공공영역에서 언어적 권리의 보장 - 헌법상의 기본권으로서 언어적 권리

The free and equal use of language is a fundamental human right because language is an essential tool for humans to preserve human dignity and to fulfill their role as members in the social community. In particular, language is seen as a component of a nation because it is closely related to the implementation of democratic representative system, to freedom of expression, and to the principle of equality, which are understood as important values in the formation of the modern nation. Therefore, even though the Korean Constitution does not explicitly prescribe linguistic rights as constitutional rights, linguistic rights are means to guarantee other constitutional rights. To be clear, the goal of this article is not to add a new constitutional right to protect linguistic rights. It is only to confirm the fact that linguistic rights are necessary in order to protect other constitutional rights and to put the government under obligation to guarantee linguistic rights. The government, therefore, would have to identify and guarantee linguistic rights, especially in the public sector. However, public language used in legislation or official documents, which are representatives of the public sector, does not currently seem to be working well. Korea has been striving to improve public understanding through the ‘plain language legislation project’ or ‘easy public language policy’ and has had some success. However, the reality is that people are still having difficulty accessing legislation or official documents, resulting in a persistent imbalance in access to the information that must be shared by all members of the nation. I think this is because the policy has been understood as a change of terminology only in benevolent or beneficiary policies. In short, the government has to recognize its constitutional obligation to provide information in a language that is easy for the people to understand in all public sectors, as well as in all legislations and public documents.