Suchergebnisse

During the progressive decade of the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun governments (1998-2007), South Korea actively pursued an engagement policy with North Korea that aimed to facilitate de facto unification by means of exchanges and cooperation, trust-building, and peaceful coexistence. But the engagement policy has been subject to harsh criticism for its silence over human rights conditions in North Korea. This article looks into the nature of conservative critiques of the engagement policy on the human rights front and elucidates how its proponents have responded. Attention is given to how the trade-off between peace and human rights, as well as that between basic human needs and human rights, constrained their open pursuit of a human rights campaign against North Korea. Also examined is their belief that democracy and human rights should not be imposed from the outside and that North Koreans should win them through struggle from within. For conservatives, hard-line pressures are of limited utility, and opening and reform, the introduction of market system, the expansion of civil society, and the advent of the middle class through the engagement policy are the best ways, albeit time consuming, to enhance human rights and democracy in the North. Finally, the authors critically assess recent debates on the North Korean Human Rights Act in the South Korea's National Assembly as a way of exploring the limits and promise of the engagement policy. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)

While the ASEAN Charter of 2007 heralded an era of improved democracy, human rights protection and good governance in accordance with the rule of law, the reality on the ground tells a different story. While all of the trappings of a human rights mechanism are in place, the normative and protective capacity of the regime is ambiguous at best. The adoption of core international human rights treaties by ASEAN member states presents an ambiguous picture, one which reveals significant variations between the ten countries. The purported institutionalisation of international human rights standards since 2007 in the region via the creation of an ASEAN human rights mechanism in that year is betrayed by the poor condition of actual protection of human rights at the national and regional level. The article analyses the situation on the ground in light of the normative obligations and aspirations of the states. (JCSA/GIGA)