ABSTRACT
The South Korean voluntary lawyers’ association, Lawyers for a Democratic Society (Minbyun), celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2008. Formed within a year of the June 1987 uprising, Minbyun constituted a group of 51 lawyers who had been active as human rights lawyers during the preceding authoritarian rule of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan. In the span of two decades, Minbyun grew over ten-fold in membership and rose drastically in profile when one of its former members, Roh Moo Hyun, became president of South Korea in 2002. While much scholarship has been devoted to the growth of civil society in South Korea, very little attention has been paid to the role of lawyers in relation to social movements in South Korea. This chapter seeks to rectify this oversight by focusing on Minbyun, a subset of lawyers who have been critical as social movement actors.
