South Korean NGOs Advocating for North Korean Human Rights and Their Impact on Inter-Korean Relations

After the World Wars, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) emerged as prominent actors in a variety of fields related to international diplomacy and inter-sate relations. In particular, following WWII, non-governmental organization started to play a fundamental role in supporting mechanisms for the international protection of human rights. In South Korea, genuine concerns for the human rights in North Korea emerged in the early 1990s, largely in response of the humanitarian disaster caused by a disastrous famine. While South Korean NGOs were able to coexist for a relatively short time a, since the early 2000s they began to diverge into two distinct camps: civil and political rights (CPR) or economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) advocates. As the NKHR issue increasingly became a partisan issue in South Korean politics, human rights and humanitarian NGOs found themselves in competition – each striving to shape the public discourse and influence government policy direction. The nationalization and politicization of human rights NGOs surely allowed them to become the dominant both in terms of media discourse, civil society organizations and policy rhetoric. However, it remains questionable whether this decision actually enabled them to directly influence the policy-making process and, consequently inter-Korean relations. Through an in-dept analysis of South Korean NGOs’ advocacy efforts, a comprehensive examination of the domestic obstacles they face, this study aims to assess whether these organizations have been able to effectively influence inter-Korean relations.