RESEARCH INTERESTS
International Institutions, International Human Rights Law and Humanitarian Law, Non-state Armed Groups, Gender, East Asia, Korea, Philippines, Mixed-methods
BOOK PROJECT
Blacklisted Rebels: Commitment to Child Rights in Armed Conflict
My book project examines the conditions under which rebel groups commit to international humanitarian law with a particular focus on United Nations (UN) action plans for ending and preventing their child rights violations. Analyzing my original dataset of all rebel groups blacklisted for violating child rights by the UN from 2002 to 2018, I argue that a rebel group's commitment to child rights is determined by the group's level of concern with its domestic and international legitimacy. I also argue that a host state's motivation to blacklist a rebel group is the main factor in influencing the UN's decision to blacklist particular rebel groups. The sequence of rebel groups’ commitment to UN action plans is divided into four phases: violating child rights, listing violators, signing UN action plans, and complying with UN action plans. To examine this sequence, I use a mixed-method approach that consists of statistical analysis with large-N cases, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) with medium-N cases, and congruence tests with small-N cases including Nepal and the Philippines.
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES
Minju Kwon. Conditionally accepted. All but the Death Penalty: Incomplete Protection for Civilian Internee Mothers. Feminist Legal Studies.
Minju Kwon and Claudia Sheng*. Forthcoming. Bad Idols: China’s Entertainment Securitization of K-pop Culture. The Journal of Asian Studies. [Equal contribution]
Minju Kwon. 2025. Short-Haired Modern Girls: Colonial Korean Women’s Fashion as the Standards of Civilization. European Journal of International Relations 31(3): 561–585.
Iara Gonzalez-Ascencio** and Minju Kwon. 2025. Cohabitation with Criminals: Civilian Women’s Everyday Cooperation with Mexican Drug Cartels. International Feminist Journal of Politics 27(2): 304–326. [Equal contribution]
Inho Choi and Minju Kwon. 2025. Ontological Complexity of Interpolity Orders: The Encounter of Choson and Tibet in Qing. European Journal of International Relations 31(1): 28–52 [Equal contribution]
Minju Kwon and Kaye Valdez*. 2024. Sarcasm or Sexism? Media Framing of Duterte’s Misogynistic Speeches. Asian Journal of Women's Studies 30(2): 85–109. [Equal contribution]
Minju Kwon and Ya Su. 2024. Relatively Unworthy Victims? Middle-Aged Women as Rape Survivors. Violence Against Women 30(8): 1804–1824. [Equal contribution]
Minju Kwon. 2022. The United Nations in the Indo-Pacific Era and Competition for Legitimacy in East Asia. Journal of Peace and Unification Studies 14(1): 5–63 [In Korean, KCI]
This article analyzes official speeches on international peace and security carried out by Northeast Asian states, especially China, to secure their legitimacy at the United Nations (UN) in the Indo-Pacific era. Existing studies on Northeast Asian countries’ behavior relevant to UN peace and security agendas have focused mainly on individual states’ issues and policy recommendations. Thus, these studies have rarely explained the meanings of such speeches in a broader context of international relations theories, specifically from the perspective of social constructivism. By examining the records of the Security Council, keynote speeches at the UN General Assembly, and official remarks of state representatives and foreign ministers, this article demonstrates that Northeast Asian states, which all are “incomplete” sovereign states based on the Western conceptualization of modern sovereignty, have competed for legitimacy to attain recognition from the international society at the UN. China, Taiwan, South Korea, North Korea, and Japan have all strategically utilized the UN Charter—a core symbolic source of the UN—to legitimize themselves and delegitimize others with respect to UN memberships and permanent memberships of the UN Security Council. In particular, China has attempted to strengthen its legitimacy by emphasizing both the principle of non-interference based on the UN Charter and a Chinese-style approach. This article provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of Northeast Asian states’ interactions in international organizations amidst the current international order that is characterized by competition between the United States and China.
Research Review, Global NK Zoom & Connect, East Asia Institute, August 29, 2022 (Summary of the article with a focus on North Korea, Translated by the East Asia Institute)
Chapter 2 in Sang-Yoon Ma (ed.), Indotaepyeongyang Sidaeui Pyeonghwawa Hanbando (Peace and the Korean Peninsula in the Indo-Pacific Era), Seoul National University Press, Forthcoming.
Minju Kwon and Jeeye Song. 2020. The Korean War and Lottery: The Legislation of the Patriotic Lottery. Society and History 128: 125–165. [Equal contribution, In Korean, KCI]
This article examines the establishment and abolition of South Korea’s Patriotic Lottery (Ae-guk Bok-gwon), which was designed to control inflation and increase government revenues during and after the Korean War. Referring to issue-framing strategies for morality policy, we argue that the government and the National Assembly presented the Patriotic Lottery with both rational-instrumental and moral frames. Despite opponents’ claims that the lottery would promote an insidious gambling culture, proponents justified the lottery as a rational and effective means of raising government revenue and financing social welfare under wartime conditions. The proponents also incorporated moral frames by describing the lottery as a non-compulsory, collective, and patriotic means of overcoming the nation’s economic challenges. However, the rational-instrumental justification of the Patriotic Lottery became weakened as the lottery lost its popularity and thereby lost its salience as a viable means for combating financial problems. Furthermore, coercive sales and lottery fraud fueled criticism of the government’s mismanagement and reignited debates on the morality of gambling, which eventually compelled the government to abolish the lottery. As the first in-depth study of the Patriotic Lottery, this article contributes to fiscal sociology by analyzing the government’s attempt to mitigate fiscal deficits and support national reconstruction in the context of the Korean War.
* Chapman Undergraduate Student ** Chapman Graduate Student
WORK IN PROGRESS
Banning Child Pornography: Women's Political Participation and Legislation
Naming and Shaming, and the Laws of War: When the ICRC Violates Discretion and Goes Public (with Brooke Greene and Tanisha M. Fazal)
Legitimate Hunters: Legitimacy-Making Process of the Civilian Joint Task Force in Nigeria (with Dinah Lawan)