Anti-State Organization

반국가단체

A legal concept defined in Article 2 of South Korea's National Security Act, denoting any domestic or foreign organization or group that fraudulently assumes the title of government or aims at rebellion against the State, and possesses a command and leadership system. Since the law's enactment in 1948, South Korean courts have consistently ruled that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea constitutes an anti-state organization, making this definition the conceptual axis around which the entire penal structure of the National Security Act revolves. The 1991 amendment removed the clause that had classified all communist states as anti-state organizations, but the Constitutional Court reaffirmed the provision's constitutionality eight times through 2023.