Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-7lfxl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-28T15:20:00.260Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Leprosy, Legal Mobilization, and the Public Sphere in Japan and South Korea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Celeste L. Arrington Open the ORCID record for Celeste L. Arrington [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article addresses the question of what gets transmitted in cross-national diffusion and why. It does so by analyzing the spread of rights-based activism from Japanese to South Korean leprosy (Hansen's disease) survivors in the 2000s. Previous scholarship would predict extensive diffusion of mobilizing frames and tactics, especially since Korean lawyers learned an effective legal mobilization template while working with Japanese lawyers to win compensation for Korean leprosy survivors mistreated by Japanese colonial authorities before 1945. Yet the form of subsequent activism by Korean leprosy survivors for redress from the Korean government differed from the original Japanese model. This case suggests the need for scope conditions on theories about isomorphism and the agency of brokers. In particular, it draws attention to how the structure of a country's public sphere—and especially its legal profession, news media, and activist sector—affects the feasibility of imported innovations related to activism and legal mobilization.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 563 - 593
Copyright
© 2014 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

I presented an earlier version of this article at the 2011 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association. I thank the members of the panel, the editors of the Law and Society Review, four anonymous reviewers, Hiroshi Fukurai, Mark Levin, Rachel Stern, Sunil Kim, Henry Farrell, and Paul Wahlbeck for their insightful feedback. I benefited from a fellowship year at the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University and a year as the Ginny and Robert Loughlin Founders' Circle Member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The George Washington University's Sigur Center for Asian Studies also provided generous research support.

References

Arrington, Celeste (forthcoming) Accidental Activists: Victim Redress Movements in Japan and South Korea. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Association to Support the Hansen's Disease Lawsuit (ASHDL), ed. (2002) Hansen Byō Mondai Koremade To Korekara [The Hansen's Disease Problem: Up to Now and from Now On]. Tokyo: Nihon Hyōronsha.Google Scholar
Avenell, Simon (2009) “Civil Society and the New Civic Movements in Contemporary Japan: Convergence, Collaboration, and Transformation,” 35 Journal of Japanese Studies 247–83.Google Scholar
Bengodan (Hansen's Disease Lawyers' Association) (2003) Hirakareta Tobira: Hansenbyō Saiban Wo Tatakatta Hitobito [The Opened Door: The People Who Fought the Hansen's Disease Lawsuit]. Tokyo: Kōdansha.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1986) “The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field,” 38 Hastings Law Journal 805–54.Google Scholar
Burns, Susan L. (2003) “From ‘Leper Villages’ to Leprosaria: Public Health, Medicine, and the Culture of Exclusion in Modern Japan,” in Strange, C., & Bashford, A., eds., Isolation: Places and Practices of Exclusion. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burstein, Paul, Einwohner, Rachel, & Hollander, Jocelyn (1995) “The Success of Political Movements: A Bargaining Perspective,” in Klandermans, B., & Jenkins, J. C., eds., The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives on States and Social Movements. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Carruthers, Bruce G., & Halliday, Terrence C. (2006) “Negotiating Globalization: Global Scripts and Intermediation in the Construction of Asian Insolvency Regimes,” 31 Law & Social Inquiry 521–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, Dai-Kwon, & Rokumoto, Kahei, eds. (2007) Korea and Japan: Judicial System Transformation in the Globalizing World. Seoul: Seoul National University Press.Google Scholar
