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.

Examining changes in the legal rules and procedures that render the courts more or less attractive for rights-claiming helps answer a core question: To what extent and how has civil litigation become an institutional mechanism for rights-claiming in South Korea? The concept of legal opportunity structures pinpoints the relatively stable but not static rules and statutes related to access to the courts, adjudication procedures, and judicial remedies that affect whether individuals and groups will use private litigation to try to enforce rights. This chapter’s analysis indicates that Koreans have benefited from a liberalizing structure of legal opportunities and improved potential for rights protection via the courts in the past two decades. I illustrate how claimants and lawyers are recognizing and using legal opportunities, and sometimes even prying open new opportunities, in pursuit of rights.

Despite some policy gains and expanded civil liberties, sexual minorities in South Korea face challenges from both conservatives and liberals. While anti-LGBTI conservatives seek to block equal rights and antidiscrimination laws, many liberal politicians have been reluctant to embrace sexual minority rights as fundamental human rights. In many instances, they portray sexual minority rights as premature, rather than permanently impossible, asserting that it is “not yet” the right time in Korea. This chapter discusses early LGBTI mobilization in the 1990s in three parts: the solidarity politics cultivated with labor and emerging human rights activism against state violence and national security surveillance; the untimely deaths of LGBTI activists; and so-called youth protection policies that deferred freedom and empowerment for LGBTI youth. This discussion is paired with an analysis of how LGBTI rights activism fared during and after the Candlelight Protests in 2016–17 in what I call a “politics of postponement.”

This chapter examines the complexity of rights-claiming in South Korea related to the violence on Jeju Island around April 3, 1948. The Jeju case demonstrates that rights claiming and counterclaiming over seventy years shaped the transitional justice process, which can be divided into four distinct periods according to the nature and dynamics of rights claims and counterclaims. I find that rights claims by both sides were not made in a vacuum but within a thick layer of existing discourses and narratives, colored by existing power structures. Over the decades, interesting dynamics of claim diversification and frame resonance occurred depending on the opportunity structures in a particular time and space. I found that rights claims diversify when the counterclaims are strong and the opportunity structure opens up. In addition, frame resonance influences the effectiveness of rights claims.

Public interest lawyering in South Korea has emerged as a response to inadequate rights protections. During the democratic transition, Lawyers for a Democratic Society (Minbyeon) was the primary network of lawyers who advocated for civil and political rights, especially on behalf of workers, students, and dissidents. In the 1990s, lawyers increasingly worked with nongovernmental organizations to promote social and economic rights in the areas of labor, consumer advocacy, environmental rights, and gender equality. Most recently, a small number of public interest lawyers’ groups formed to focus on the rights of minorities, such as migrants, refugees, people with disabilities, and sexual minorities. Meanwhile, bar associations, law firms, and law schools have sought to promote pro bono activity as a professional ethic. This article examines the emergence of public interest law entities since the early 2000s to identify patterns in institutional development and sustainability, especially in modeling and diversification. These case studies uncover an increasingly institutionalized infrastructure for legal mobilization in Korea.