Origins of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea: global and domestic causes

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the human rights movement has become an integral part of South Korea’s civil society, and its success has been so remarkable that the U.N. Higher Commissioner for Human Rights praised the Republic of Korea, saying that it has an “excellent reputation in the international human rights system” (Arbour 2008: 2). Though lacking long-standing historical roots in human rights movements in comparison with countries in the West, Korea saw the rise and development of the human rights movement in the 1970s and 1980s when numerous students, workers, and dissidents called for the liberty and security of the person, the freedom of assembly, and the right to form trade unions. In large part, the human rights movement was an indispensable element of the pro-democracy movement in Korea. Yet it must not be reduced to merely an outcome of the antirepression movements that occurred under authoritarian regimes. The successful institutionalization of the human rights movement is also firmly anchored in the rise of new social movements (e.g. the women’s movement) in Korea as well as in the diffusion of human rights discourse worldwide (Chung 2002, 2005; Neary 2002; Koo and Ramirez 2009).1