Dealing with the past and the path to transitional justice: A comparative analysis of South Korea and Albania

Abstract This article compares the authoritarian regimes of early South Korea and Albania, identifying historical anecdotes of state authoritarianism that resulted in state‐led crimes and human rights violations. It identifies the historical connections between the establishment and maintenance of authoritarian regimes, as well as the consequences of such meticulous upkeep, by comparing and contrasting the efforts made in dealing with the past and lustration, as well as their significance for peace and stability. We compare the South Korean and Albanian cases from these perspectives to find similarities and differences. By comparing two different countries with similar authoritarian pasts, this article analyzes the efforts of both countries towards transitional justice, and unified rhetoric across the political spectrum for lustration and punishment of past crimes, and discovered that when it comes to practice, these laws tend to be unilateral and were strongly challenged in courts and used as political tools against ideological opponents.