[PDI Working Paper No.1] Human Rights, Information technology and Global Standard

Jun Hyeop Kim (Research Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Korea University)

* This paper was presented at Jiam Workshop #3.

Abstract

The concept of human rights can be classified into two categories: the political right not to be oppressed by unjust power and the economic right to have decent living standards. The development of information technology can serve as a major viable in the promotion of individual political and economic rights. The development of information technology has positively contributed to the improvement of human rights by allowing individuals to express their political opinions and improving the access to economic services. However, since the use of information technology is limited to some social classes, the development of information technology is playing a role in improving the level of human rights as an adjusting variable rather than a direct independent variable. In addition,various human rights-related issues can arise due to the development of information technology. In this paper, we will put the focus on human rights issues related to information technology at the transnational level, and examine the causes and future prospects on the matter.

• Original paper (in Korean):  [PDI Working Paper No. 1] Human rights and information technology, global standards