냉전과 분단시대 한국의 어린이 인권 인식 －1950년대 <대한민국 어린이헌장>을 중심으로－

Abstract

After World War II, when the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of the Child were created, there was awareness and culture of children’s human rights in Korea. Established in 1957, <Children’s Charter of the Republic of Korea> becomes an important point in the children’s human rights culture in Korea in the 1950s, when it was passing through the ruins of division and the Korean War. It showed the children human rights culture of in Korea in the 1950s on the basis of the influence of world human rights thought and the history of the Korean children’s human rights movement from Japanese colonial era. In this paper, it was analyzed with three keywords. The first is the right of children as a nation. It was to recognize and respect children as the subjects of the nation-state. Respect for children’s personality and human rights as a citizen was linked to awareness of children’s human rights and experience of activities during the Japanese colonial era. The second is the right to survival and protection. As a human being, survival and protection are the most basic rights that human beings should enjoy in society, and especially in the case of children, it is more important because they are physically and socially weaker than adults. In particular, protecting hungry and sick children is the most important issue to guarantee children’s right to live and protect. In particular, in the reality that there are many children of disasters who need social protection, such as orphans and vagrants after experiencing the Korean War, these provisions were the most necessary children’s human rights in Korea at the time. However, the Children’s Charter showed an awareness of separating and treating orphans and vagrants as beings out of the ‘normal’ family as objects of management, supervision and control. Third is the right to development. The right to development was already recognized as a basic provision of the children’s movement during the Japanese colonial era. After liberation, the Korean government focused on implementing compulsory education and attempted to expand the right to education. The Children’s Charter criticized children’s right to education as turning them into slaves to study. It reflected the children’s culture of childlike angelism during the Japanese colonial period, which emphasized emotional education, and the perceptions of children’s story writers. The enactment of the Children’s Charter of the Republic of Korea spread speech and representation about rights of children in the 1950s, but combined with the culture of mobilization and control in a time when democracy was insufficient, it failed to capture fully the reality of improving the human rights of socially disadvantaged children. Although children were recognized as subjects of human rights protection, their right to participate in matters that affect their lives and to have their opinions respected was not considered at all. The children’s human rights discourse of the Children’s Charter of the Republic of Korea represents the national and social orientation toward children’s human rights in Korea in the 1950s during the division and Cold War era, with the task of reflecting on the recognition of children’s human rights in world history and Korean history.