.