Dezalay, Yves, & Garth, Bryant G., eds. (1996) Dealing in Virtue: International Commercial Arbitration and the Construction of a Transnational Legal Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul J., & Powell, Walter S. (1983) “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” 48 American Sociological Review 147–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, Eric A. (2000) The Ritual of Rights in Japan: Law, Society, and Health Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felstiner, William L. F., Abel, Richard L., & Sarat, Abel (1980) “The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming,” 15 Law & Society Review 631–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fligstein, Neil, & McAdam, Doug (2011) “Toward a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields,” 29 Sociological Theory 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fourcade, Marion (2009) Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, Laurie A. (2000) Closing the Shop: Information Cartels and Japan's Mass Media. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gil, Yun-hyeong (2005a) “Hansenin Teukbyeolbeop Jejeong Noneui Hwalbal [Lively Debate about the Proposed Hansen's Special Law],” Hankyoreh Sinmun, February 20.Google Scholar
Gil, Yun-hyeong (2005b) “Geunal, Sorokdo Ga Useotta [Sorokdo Laughed That Day],” Hankyoreh 21: May 24.Google Scholar
Gil, Yun-hyeong (2007) “Gongheohada, Hansenin Teukbyeolbeop [The Hansen's Disease Special Law Is Empty],” Hankyoreh 21: May 25.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Tom (2001) “Dismantling the Developmental State-Administrative Procedure Reform in Japan and Korea,” 49 American Journal of Comparative Law 585–626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginsburg, Tom, ed. (2004) Legal Reform in Korea. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginsburg, Tom (2007) “Law and the Liberal Transformation of the Northeast Asian Legal Complex,” in Halliday, Terrence, Karpik, Lucien, & Feeley, Malcolm, eds., Fighting for Freedom. Oxford: Hart.Google Scholar
Givan, Rebecca Kolins, Roberts, Kenneth M., & Soule, Sarah A., eds. (2010a) The Diffusion of Social Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Givan, Rebecca Kolins, Roberts, Kenneth M., & Soule, Sarah A. (2010b) “Introduction: The Dimensions of Diffusion,” in Givan, R. K., Roberts, K. M., & Soule, S. A., eds., The Diffusion of Social Movements: Actors, Mechanisms, and Political Effects. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goedde, Patricia (2009) “From Dissidents to Institution-Builders: The Transformation of Public Interest Lawyers in South Korea,” 4 East Asia Law Review 63–90.Google Scholar
Goedde, Patricia (2011) “Lawyers for a Democratic Society (Minbyun): The Evolution of Its Legal Mobilization Process Since 1988,” in Shin, G.-W., & Chang, P. Y., eds., South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (2006) “Political Communication in Media Society: Does Democracy Still Enjoy an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on Empirical Research,” 16 Communication Theory 411–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hajjar, Lisa (1997) “Cause Lawyering in Transnational Perspective: National Conflict and Human Rights in Israel/Palestine,” 31 Law & Society Review 473–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haley, John Owen (1978) “The Myth of the Reluctant Litigant,” 4 Journal of Japanese Studies 359–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hallin, Daniel C. (1994) We Keep America on Top of the World: Television Journalism and the Public Sphere. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hanvit (2009) “Hansenin Pihaesgeon Pihaeja Myeongyehoebok Mit Bosang Deung E Gwanhan Beopryul” Ipbeop Gongcheonghoe [Public Hearing for the Revised Hansen's Disease Victim Assistance Law]. Seoul: National Assembly.Google Scholar
Hanvit (2012) “Hansenin Gangje Danjong, Naktae Gukka Baesang Sosong Cheot Jaepan [First Court Date in the State Compensation Lawsuit for Hansen's Victims of Forced Vasectomies and Abortions],” News. Available at: http://www.hansenkorea.org/board.php?db=news&mode=view&idx=290&page=1&ss=on&sc=on&sn=&scWord=%BC%D2%BC%DB (accessed 30 May 2014).Google Scholar
HCA (2002) Hansenbyeongryeokja Gwonikbohoreul Uihan Gwanryeon Jeongchaek Semina [Seminar on Policies Related to the Protection of Hansen's Disease Patients' Interests]. Seoul: Hanseong Cooperative Association.Google Scholar
Hilbink, Thomas M. (2004) “You Know the Type: Categories of Cause Lawyering,” 29 Law & Social Inquiry 657–98.Google Scholar
Hong, Joon Seok (2011) “From the Streets to the Courts: Pspd's Legal Strategy and the Institutionalization of Social Movements,” in Shin, G.-W., & Chang, P. Y., eds., South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jeong, Jonggwon (2000) “Simin Undong-E Daehan Bipanjeok Pyongga [Critical Assessment of the Citizens' Movement],” 45 Gyeongje-wa Sahoe [Economy and Society] 132–48.Google Scholar
Keck, Margaret E., & Sikkink, Kathryn (1998) Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kidder, Robert L., & Miyazawa, Setsuo (1993) “Long-Term Strategies in Japanese Environmental Litigation,” 18 Law and Social Inquiry 605–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Deok-mo (2003) “Ilbon Hyeonji Hwaldong Gyeolgwa Reul Bogo Hamnida [Reporting on Local Japanese Activism],” Sorokdo Reul Sarang Haneun Saramdeul Eui Moim. Available at: http://cafe.daum.net/ilovesosamo/5QHF/19?docid=1yqf5QHF1920030109153906 (accessed 1 March 2014).Google Scholar
