Burmese Political Activists and Human Rights in Korea

The goal of this paper is to examine the contribution of Burmese political activists to the broadening of human rights agenda in Korea, particularly by their public campaign for refugee rights and debate regarding sanctions as a policy tool. The Burmese activists, who came to Korea as migrant workers in the mid-1990s, began to engage in long-distance politics for democratization of the home country in the late 1990s. Compared with their Western counterparts, the effects of their long-distance politics, such as the change in Korean government policies towards Myanmar, were not significant. In the process, however, they made contributions to the host society, recently democratized and utterly unfamiliar with diaspora activism until then, as an unintended consequence. The case demonstrates the possibilities of migrant politics - on the margin of both the host society and the global Burmese diaspora activism - can make, with such marginality placing them in a special position to make a difference.