2012년 12월 대통령 선거를 전후한 인권논의에 관하여

This article analyzes human rights discourses that were deployed in three political sources: (1) 5 volumes of The Collection of Presidential Speech by President Myeong Bak Lee(2008. 2.∼2013. 2.) and 12 volumes of The White Paper on the President Lee Administration(2008. 2.∼2013. 2.), (2) the ruling Sanuri Party’s policy paper and its candidate Kunhae Park’ speech for the 2012. 12. presidential election campaign, and (3) the opposition Democratic Unified Party’s policy paper and its candidate Jae In Moon’s speech for the same presidential election campaign. A underlying reason for this analysis is that the real status of human rights in the korean society is spoken and showed up succinctly in the words of political power elites and their leaders. This article refers to this kind of human right discourses as “human rights spoken by political power.”The above analysis leads to three points: (1) on the whole, President Lee and his administration made use of human rights as cliche for ceremony and protocol. They have hardly mentioned human rights issues in the domestic setting and, in contrast, have several times applauded human rights as universal values of human kind in the international setting, such as North Korean human rights issues and comfort girl issues under the Japanese imperial army. In a word, stringent scrutiny against others, no scrutiny for themselves; (2) the ruling Sanuri Party and its presidential candidate Park avoided intentionally human rights approach towards policy issues, only speaking about welfare and happiness. It can be characterized as “the pursuit of happiness without human rights promotion.” Such approach would end up with the advent of patriarchal guardian administrative state in the absence of human rights considerations; and (3) the opposition Democratic Unified Party and its presidential candidate Moon elaborated on comprehensive and systematic policies for the protection and promotion of human rights. On December 10, 2012, the anniversary of the 1948 World Human Rights Declaration, Moon expressed his own conviction on “human rights as the foundation of our society.”This conspicuous gap in the human rights discourses among political power elites shows that human rights agenda have still been, and will be, “the share of progressive group.” Such gap results from such two causes as (1) political identity as a conservative political group formed in the historical process of Korean politics and (2) the autistic blindness to new and higher levels of diverse human rights on the part of the majority of Korean people and political leaders triggered by the narcissistic pride in the achievement of “industrialization and democratization” in the Korean contemporary history.