South Korea’s two-decade effort to establish local human rights protection systems through municipal ordinances shows significant progress: all 17 metropolitan governments and 54 percent of basic local governments have enacted human rights ordinances by 2024. Yet implementation remains uneven, with stark urban-rural and regional disparities.

Three factors impede development: absence of national human rights legislation, narrow and conflicting understandings of human rights (particularly regarding sexual minorities), and weak social consensus. Political orientation heavily influences outcomes, with conservative forces often opposing ordinances while progressive governments advance them. Several cases demonstrate how ordinances were abolished or weakened following electoral shifts.

The author, seeing strengthening local democracy as crucial for human rights advancement, calls for measures including electing rights-conscious leaders, ensuring resident participation, establishing dedicated human rights institutions, and building social consensus around protection systems. Local human rights committees and specialized bureaus—mandated by many ordinances but poorly implemented—must function as genuine governance bodies rather than rubber-stamp mechanisms.

Local democracy and human rights protection must develop simultaneously in a mutually reinforcing relationship, with democratic processes enabling rights advancement and robust rights protections strengthening democratic institutions.