THE MILITARIZATION OF KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract

All too often narrowly focused on the issue of perceived North Korean abuses, human rights on the Korean peninsula should rather be understood against the militarized legacies of national division, a history in which the United States has played no small role. Rather than isolate one or the other of the two Koreas for censure, this article identifies the hostile mutual interdependence of North Korea and South Korea as a starting-point for understanding human rights in both north and south. Arguing for a comprehensive human rights approach, this analysis demonstrates that the military expenses and militarized tensions on either side of the DMZ as well as the conscription of South Korea to the neo–cold war agenda of the United States within the Asia-Pacific region infringes on the Korean peoples’ right to peace. Positing “Korean human rights” as an alternative framework that aims at once to abolish militarism and to improve human rights through peaceful, cooperative, and constructive means, this article contends that any genuine solution to human rights issues on the peninsula entails more than a unidirectional critique. Durable solutions require critical self-reflection and collaboration on the part of both Koreas.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to express his appreciation to the National Research Foundation of Korea, which funded the research on which this article is based (NRF-2010-361-A0001). The author is very grateful to Professor Christine Hong for her excellent assistance in completing this article.

Notes

1. Hawk 2013.

2. Ibid. See also, Kim (Taewoo) 2012.

3. Nebehay 2013.

4. Paik 1998, 17, and Paik 2013.

5. Although North Korea is a signatory to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), it has resisted UN resolutions condemning its human rights record. The late Kim Jong Il, in his speeches, defined human rights narrowly along ESCR, not CPR, lines—for example, the right to labor, food, clothes, education, and health. See Kim Jong Il 1997, 55.

6. North Korea's Foreign Ministry states that “a human right that is removed from the nation's sovereignty cannot exist” and that “a country that loses its national sovereignty will have their human rights violated.” Yonhap News 2003.

7. Moyn 2010, 85.

8. No Lies Radio 2013.

9. North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly revised its Constitution on 13 April 2012; the document's preamble stipulates songun sasang along with the juche sasang (self-reliance ideology) as the “guiding ideologies” of the nation.

10. Yoon 2003, 1301.

11. See Yoon 2012, A8.

12. Kim Jong Il 1998, 477.

13. The Rodong Sinmun 2013.

14. Lee 2012.

15. For example, in President Lee Myung-bak's last year in office, the total expenses for forty newly contracted arms imports shipments amounted to an estimated 28 trillion won (about $24.22 billion). As one of the largest one-year defense budgets in the history of South Korean military expenses, these expenditures were criticized as being rushed through and insufficiently deliberated. Hong 2012, 1.

16. Korean Central News Agency 2012.

17. At the Central Committee of the Korea Workers’ Party in December 1962, North Korea passed four military lines that include the militarization of all citizens, fortification of the territory, management of the army, and equipment modernization. The term “garrison state” was coined by professorWada Haruki (University of Tokyo, professor emeritus) to describe North Korea's military state. See Wada 1998.

18. For example, fifty-five civil and social groups in South Korea held a joint press conference on 21 June 2012 to demand a “stop to the combined military exercise[s] by ROK–U.S.–Japan, which are raising military tensions on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia.” Cho 2012.

19. On 1 April 2013, following the third nuclear test on 12 February 2013, North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly decided to firmly establish North Korea as a nuclear state. This decision followed upon its 2012 Constitution revision for the inclusion of the phase, “a nuclear power.”

20. For details, see Suh 2011.