South Korea Discovers Children Are Human, Not Just Future Detainees
So, after years of human rights groups shouting into the void, 20 South Korean lawmakers, including Rep. Seo Young-kyo and Rep. Han Chang-min, have boldly introduced a bill to prevent the detention of foreign nationals under 19. The Ministry of Justice has, for years, seen fit to house 886 children in these 'protection centers' (read: detention facilities) over the last five and a half years. One
wonders what exactly they were being 'protected' from—perhaps from actually being children? It takes a special kind of bureaucratic logic to classify the imprisonment of children as 'protection.' This isn't groundbreaking insight; international law has consistently condemned such practices. It seems some concepts, like basic human dignity for children, take an extraordinary amount of legislative
effort to implement when inconvenient. A cynic might observe that it's only when the international spotlight becomes too bright, or domestic activists too loud, that these 'long-standing practices' suddenly become unacceptable.