In August, hundreds of South Korean climate activists won a long court battle. The young plaintiffs had accused their government of failing to provide protection from the threat of climate change, a constitutional right. Earth.Org spoke with two young activists involved in the case – Hyunjung Yoon and Borim Kim – about their four-year court battle and the significance of their efforts for South Korea and the region.
—
Hyunjung Yoon
19 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.
Earth.Org: Last month, you scored a historic win when the Korean Constitutional 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. The court, however, dismissed other claims challenging the Carbon Neutrality Basic Plan and the enforcement decrees of the Framework Act on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth. What was your first reaction when you heard the verdict, and what repercussions do you think the verdict will have?
Hyunjung: When I first heard the ruling, I had ambivalent feelings. I was relieved that we hadn’t lost, but also disappointed that not all of the laws were unconstitutional. I was depressed for a few days after the ruling. But when I read the ruling, I changed my mind a bit. Courts are for reacting, not for creating change. When there is social support, when the mood is right, the courts follow the changes in society. The ruling of this constitutional complaint is not the best outcome for our society, but a maginot Line that cannot be retreated from. The outcome of the case is that a country’s climate response must protect the fundamental rights of its citizens and take into account those who are more vulnerable to the climate crisis but are unable to participate in the political process.This ruling sets a standard for the minimum climate response that should be upheld in our society. It sets a minimum standard for climate action in our society. While this threshold may seem tenuous at the moment, we can only move forward. We will continue to raise the bar.
Earth.Org: What led you to join Youth4ClimateAction and subsequently become a plaintiff for the case, and what were you hoping to achieve? How did you first become aware of climate change?
Hyunjung: I first came face to face with the severity of the climate crisis in the summer of 2019. 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. Since then, I’ve started taking everyday practices to try to make a difference. I became a vegan and started picking up trash. I gradually realised that the climate crisis cannot be solved by everyday practices, and that policy changes are needed. 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. I met with the superintendent, city councillors, and the vice mayor in my community, but they weren’t interested in addressing the climate crisis, they just took pictures with me and posted them on Facebook. I realised that I needed to connect with more people and be strategic, and that’s how I met Youth 4 Climate Action and joined the group. In March 2020, I joined the Youth Climate Litigation as a plaintiff.
After joining the litigation as a plaintiff, I didn’t just stand still. I kept looking for things that I could do outside of the courtroom, and in the process, I became more and more aware of the impacts of the climate crisis, which was scary. At first, it was just a sense that it was less than a decade away, that it would affect me in my lifetime, but in 2020, there was a big typhoon in Ulsan. There was a massive power outage, schools were closed, electricity poles and trees were down, and broken objects littered the streets. The nuclear power plant less than 20 kilometres from my house was also shut down by the typhoon. This was the moment when the climate crisis entered my life.
This summer, I watched a stream right in front of my house swell to a frightening level after only two hours of rain. It was frightening to see so much rain fall in such a short time after hearing about it on the news. The dark water was swirling. My house is over 30 years old, and last year a landslide hit a house similar to mine nearby.
As the risks of the climate crisis have grown, I have become more aware of my own vulnerabilities. The most important thing for me is that no one is left behind in the process of responding to the climate crisis. It’s not about reducing greenhouse gases, it’s about making sure everyone is safe.
Earth.Org: What are your hopes for the future of South Korea and the planet and do you see yourself advocating for climate justice for the rest of your life?
Hyunjung: The ruling is not the end. Rather, it is the beginning of the end. The Constitutional Court’s ruling was necessary because we need to strengthen our national climate action to a level that protects our fundamental rights. 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.
It’s been seven years since we started working together as Youth 4 Climate Action. We chose to be our own agents of change. We saw that a climate response that erases the lives of the people who will live through the crisis will not stop it. We believe that climate action is possible only if everyone speaks about their own crisis. And only a climate movement organized in this way can make a difference.
Earth.Org: What message would you like to share with your fellow young climate activists around the world?
Hyunjung: The climate crisis won’t be solved by any one country doing particularly well, but it won’t be solved if even one country doesn’t get on board. Young climate activists around the world are building their own movements in different environments, but I believe we are in this together. 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. I would like to thank my fellow activists who are doing their best in their respective places, because in the end, we are all fighting this crisis together, and each and every one of them is very valuable and precious. I am also doing my best in my position, and I believe that change is possible if we all work together.
