Human Rights in Korea: Historical and Policy Perspectives (Harvard Studies in East Asian Law) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674416058 ISBN 13: 9780674416055

Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center, 1991

Synopsis

These chapters by eight Korea specialists present a new approach to human rights issues in Korea. Instead of using an external and purely contemporary standard, the authors work from within Korean history, treating the successive phases of Korea’s modern century to examine the uneasy fate of human rights and some of the ideas of human rights as they have developed in the Korean context. Beginning with the Independence Club of the late nineteenth century and continuing through to the constitutional and judicial structures underlying the Sixth Republic Government of Roh Tae Woo in South Korea, these papers illuminate the sometimes complex interactions between modern Korean human-rights issues and the legacies of Korean culture and colonial occupation.

The contributors provide a corrective to two common errors: one, an overemphasis on the tension between residual Confucian culture and human-rights concepts; two, the opposite error, a defensive nationalism that gives rise to ill-founded efforts to identify democratic antecedents in the Korean past. Instead, these authors allow each episode in the emergence of Korean human rights thought and action to stand in the context of its own time and of Korea’s modern history. The final sections deal with the usefulness and appropriateness of U.S. policies toward human rights in South Korea and comparatively with the overall issues raised in the volume.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

These chapters by eight Korea specialists present a new approach to human rights issues in Korea.Instead of using an external and purely contemporary standard, the authors work from within Korean history.

About the Author:

The author and editor of numerous books and articles in the areas of ethics and social and political philosophy, William H. Shaw obtained a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the London School of Economics and teaches philosophy at San Jose State University, where he served as chair of the department for eleven years. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Zimbabwe, the University of Hong Kong, and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He has two other books with Cengage Learning, SOCIAL AND PERSONAL ETHICS and MORAL ISSUES IN BUSINESS (with Vincent Barry).

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0674416058
• ISBN 13: 9780674416055
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 350
• Editor: Shaw William