Human rights versus national security in public opinion on foreign affairs: South Korean views of North Korea 2008–2019

Abstract

While human rights are an integral part of liberal democratic rule, the extent to which public opinion in democracies prioritises human rights in other countries relative to other competing foreign policy priorities is not clear. This is particularly the case when a country that systematically breaches human rights also poses a serious security threat and there are incentives to improve relations with the regime in power. To assess whether and how the public values human rights vis-à-vis national security in foreign affairs, this paper utilises survey questions that capture the public’s relative preferences between the two in South Korean public opinion regarding relations with North Korea. It provides evidence that when a democratic government attempts to improve relations with a regime committing grave human rights violations, public opinion in the democracy deprioritises human rights in favour of reducing military tension. The findings shed light on the trade-off that exists in attempts to improve relations with a regime that is both a security threat and a systematic violator of human rights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Park was impeached in 2017 months before finishing her term. South Korea voted for the UN human rights resolutions during her last year in office after she stepped down.

2 Hyungjin Kim and Christy Lee, “Seoul Prioritizes Pyongyang’s Human Rights Abuses Amid Growing Nuclear Tensions,” VOA News, April 5, 2023.

3 Eli Watkins and Madison Park, “North Korean Defector Attends State of the Union,” CNN, Jan 31, 2018.

4 “Seoul Vows to Stop Border Protests after North Korea’s Threat,” LA Times, June 4, 2020.

5 “Four North Korean Defectors Accuse ‘Lee In-Young Treats North Korean Defector’s Testimony as a Lie…Going to Sue’,” Donga Ilbo, February 21, 2021.

6 “Pyongyang Condemns Seoul’s North Korea Human Rights Act,” UPI, September 1, 2016.

7 Choe Sang-Hun, “North Korea Accuses Washington of Weaponizing Human Rights as Nuclear Talks Stall,” New York Times, November 29, 2018.

8 Madison Park, “China, North Korea Slam U.N. Human Rights Report as ‘Divorced from Reality’,” CNN, March 18, 2014.

9 Activists releasing balloons intended to float into North Korea with, among other sources of information, pamphlets criticising North Korean leader Kim Jung Un has drawn the ire of Pyongyang.

10 Conservative governments have not held summit meetings with North Korean leaders.

11 According to the Ministry of Unification, the number of North Koreans that have defected to Korea currently number just above 34,000 as of September 2023. Source: South Korean government’s Ministry of Unification.

12 “Congressional Record,” Congress.gov, Library of Congress, vol. 169, issue 71. Accessed January 2, 2024. https://www.congress.gov/118/crec/2023/04/27/169/71/CREC-2023-04-27-pt1-PgH2056.pdf

13 Seungguen Shin “Kwon Young-se ‘Human Rights in North Korea Are Basic Principles… You Cannot Achieve Peace Through Flattery’,” Hankyoreh, April 9, 2023.

14 Heinrich et al. (2017) also find a trade-off between sanctions and domestic economic interests, where the public is opposed to economic sanctions if it affects the U.S. economy through job losses.

15 These questions assume that respondents are not against unification or that at least their position on unification is independent from their responses to this question. This premise may not be warranted given long-term opinion trends in South Korean opinion and we run various diagnostic tests to assess whether key findings are sensitive to responses that are not enthusiastic about reunification between North and South Korea. The key findings remain unchanged. Refer to the Online Appendix.

16 The estimates are generated using Hatzinger and Dittrich’s (2012) prefmod package in R to deduce a rank order among the six issues from loglinear preference models. The package compares all the possible pairing of responses about the urgency of two issues and generates an estimate for how much one issue is more or less urgent relative to the others, leading to a preference ordering among the six issues for each year. Figure A1 in the Online Appendix plots the public’s relative priorities for just human rights and military security over time.

17 Political ideology and gender could also lead to similar concerns about assessed probability of war. Progressive political ideology and the female gender could be behind lower assessed chances of war, thereby leading to a similar bias.

Additional information

Funding

Research support from the KDI School of Public Policy and Management is acknowledged.

Notes on contributors

Joonbum Bae

Joonbum Bae is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Colorado State University.

YuJung Julia Lee

YuJung Julia Lee is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Colorado State University. Email: [email protected]