Rev. Kim Kyung Nam, Anselmo Lee Seong Hoon, Jennifer Hyesun Chang

This paper aims to introduce a basic outline of human rights developments by briefly examining the history, legal structure, and the present situation of human rights in South Korea.

I. Human Rights Developments in the Historical Context

1) Failure of Modernization Efforts and Japanese Occupation (1894 - 1945)

A generation of Japanese economic, political, and military interference culminated in Korea's formal annexation to Japan on August 22, 1910. Annexation inaugurated a thirty-six year period of social and economic change directed to the ends of the Japanese state that left a bitter legacy to this day. It disrupted the indigenous political movement to create a modern Korean nation-state. By the end of Japanese rule in 1945, there was not one aspect of Korean life that lay unaffected by the harsh colonial policies of Japan. Brutal assimilation and mobilization policies created havoc in the social, political, and economic life of the people. The basic freedoms and the freedom of the press were suspended. Prepublication censorship and a ban on the use of the Korean language were severely enforced. The divide and rule policy compounded ideological division and intensified class contradictions that continue to influence the Korean society to this day.

The Japanese annexation of Korea and the loss of sovereignty provoked an intense reaction by the Korean people and their leaders. Fierce resistance against Japanese colonialism continued internally and by exiled leaders abroad. The Japanese retaliated with ruthless force and many were tortured, imprisoned or conscripted. In a humiliating and atrocious development related to military conscription, the Japanese even organized the so-called "comfort corps," made up of young Korean women sent to the war-front to service the sexual needs of the Japanese troops. The struggle by former comfort women for compensation and a formal apology from the Japanese government still continues to this day.

2) Liberation, National Division and War (1945 - 1953)

August 15, 1945 was a day of jubilation throughout the Korean Peninsula. It opened the way for Koreans themselves to shape their own destiny for the first time since 1905. Koreans differed, however, in their visions of a post-colonial state and society. The Japanese rule had engendered the socio-economic, political, and ideological cleavages within the peninsula that made national unity problematic. Korean society in 1945 was a maelstrom of old and new classes, political groups, and ideologies. Liberation had also created a geopolitical vacuum in northeast Asia that neither of the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, was willing to relinquish to the other, or to the Koreans themselves. In less than five years, the interaction of these forces, internal and external, led to national division and the devastating civil war.

Three years of fighting solved nothing and brought ruin and intense suffering to both halves of the peninsula. The toll in human lives was staggering as up to 2.5 million people were killed or gone missing. Half of the industrial capacity in the south was destroyed while Pyongyang was reduced to ashes and rubble. The war left its scars on an entire generation of survivors, a longing for separated family members, and a legacy of mistrust and fear of each other that continues to affect the internal politics as well as in inter-Korean relations.

3) The Rise of Authoritarian Regimes (1948 - 1993)

Since 1948, the politics of south Korea have been characterized by two opposing forces. Controlling the society at the top has been an increasingly oppressive and systematic authoritarian coalition of political, bureaucratic, economic, and security groups under the dominance of a single dictatorial leader. Confronting this massif of power, has been a growing and ever more diverse and sophisticated coalition of opposition groups, within and outside the country, calling for the democratization of the society