ABSTRACT
By the time the former authoritarian regime gave way to more pluralist democratic politics in Korea after the late 1980s the concept of human rights was almost synonymous with the typical notion of human rights as the individual’s last resort against the state’s repression. To the extent that the ‘mainstream’ or ‘traditional’ view of human rights was clearly defined, however, there were very few, if any, coherent counter-arguments against the prevailing concept. While the former was abundantly documented and reported (cf. Amnesty International, 1986; Asia Watch Committee, 1987; Ranard, 1980), the latter existed only as a rather defensive argument based on the ‘necessary evil’ logic under the circumstances of political exigency. This meant that although there were severe restrictions on citizens’ freedom in all their guises in the past there existed a largely undisputed ideal of ‘universal’ human rights. This is an interesting point of departure from a more articulated, albeit flawed, form of counter-concept of human rights such as the one illustrated by the so-called ‘Asian value’ debate. In short, the conceptual landscape of human rights in Korea in the 1980s consisted of a rather clear-cut, standard formulation of human rights as liberty-equality-fraternity on the one hand, and of a merely reactive and somewhat temperamental inclination against the rights discourse on the other, hence the vastly asymmetrical picture.
