Economic Development, Political Democracy, and Leadership on Human Rights in East Asia–The Parallel Progress of South Korea and Taiwan

We were relatively late arrivals to the study of government and human rights in East Asia. At the beginning of the new century the two of us launched a study of state execution and the human rights debate that ultimately was published as The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia. The major contribution in that volume was a series of detailed profiles of national development and capital punishment in five nations: Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan (Republic of China), and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).