Refugee Protection in South Korea and Japan: Interpreting International Duties Through Domestic Law

Despite their accession to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, South Korea and Japan remain among the most restrictive refugee-hosting states in East Asia. This study conducts a qualitative comparative analysis of how both countries interpret and incorporate international refugee obligations through domestic legislation and administrative practice. Using a social constructivist perspective, the paper examines how shared international norms are reinterpreted through domestic political identities, institutional cultures, and societal narratives. The analysis focuses on three core dimensions of refugee protection: non-refoulement guarantees, differentiated legal status and rights categories, and refugee recognition procedures. The findings show that divergence arises not from formal legal commitment but from the mechanisms through which restriction is produced. South Korea codifies comparatively expansive protections in statutory text, including extended non-refoulement coverage and enumerated social rights for recognized refugees, yet significantly narrows these protections in practice through restrictive implementation and procedural gatekeeping. Japan, by contrast, maintains near-verbatim compliance with the Refugee Convention in its legal framework but constrains protection through stringent evidentiary standards, centralized ministerial control, and legislative amendments limiting repeat applications. Taken together, the study demonstrates that international refugee law does not function as a fixed or self-executing standard but is reinterpreted through domestic legal frameworks and socially constructed understandings of legitimacy, security, and national identity. By opening the “black box” of domestic legal interpretation, this research contributes to comparative refugee law scholarship and advances the understanding of how international norms are selectively internalized within East Asian refugee protection regimes.