What are different ideas, perceptions, or historical processes that are involved in North Korean human rights discourses produced by U.S. organizations? Is there a certain reason why American...Show moreWhat are different ideas, perceptions, or historical processes that are involved in North Korean human rights discourses produced by U.S. organizations? Is there a certain reason why American organizations express particular interest in the ‘human rights’ of North Korea? Based on a historical analysis of Western human rights and its recent development towards a form of post-humanitarianism, this thesis analyzes how the ideas of both conservative evangelicals and liberal democrats coincide to frame North Korean human rights discourses in ways that are agreeable to Western audiences. Although the organizations come from opposite stances in domestic politics, the commonalities underlying both stances are expected to reflect deep-rooted national identities that developed throughout the history of the American human rights regime. The thesis claims that a historical entanglement between decolonization, Cold War tensions, foreign policy strategies, and deeply ingrained national identities create an ‘American’ version of human rights. Moreover, although the evangelicals and the democrats differ on the extent or way of identifying the distance between ‘us the observers’ and ‘them the sufferers’, both sectors presume a selective and self-serving post-humanitarian distance that does not contemplate the structural circumstances of the sufferers. Instead, the organizations reflect on the observer’s own sense of morality, either religious duties or international security concerns, at the expense of morally essentializing or victimizing the sufferers based on Western liberal assumptions about human nature. Without trying to discount the importance of religion or security issues in U.S. international relations, this thesis aims to raise the awareness of deeply embedded power relations, both historically inherent and currently reenacted by human rights discourses, that can be easily mystified in the name of ‘universal human rights’.Show less
