Abstract
This chapter presents an overview of and an argument about the progress of human rights and the quality of democracy in South Korea in the last three decades. The author’s line of thinking consists of four propositions: First, since 1987 there has been reasonable progress of civil liberties within a well-established legal, institutional, and administrative framework for human rights; second, despite these achievements, there has recently been a disturbing trend of reversal in the realization of human rights; third, there are a number of different frameworks for the interpretation of the current human rights situation, with important implications for the quality of democracy; and fourth, we may need a new framework of thought to properly understand the current state of affairs in human rights and the ‘human rights-democracy’ nexus in South Korea. This chapter necessarily takes a historical perspective to produce a useful if sweeping overview which provides a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the subject. It is intended to offer a critique of the conventional, prevailing frameworks, aiming for a proper understanding of the South Korean debate on the ‘human rights-democracy’ nexus in the context of the question of democratic quality. The analysis provides the reader with a pointer for thinking about the prospects of human rights and democracy in the foreseeable future.
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Cho, HJ. (2018). The Progress of Human Rights and the Quality of Democracy in South Korea. In: Mosler, H., Lee, EJ., Kim, HJ. (eds) The Quality of Democracy in Korea. Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63919-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63919-2_5
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