South Korean court disbands the leftist Unified Progressive Party

South Korea's Constitutional Court yesterday ruled to disband a small leftist party accused of supporting North Korea at the cost of national security.

The ruling comes about 13 months after the Ministry of Justice filed for the Unified Progressive Party to be dissolved after its lawmaker Lee Seok-ki and other members were arrested in August last year on charges of plotting to overthrow the government by means of an armed insurrection.

"The UPP, with a hidden agenda to adopt North Korea's socialism, organised meetings to discuss a rebellion. The act goes against the basic democratic order of the Constitution," Park Han Chul, president of the Constitutional Court, said in reading out the ruling, according to Yonhap News Agency. "There is no other alternative to banning the UPP as the party causes real harm," Park added.

UPP leader Lee Jung-hee said after the ruling: "Democracy has crumbled." "The time of darkness has begun when freedom of speech and freedom of association are completely deprived," she said.

She blasted President Park Geun-hye for having "turned the nation backward into a dictatorship".

Kyodo