The progressive Christian church and democracy in South Korea

Journal of Church and State, Spring, 1998 by Chang Yun-Shik

Later that year, the council issued another historic declaration, "The Fifty Million People's Human Rights," which stipulated what human rights should mean in the Korean context. This document declared that in substantive terms, human rights include the fight of people (1) to work according to their abilities, thereby earning a decent living; (2) to live freely according to their own thoughts; (3) to express themselves freely and creatively in words and actions; (4) to associate with others in order to protect their right to subsistence and freedom of thought; and (5) to protect their human rights and oppose those who try to deprive and forestall them.(28) This declaration specifically defines the enemies of human rights. They include (1) autocrats who force individual sacrifices; (2) egoism, which undermines other people's human rights in pursuit of one's own rights and interests; (3) state-above-all-ism without consideration for citizens; (4) nationalism without consideration for people; (5) the placement of materialistic values above human beings; and (6) the brute force of power and money.(29)

These two documents recast what was stated in the original 1948 constitution. But it was important that the political dissidents found ideological and moral justification in what was already in existence, namely, the first constitution. In other words, it was the government--not the people--that deviated from the democratic norm. The people were merely trying to retrieve the constitutional rights that had been usurped by the government. In a document on human rights issued in 1978, "The Human Rights Declaration on the 30th Anniversary of the Nation Building," the Council declared that people have the fight to oppose or criticize the government, and the right and duty to build a new world. The people were deemed the ultimate power. It was a declaration of war against the dictatorial government.(30)

Dissident Christian church leaders, basing their argument on the Bible, presented a new concept of humanity--an alternative to the traditional personalistic view which emphasized a man or a woman as a particular person to particular others.(31) The new concept advocated the idea of the universal human and recognized people's fight to defy any government that failed to protect their heavenly human rights and to resist oppressive regimes.(32)

IV. THE SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT: DEMOCRATIZATION OF INDUSTRIAL WORKERS, FARMERS, AND THE POOR

With a new perspective on human fights issues, the church broadened its activities to deal with the social and economic injustices instigated by the exclusion from the political and economic process of people at the bottom of the social hierarchy: industrial workers, the urban poor, and rural farmers.

Both Protestant and Catholic dissident clergymen attributed the suffering of industrial workers to the growth strategy adopted by the government. This strategy aimed to foster big enterprise and promote exports through low labor wage policy. This was achieved by restraining the laborers' exercise of their constitutional fights to guard their interests and welfare collectively, and by supporting company owners who were ready to squeeze maximum profits out of laborers by paying what came to be regarded as starvation wages. Furthermore, although unions had long been in existence, they had failed to look after the workers' rights, interests, and welfare. In the perception of the church, both the state and capital regarded labor as the instrument of production; consequently, industrial workers' rights were largely ignored by both management and the state. Yet the church also held that the sufferings of God's people in an industrial society ought not to be neglected. The church, too, had a responsibility to react to rapid industrial transition in a responsible manner and proceed with industrial mission activities as an ecumenical movement to protect the human fights of the workers who were also the children of God in God's image.(33)