Human security aspects of international migration: The case of South Korea

While the discourse in defining security has mainly remained at the conceptual and abstract levels, there has been a growing need to consider newly identified security tasks in order to bring about effective policy and institutional responses. One important agenda, which requires such policy and institutional adjustments, deals with how to effectively manage the growing movement of peoples both at the intra‐and international levels and with how to ensure the individual rights of various types of migrants. This paper intends to examine the issue of international migration from a human security perspective, with particular reference to the migration policies and practices of South Korea. After an extensive analysis of the data gathered, this paper claims that despite some improvements, the efforts of the Korean government are still proven unsatisfactory because it has often addressed the issues of emigrants and immigrants from the perspectives of domestic governance and foreign relations. For South Korea to protect and promote the rights and demands of emigrants and immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, and victims of human trafficking, humanitarian concerns should always be considered a national priority no matter what political, security, economic agendas exist

Keywords:

• human security
• international migration
• Korean emigratioii/immigration policies
• human trafficking
• refugees
• asylum seekers

Notes

Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University ([email protected]). The author wishes to express her gratitude to Hyun Myoung Jae, a graduate student of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Korea University, for her valuable assistance.