Human Rights

This PDF is the full publication and contains all of the following sections: KEI Board of Directors KEI Advisory Council About the Korea Economic Institute of America Preface by KEI…

August 2009 saw an abrupt “about-face” in North-South relations on the Korean peninsula. The month began with former president Bill Clinton’s historic meeting with Chairman Kim Jong-il and concluded with…

In the next few days, the United Nations General Assembly will approve a resolution on “The Situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”  The text of the 11 page resolution reviews the human rights abuses that the UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korea’s human rights documented (2013-2014), as well as…

The agreement between Korea and Japan on the issue of comfort women, announced in 2015, seemed like an amazing breakthrough on a sensitive topic in the bilateral relationship. But in the five years since then, the agreement has largely fallen apart, and other disagreements over the legacy of Japanese control of the Korean Peninsula have…

By Stephan Haggard Humanitarian disasters in closed, authoritarian regimes pose particular challenges to the international community. Government actions can exacerbate or even create crises; this was certainly true of the great famine of the early 1990s. Yet the victims of the regime’s choices are innocents, including overstretched but dedicated doctors and health care workers. If…

By Robert R. King On November 7, 2019, the South Korean government delivered two North Korean fishermen to North Korean officials at the Demilitarized Zone at Panmunjom.  The two were part of a crew involved in illegal squid fishing in South Korean territorial waters, and they were detained after a two-day pursuit and the firing of warning…