KJCKorea
Journal Central

As supply chain due diligence laws based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) are spreading throughout European countries, the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) focusing on human rights and environment were adopted in June 2024. Considering that companies are closely interacting in an unprecedentedly complex global supply chains due to rapid economic globalization and hyper-connectivity caused by technological innovation, the due diligence law being introduced for the first time at the EU level is expected to have a wide range of direct and indirect effects on companies around the world. In particular, South Korea, which has an export-oriented industrial structure, needs a systematic response to the regional legislation of corporate due diligence in EU. Accordingly, this study analyzed the status of human rights due diligence of global companies based on the extracted data corresponding to the ‘CHRB Core UNGP Indicators’ among the CHRB assessment results from 2018 to 2023. In addition, we compared this with the assessment results based on the same indicators for 12 major South Korean companies in 2024 to analyze the implementation status and explore the implications and directions for an effective due diligence system based on the results.

This article investigates how the concept of human rights is strategically articulated within far-right discourse on Korean YouTube channels. Drawing on a collocation analysis of 4,119 videos from 11 far-right channels uploaded between December 3, 2024 (the declaration of martial law) and April 4, 2025 (the impeachment verdict) and informed by Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, this study identifies three core mechanisms through which far-right populism appropriates human rights discourse. First, a discourse of ‘selective human rights’ is constructed by portraying political elites as victims through narratives of ‘inverted victimhood’ while marginalizing the rights of minorities. Second, under a politics of antagonism, heterogeneous groups—including sexual minorities, Muslims, and North Korea—are linked through ‘chains of equivalence’ to form a unified ‘empty signifier.’ Third, a discourse of ‘institutional delegitimation’ undermines trust in human rights institutions by framing entities such as the Constitutional Court as components of a leftist cartel. These regressive discursive strategies instrumentalize the language of universal human rights to serve exclusionary political ends, transforming democratic disagreement into an existential conflict. This study contributes to the growing literature on the far-right’s articulation of human rights.

This study examines the role and institutional significance of local case determination committees within the child protection system of the Republic of Korea, grounded in a child rights-based approach and the principle of family-based care as emphasized in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The study further explores the institutional framework and operational practices of the Case Determination Committee by analyzing the meeting records from District A in Seoul. Introduced in 2021, the local Case Determination Committee serves as a key mechanism symbolizing the transition toward a public-centered child protection system, by making formal decisions regarding the separation of children from their families and the provision of alternative care arrangements. Composed of various experts, the Committee structures its decision-making process based on the assessments of child protection officers, while reflecting the best interests of the child and the principle of family-based care. The analysis of three and a half years of meeting records in District A reveals institutional stabilization through regularized meetings, responsiveness to developments in the child protection system, and efforts to uphold children’s right to be heard. Moving forward, the continued refinement and standardization of the deliberative framework, along with measures to realize rights of the child to participation, are expected to contribute to the enhanced effectiveness of the Case Determination Committee.