Despite more than a decade of repeated recommendations by international human rights bodies to enact comprehensive antidiscrimination legislation, South Korea has not done so. This raises fundamental questions about the conditions under which international human rights mechanisms can affect domestic human rights legislation. This chapter argues that despite the apparent lack of legislative change, Korea’s movement for antidiscrimination legislation successfully brought the international human rights norms of equality and nondiscrimination into Korean society. South Korea has long been regarded as a homogeneous society in which assimilationist forces dominate policymaking and culture. Strong opposition to comprehensive antidiscrimination legislation from conservative Protestant groups paradoxically exposed Korean society’s prevalent but hidden intolerance of diversity, energizing the antidiscrimination movement and increasing the visibility of minorities. This process of “discovering” diversity has catalyzed significant changes in social norms and values, which constitute a critical step toward enacting comprehensive antidiscrimination legislation that embraces all forms of diversity.

This chapter examines human rights policies and their relationship to conceptions of the national interest, focusing on the 2001 establishment and subsequent functioning of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK). The chapter argues that one reason why Korea created and consolidated the NHRCK was to realize its desired identity as a seonjinguk (advanced country). Over time, with changes in political administrations, the definition of a seonjinguk transformed alongside human rights discourses, with implications for the NHRCK’s functioning as a channel for rights-claiming. By tracing the rise and subsequent weakening of the NHRCK from 2001 to 2012, this chapter demonstrates that national interest considerations shape state decisions about whether to comply with or disregard global human rights norms embodied in national human rights institutions like the NHRCK. It also illustrates the interplay between international and domestic human rights discourses.