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1 results

  • 3 - “Equal” Second-Class Citizens

  • from Part I - Rights in Historical Perspective
  • Edited by Celeste L. Arrington, George Washington University, Washington DC, Patricia Goedde, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul
  • Book:
    Rights Claiming in South Korea
    Published online:
    17 April 2021
    Print publication:
    27 May 2021, pp 63-82

  • Summary

    Through an analysis of the codification of family law, this chapter argues that the process of institutionalizing democracy in South Korea created ambivalent legal bases for women’s rights. Amid the peninsula’s division, the occupation of the US Military Government, the onset of the Cold War, and the Korean War, South Korea began to institutionalize democracy before it could complete the process of decolonization. In the historical context of postcoloniality, women came to symbolize democracy and capitalism with the new Civil Code that remade women into full legal subjects with rights. Yet, women were also treated as the last remaining repositories of Korea’s “national tradition” in the legislative discussions that led to the promulgation of the new Civil Code. As a result, women’s rights were significantly compromised. This duality demonstrates key tensions in the conceptualization of equal rights in contexts of postcolonial democracy.