From the cradle: How kids, newborns, and the unborn jump-started South Korea’s historic climate lawsuit

Choi Hee-woo was a 20-week-old embryo when he joined a landmark climate lawsuit in South Korea. At the time, his mother was planning to make Choi’s older sibling a plaintiff in a lawsuit that argued the South Korean government had not taken sufficient action against climate change. But when she learned that an unborn child could be party to a lawsuit, she nicknamed the child Woodpecker — because she’d heard the bird’s call when she first learned she was pregnant — and signed him up. The case became known as Woodpecker et al. v. South Korea. 

The now nearly 2-year-old boy is one of more than 250 plaintiffs, of all ages, ensuring that the South Korean government does not wait too long to act on its legal commitment to carbon neutrality. Last week, a constitutional court partially sided with Choi and the other plaintiffs, ordering the country’s legislative body to revise its climate law. In 2021, the South Korean National Assembly passed a law requiring the government to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 35 percent by 2030 and to become carbon neutral by 2050. In response to the law, the government set a goal of reducing carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030, which the plaintiffs argued was insufficient to protect their fundamental right to life and a clean environment. 

The court, which examines the constitutionality of laws, ruled that the intermediary 2030 goal was adequate — but it ordered the National Assembly to develop additional concrete plans to ensure that progress continues at a robust pace after 2030, in order to meet the 2050 goal of carbon neutrality. The decision is a partial victory for plaintiffs, and it requires the National Assembly to revise the existing climate law by the end of February 2026. 

“The Korean constitutional court is very conservative,” Byung-Joo Lee, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told Grist. “But the court made it very clear that the climate crisis is a scientific and legal fact, and they acknowledged that the state has a duty to protect people from climate change. It’s a clear, constitutional right of the people.”

The ruling is the first of its kind in Asia and could influence outcomes in Japan and Taiwan, where similar cases are making their way through the courts. Climate lawsuits by young people against state and federal governments around the world have been steadily gaining momentum over the last decade. Earlier this year, the Hawai‘i Department of Transportation entered into a historic settlement with youth plaintiffs who sued the agency for failing to adequately protect their right to a clean environment. Similar cases are pending in Montana, Alaska, Utah, and Virginia. In April, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland’s limited action on climate change was endangering the lives of a group of women over the age of 64, who argued they were particularly susceptible to heat waves. And in 2021, a German court sided with youth who argued that the country’s greenhouse gas reduction goals were insufficient. 

The ruling by South Korea’s constitutional court is “consistent with other court decisions globally that have found a failure to have either adequate or any mid- or long-term targets violates one form or another of protected rights,” said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. The court’s finding that the lack of interim targets is unconstitutional is significant because it ensures that there’s a roadmap for the government to meet its 2050 goal of carbon neutrality. 

“The failure to include [interim goals] can be seen as passing the buck to a generation 20 years down the line,” said Burger. “That’s the problem that the court found with the lack of interim plans, that it puts the burden on some future generation to come up with a solution.”

The lawsuit in South Korea was first filed in 2020 by 19 young people affiliated with Youth 4 Climate Action, a group inspired by Greta Thunberg’s school climate strikes that leads the Korean arm of the movement. When three other similar cases were later filed by other groups, the court consolidated the cases into one, bringing the total number of plaintiffs to 255. About a third of them were children at the time the cases were filed.

“Responding to the climate crisis means reducing its risks, controlling factors that could exacerbate the crisis, and building safety nets to sustain life and society,” said Kim Seo-gyeong, an activist with Youth 4 Climate Action, in a press release. “I look forward to seeing how this constitutional complaint will change the standards for climate response and what transformations it will bring.”   

Burger said the ruling is “likely to inform and influence other judges, especially in the region.” Last month, a group of young people in Japan filed a lawsuit against ten thermal power companies in the country, demanding that the facilities reduce their emissions in line with internationally agreed targets to keep global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). 

“As a significant judicial decision in Asia, the Constitutional Court of South Korea’s decision will have a substantial impact in Japan as well,” said Mie Asaoka, an attorney representing the youth plaintiffs, in a statement. “We are confident that this decision will serve as a powerful catalyst for change in Japan’s judicial landscape.”

Lee, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told Grist that the case has increased awareness about the climate crisis among South Koreans. Since the court has required the National Assembly to revise the climate law, Lee has been urging plaintiffs and climate action groups to begin campaigning lawmakers to enact the most stringent requirements possible.

“Our fight in the constitutional court ended, but our next fight in the Korean Congress is just starting,” said Lee.