Kim, Eunjung (2007) “Cultural Rehabilitation: Hansen's Disease, Gender, and Disability in Korea,” 4 Wagadu 108–24.Google Scholar
Kim, Samuel S. (2003) Korea's Democratization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingdon, John W. (1984) Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Kingston, Jeff (2013) “Japan and Korea: Reconciliation and Redress for Wrongs Remain Elusive,” Japan Times, September 28.Google Scholar
Koga, Yukiko (2013) “Accounting for Silence: Inheritance, Debt, and the Moral Economy of Legal Redress in China and Japan,” 40 American Ethnologist 494–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Sang-il (2001) “Sorokdo Sarang Haneun Areumdaun Saramdeul [Beautiful People Who Love Sorokdo],” Kookmin Ilbo, March 31.Google Scholar
Lee, Sook Jong, & Arrington, Celeste (2008) “The Politics of Ngos and Democratic Governance in South Korea and Japan,” 23 Pacific Focus 75–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Sook-Jong (2005) “Democratization and Polarization in Korean Society,” 29 Asian Perspective 99–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitt, Peggy, & Merry, Sally (2009) “Vernacularization on the Ground: Local Uses of Global Women's Rights in Peru, China, India and the United States,” 9 Global Networks 441–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lew, Joon (1992) “Leprosy in Korea, Past and Present: A Model for the Healing of Leprosy in Korea,” 23 Korea Observer 197–213.Google Scholar
Lipsky, Michael (1968) “Protest as a Political Resource,” 62 The American Political Science Review 1144–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, Doug, & Rucht, Dieter (1993) “The Cross-National Diffusion of Movement Ideas,” 528 The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 56–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCann, Michael W. (1994) Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McKean, Margaret A. (1981) Environmental Protest and Citizen Politics in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MHLW (2003) “Hansenbyō Mondai Wo Tadashiku Tsutaeru Tameni: Hansenbyō Mukōgawa [Correctly Communicating the Hansen's Disease Issue: The Other Side of Hansen's Disease].” Available at: http://www.mhlw.go.jp/houdou/2003/01/dl/h0131-5j.pdf (accessed 18 February 2014).Google Scholar
Miyazawa, Setsuo (2013) “Symposium: Successes, Failures, and Remaining Issues of the Justice System Reform in Japan: An Introduction to the Symposium Issue,” 36 Hastings International and Comparative Law Review 313–48.Google Scholar
Na, Gwon-il (2001) “Sorokdo Reul Ingwon Jaehwal Eui Ddang Euro [Turning Sorokdo into A Land of Rehabilitating Human Rights],” Sisa Jeoneol, December 30. Available at: http://www.sisapress.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=9129 (accessed 23 February 2014).Google Scholar
NCLR (2001) Fukken E No Nichigestu [The Years to the Restoration of Our Rights]. Tokyo: Kouyou.Google Scholar
NHRCK (2005) “Hansenin Ingwon Siltae Chosa [A Study of the Human Rights of Persons Affected by Hansen's Disease]”. National Human Rights Committee Korea.Google Scholar
Olson, Susan M. (1984) Clients and Lawyers: Securing the Rights of Disabled Persons. Westport: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Petras, James, & Zeitlin, Maurice (1967) “Miners and Agrarian Radicalism,” 32 American Sociological Review 578–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reich, Michael R. (1991) Toxic Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Roggeband, Conny (2010) “Transnational Networks and Institutions: How Diffusion Shaped the Politicization of Sexual Harassment in Europe,” in Givan, R. K., Roberts, K. M., & Soule, S. A., eds., The Diffusion of Social Movements: Actors, Mechanisms, and Political Effects. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, & Scheingold, Stuart A., eds. (1998) Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, & Scheingold, Stuart A., eds. (2001) Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sato, Hajime, & Narita, Minoru (2003) “Politics of Leprosy Segregation in Japan: The Emergence, Transformation and Abolition of the Patient Segregation Policy,” 56 Social Science & Medicine 2529–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scheingold, Stuart A. (1974) The Politics of Rights: Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political Change. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, W. Richard, & Meyer, John W. (1983) “The Organization of Societal Sectors,” in Meyer, J. W., & Scott, W. R., eds., Organizational Environments: Ritual and Rationality. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Shin, Gwang-yeong (2011) “ ‘Sum Suiryeoneun Ne Agi Reul Geudeuleun Binile Dama Beoryeotda’ [‘They Threw Away My Still Breathing Child in a Plastic Bag'],” DongA Ilbo: October 19.Google Scholar
