국가인권위원회 10년의 평가와 전망

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article aims to present an evaluation on the achievement of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea for its first ten years since 2002. The author’s approach is to take a viewpoint of human rights politics. He recognizes that liberal democracy includes several tendencies of human rights politics such as passive, active, and reactive human rights politics. There was a civic movement to establish a national human rights commission in Korean society from 1993. The author sees this a integrative human rights politics between passive and active wings, which aimed to overcome the reactive human rights politics that had governed Korean society after 1960s. In the legislative process of the National Human Rights Commission Act after 1998, the mainstream of human rights politics in Korea has been divided into passive and active groups. It was under the leadership of the former that the National Human Rights Commission of Korea was actually established in 2002. However, under the latter's control, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea has experienced the widest and most powerful political influence between the years 2005-2007. After the launching of the LEE Myung-Bak's government in 2008, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea was faced with great challenges mainly from the political majorities who governed the legislative and executive branches. The author tries to understand many changes in the field of human rights politics in Korea in the perspective of reactive human rights politics.