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Human Rights Diffusion in North Korea: The Impact of Transnational Legal Mobilization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 August 2017

Patricia GOEDDE
Patricia GOEDDE*
Affiliation:
Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea
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Abstract

This article asks how legal mechanisms are employed outside of North Korea to achieve human rights diffusion in the country; to what extent these result in human rights diffusion in North Korea; and whether measures beyond accountability can be pursued in tandem for more productive engagement. Specifically, it examines how the North Korean government has interacted with the globalized legal regime of human rights vis-à-vis the UN and details the legal processes and implications of the UN Commission of Inquiry report, including domestic legislation, and evidence collection. While transnational legal mobilization has gathered momentum on the accountability side, it is significantly weaker in terms of achieving human rights protection within North Korea given the government’s perception of current human rights discourse as part of an externally produced war repertoire. Thus, efforts to engage the North Korean population and government require concurrent reframing of human rights discourse into more localized and relatable contexts.

Keywords

North Koreahuman rightslegal mobilizationtransnational advocacyUnited Nations
Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , May 2018 , pp. 175 - 203
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 2018 

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Footnotes

*

Associate Professor, Sungkyunkwan University, School of Law, in Seoul, Korea. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A3A2925085). Correspondence to Patricia Goedde, Sungkyunkwan University, School of Law, 25–2 Sungkyunkwan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea 03063. E-mail address: pgoedde@skku.edu.

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