Patricia Goedde

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 U

The nature of public interest lawyers in South Korea has transformed in recent decades. Under authoritarian rule in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, a sparse group of human rights lawyers defended the rights of political prisoners and laborers. With transition to democracy beginning in 1987, these lawyers formed a professional affiliation called Lawyers for a Democratic Society (Minbyun). As citizens' groups and social movements blossomed in the 1990s, civic-minded lawyers began to support more speci

International human rights networks have publicized the exigencies of human rights violations in North Korea and have mobilized international and domestic laws as part of their respective movements to pressure North Korea on human rights. This article asks how effective these attempts at legal mobilization have been. While leveraging law has found success in other parts of the world for human rights improvement, this article argues that legal mobilization has had very limited impact in North Kor

This article asks how the Refugee Convention applies to North Korean escapees, specifically whether North Koreans who leave their country without government permission qualify as refugees in the first instance, and whether refugee status is negated by the fact that the South Korean Constitution confers South Korean nationality to anyone born on the Korean Peninsula, which thus gives dual nationality to North Koreans. This article addresses how states and other actors interpret the Refugee Conven

This article reviews the US Supreme Court cases regarding detention of alleged terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and examines the interplay between international human rights law and the American Constitution with respect to the executive policies of the Bush Administration to detain terror suspects. The article first references the international human rights legal framework regarding detainees, specifically the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuma

What civil nuclear liability regime would apply to North Korea should any nuclear reactors be in its future? To answer this question, this article first describes and assesses current conventions governing civil nuclear liability, provides a few examples of domestic legislation in countries that have not signed these conventions, and discusses what will happen if no adequate civil nuclear liability framework is in place for a country, using the example of Chernobyl. The role of codified general

The Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is often dismissed as a valid legal instrument within the larger framework of the North Korean legal system. This is an unsurprising outcome given the portrayal of North Korea as a totalitarian dictatorship, documented human rights abuses, and the lack of access to the country's lawmaking processes. It is also a foreseeable result if comparisons are made to liberal democratic constitutions where rights guarantees and judicial review a

In this Essay, I first briefly present theoretical contexts that may aid in defining the North Korean legal system. Next, I trace the evolution of the North Korean legal system by examining the North Korean reaction to various legal influences of the Japanese occupation, Soviet tutelage, and traditional Korean practices, and outline the current politico-legal structure. In the final section, I inquire whether the North Korean legal structure can accommodate a different legal system necessitating

This paper constitutes (1) a full-text English translation of the Basic Law of the Sinuiju Special Administrative Region of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) and (2)comparative analyses of the Sinuiju Basic Law with the DPRK Constitution and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. To supplement thetranslation, the paper makes respective contextual and textual comparisons between the Sinuiju SAR and its Basic Law with (a) North Korea and its 199

Public interest lawyering in South Korea has evolved over the years as a response to inadequate rights protection.Prior to and during democratic transition, human rights lawyers advocated for civil and political rights especially on behalf of workers, students, and dissidents.In the 1990s, lawyers helped to promote more social and economic rights in the areas of labor, consumer advocacy, environmental rights, and gender equality.In the past decade, public interest law groups have emerged to focu

Abstract The Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is often dismissed as a meaningless legal instrument within the larger framework of the North Korean legal system. This is an unsurprising view given the portrayal of North Korea as a totalitarian dictatorship, documented human rights abuses, and the lack of access to the country’s lawmaking processes. It is also a foreseeable conclusion if comparisons are made to liberal democratic constitutions that emphasize rights guarant

North Korean detention of U.S. citizens has prompted considerable attention in the U.S. media over the years, especially with the most recent case of Otto Warmbier’s death. Releases have usually been negotiated through diplomatic channels on a humanitarian basis. While detainee treatment is influenced primarily by political considerations, this Article asks what international legal implications arise from these detentions in terms of international law violations and recourse. Specifically, this