South Korea Empowered with Tools to Accomplish Universal Human Rights

Civil and government leaders welcomed Youth for Human Rights International to South Korea this week, praising the human rights education campaign they have created in partnership with the Church of Scientology International. The campaign is designed to help young people understand and take responsibility for accomplishing human rights for themselves and others.

Youth for Human Rights International, a non-profit organization founded in 2001 in coordination with the Human Rights Department of the Church of Scientology International, holds events and produces instructional tools to raise human rights awareness. Their visit to South Korea is part of their 2006 World Tour, where they are urging leaders in the public and private sectors to implement mandatory human rights education. The tour is also releasing a series of 30 audiovisual public service announcements, one for each article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first three of these messages, released in late 2005, have been screened to more than 130 million people.

The year 1948 marked the adoption by the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also saw the founding of the country of Korea after 35 years of Japanese occupation.

But freedom and human rights continued to elude the people of this country, which was torn by a 3-year civil war that escalated into a multi-national conflict and was then subjected to 34 more years of military rule.

With international attention on neighboring North Korea for their recent testing of nuclear weapons, civil and government leaders in South Korea are all-the-more committed to continue a strong policy of human rights in their country.

Youth for Human Rights International presented its PSAs to Kim Young-sam, former President of the Republic of South Korea, whose administration is famous for his work to end corruption and provide basic rights to the people of his country, including the granting of an amnesty to thousands of political prisoners and the cancellation of criminal convictions of pro-democracy protesters who had been arrested during the late 1970s.

Presentations were also made to the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, the President of the Korea Federation of Teachers Associations, the Korea Human Rights Commission, the Gender and Family Committee of the National Assembly and students at Seoul University.

Having briefed these Korean human rights advocates and provided them with an effective education program they can use to make human rights known to the youth of their country, Youth for Human Rights International has moved on to the next stop on their world tour itinerary, determined to accomplish what humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard envisioned when he wrote, "Human rights must be made a fact, not an idealistic dream."