Smith, S. A. (2000) Local Voices, National Issues: The Impact of Local Initiative in Japanese Policy-Making. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, David A., & Benford, Robert D. (1999) “Alternative Types of Cross-National Diffusion in the Social Movement Arena,” in della Porta, D., Kriesi, H., & Rucht, D., eds., Social Movements in a Globalizing World. New York: St. Martin.Google Scholar
Soh, Chunghee Sarah (2008) The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. Worlds of Desire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soule, Sarah A. (1997) “The Student Divestment Movement in the United States and Tactical Diffusion: The Shantytown Protest,” 75 Social Forces 855–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soule, Sarah A. (2004) “Diffusion Processes Within and Across Movements,” in Snow, D. A., Soule, S. A., & Kriesi, H., eds., The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Steinhoff, Patricia G. (1999) “Doing the Defendant's Laundry: Support Groups as Social Movement Organizations in Contemporary Japan,” 11 Japanstudien: Jahrbuch Des Deutschen Instituts für Japanstudien 55–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, Rachel E., & Hassid, Jonathan (2012) “Amplifying Silence: Uncertainty and Control Parables in Contemporary China,” 45 Comparative Political Studies 1230–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stobaugh, James E., & Snow, David A. (2010) “Temporality and Frame Diffusion: The Case of the Creationist/Intelligent Design and Evolutionist Movements from 1925 to 2005,” in Givan, R. K., Roberts, K. M., & Soule, S. A., eds., The Diffusion of Social Movements: Actors, Mechanisms, and Political Effects. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Strang, David, & Meyer, John W. (1993) “Institutional Conditions for Diffusion,” 22 Theory and Society 487–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strang, David, & Soule, Sarah A. (1998) “Diffusion in Organizations and Social Movements: from Hybrid Corn to Poison Pills,” 24 Annual Review of Sociology 265–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney (2005) The New Transnational Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney (2010) “Dynamics of Diffusion: Mechanisms, Institutions, and Scale Shift,” in Givan, R. K., Roberts, K. M., & Soule, S. A., eds., The Diffusion of Social Movements: Actors, Mechanisms, and Political Effects. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney (2011) Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Third Sector Institute (2006) “The Explosion of CSOs and Citizen Participation: An Assessment of Civil Society in South Korea (CIVICUS Civil Society Index Report for South Korea)”. Hanyang University. Available at: http://www.civicus.org/media/CSI_South_Korea_Country_Report.pdf (accessed 24 January 2014).Google Scholar
Toyonaga, Keisaburo (2001) “Colonialism and Atom Bombs: About Survivors of Hiroshima Living in Korea,” in Fujitani, T. T., White, G. M., & Yoneyama, L., eds., translated by Eric Cazdyn and Lisa Yoneyama,” Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(S). Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Underwood, William (2010) “Redress Crossroads in Japan: Decisive Phase in Campaigns to Compensate Korean and Chinese Wartime Forced Laborers,” 30-1-10 The Asia-Pacific Journal. 3 February 2014.Google Scholar
Upham, Frank K. (1987) Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vallinder, Torbjörn (1994) “The Judicialization of Politics—A World-Wide Phenomenon: Introduction,” 15 International Political Science Review 91–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verification Committee (2005) Verification Committee Concerning the Hansen's Disease Problem, Final Report (English Summary Version). Tokyo: Japan Law Foundation. Available at: http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/policy/health/01/pdf/01.pdf (accessed 3 September 2013).Google Scholar
Wang, Dan J., & Soule, Sarah A. (2012) “Social Movement Organizational Collaboration: Networks of Learning and the Diffusion of Protest Tactics, 1960-1995,” 117 American Journal of Sociology 1674–722.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westney, D. Eleanor (1996) “Mass Media as Business Organizations: A U.S.-Japanese Comparison,” in Pharr, S. J., & Krauss, E. S., eds., Media and Politics in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar