Korean Perceptions of Czechoslovakia’s Charta 77: Focusing on Korean Media Reports

Abstract

This study analyzes the development process of Czechoslovakia’s Charta 77 and Korean perceptions of the Czechoslovak liberalization movement in 1977 based on media materials. Charta 77, published on January 1977, was a Czechoslovak dissident movement that emphasized non-political purposes and human rights motives. The media of the Republic of Korea(ROK) quickly and concretely reported on the suppression of the human rights of those involved in Charta 77 by the Czechoslovak government, with particular attention to the reactions of countries around the world to human rights issues in Eastern Europe. The People’s Republic of China supported Charta 77 and called it a “new Prague Spring.” The United States also broke with the principle of nonintervention in human rights issues in Eastern Europe and strongly criticized violations of human rights and freedoms there. The media of the ROK continued to report on the trend toward liberalization from Charta 77 until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. In particular, in analyzing the causes of Charta 77, ROK media cited Czech intellectuals’ longing for democracy and internal conflicts within the communist forces that resisted the dictatorship of the proletariat. While multi-layered reports on Charter 77 in the ROK progressed quickly, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea(DPRK) reported in detail on the 1968 Prague Spring, but there were no reports in DPRK on Charta 77 during the worsening economic crisis of the late 1970s.