Check this out next: 5 Ways Kids Can Help Shape a More Sustainable Future
Borim Kim
Borim Kim is an activist at Youth 4 Climate Action. While she was not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, she has been leading the group and working on the litigation since late 2019.
Earth.Org: What is Youth 4 Climate Action and how did you get involved?
Borim: Youth 4 Climate Action is a climate movement organization with a direct-involvement that acts to make practical changes that will keep our lives safe so that no one’s life is excluded from the climate crisis. Focusing on the strategy and messages, we are shifting toward the world we want and drawing realistic changes in policy/industry decision-makers. About 1,000 members are joining our group, mainly youth nationally.
We have been carrying out global climate strikes with Fridays For Future since 2019 and are also filed a climate constitutional petition and led a four-year, five-month litigation campaign.
We design actions to completely transform the entire system of society against the current climate crisis created by making huge profits by emitting greenhouse gases and exploiting regions, labor, and generations. We overturn the structure of discrimination and exploitation and draw a society where everyone’s life can be protected from the climate crisis. For this purpose, our goal is to establish a social safety net and create a reduction measure to limit the temperature rise at a 1.5C.
Earth.Org: Where did the idea of a lawsuit come from, what inspired it, and how did you come to the conclusion that litigation was the right thing to do? How long did it take to prepare for the court case, how many people worked on it and what kind of help did you get?
Borim: To reduce the risk of the climate crisis, we have long demanded that policymakers of government, legislative and executive, enact laws to stop the climate crisis. 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.
Climate litigation was already underway around the world, and we saw calls for climate action through judicial action in various places, so we kept thinking about whether it could be done in Korea. In Korea, most lawyers said it was not possible.
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. 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. We started with the small possibility of speaking with rights.
Preparing for the court case involved discussing the possibility of filing a climate litigation, starting at the [20]18 meeting and continuing through the summer of [20]19. It was a little over a year and a half, although it was defined in a very fluid way. At that point, our lawyers would create the legal brief, and then our media partner, GSCC, and the plaintiffs would work together on external messaging and strategic communications.
Earth.Org: Last week’s verdict was the first of its kind in Asia. Without any past examples to guide you, how did you go about the litigation? Who helped you understand and deal with the legal side of things and was there ever a moment when this felt too big for you (and your fellow activists) or were you always confident of what you were doing and that you were doing the right thing?
Borim: We were able to refer to previous cases in the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, and the United States, but none of the campaigns to stop the climate crisis that we had been working on up until the time we filed the lawsuit had similar examples of change. I think we felt that even if we had good examples of previous cases, we would still have to create them in the context of the Korean situation.
In fact, when we were looking into the possibility of filing a constitutional petition in 19, 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. But this constitutional challenge was not just a meaningful attempt for us to try once, or just one of our campaign tactic. We wanted to face an outcome that would protect our safe lives in the midst of the climate crisis. 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.
The legal side of things, because we were in frequent communication with our lawyers, and because we were not just participants in this case as plaintiffs filing papers, but we were people who were making a difference, I think the effort to understand the minimum necessary legal stuff was a recurring one for us, and it was a recurring one over the course of the four and a half years of the case, and I think we learned the most about the legal side of things not when we were trying to understand the case at the beginning, but when we were trying to figure out what we could do inside the courtroom. 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.
Earth.Org: Have you had a chance to reflect on the repercussions that the verdict will have outside of South Korea and how do you hope it will inspire and help other young activists fight for climate justice in their own country?
Borim: Working for climate justice is also about keeping our lives safe, but change is hard to come by in the real world. The ruling in this case doesn’t represent the best of climate action, but it does represent a red line for national climate action that we can’t go backwards. We hope that seeing change happen in South Korea will inspire others who are pursuing similar judicial action for climate justice. 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.
Earth.Org: What’s next for Youth4ClimateAction?
Borim: The ball is now in the court of legislation and administration. South Korea must establish the 2035 NDC by 2025 and amend the Basic Act on Carbon Neutrality. 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. We will again gather the voices of ordinary citizens to tell us what the minimum necessary to protect our lives is, and continue to present it as a non-[regressive] threshold as the country’s climate response is reset.
Check this out next: Educating Kids About Climate Change: An Interview With Young Environmentalist Romario Valentine
The post Two Young Activists on Their Efforts to Spearhead Climate Action in South Korea appeared first on Earth.Org Kids.