Abstract
An influential strain of thought supports restrictions on individual rights to achieve certain liberal values. The temporary use of illiberal means for ostensibly liberal ends (Doyle’s “low-road” liberalism) is embraced by both the political right and left to serve their partisan policy goals. Our essay analyzes low-road policies and practices, specifically speech restrictions, and how they are countered. We compare two transnational campaigns, mainly based in democratic South Korea, which criticize either the North Korean and Japanese governments for their current or past human rights violations. The “anti-North” campaign is supported by South Korea’s political right and the “anti-Japan” campaign by the left. Each has exercised bureaucratic-institutional power to stigmatize target groups and punish dissenting speech. Each campaign is countered by a mix of low-road, partisan opponents, who would similarly exercise illiberal power to achieve their respective goals, and high-road, procedural liberals, who secularly criticize censorship and endorse open, rational debate to correct flawed information, advance shared knowledge, and generate bipartisan, multilateral consensus.
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Notes
‘South Korea refers to the Republic of Korea.
‘North Korea refers to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Other defector testimonies and evidence have credibly chronicled significant human rights violations by North Korean government agents (United Nations 2014).
Other testimonies and evidence have credibly chronicled significant human rights violations in Japan’s comfort women system. Although, in the case of women from colonized Korea, much of the violations were likely committed by private agents and brothel owners, with varying degrees of government complicity (Soh 2008; Park 2013). For a comparison to comfort women for the US military in South Korea, see Moon (1997).
Ryu allegedly made other offensive statements, which he claims were reported out of context; they are not the focus of the criminal prosecution.
Email communication from Sarah Soh, Nov. 24, 2014.
Although raised in South Korea, Ahn Yonson teaches in Germany and published this paper in a European journal.
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Yi, J., Phillips, J. “Low-Road” Liberalism: Censoring Public Discourses on Communist North Korea and Imperial Japan. Soc 60, 212–223 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00811-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00811-6