RESEARCH INTERESTS
International Organizations, International Law, Laws of War, Human Rights, Human Security, Gender, Non-state Actors, Culture, East Asia, Mixed-methods
BOOK PROJECT
Blacklisted Rebels: Commitment to Child Rights in Armed Conflict
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES
Minju Kwon and Claudia Sheng*. Forthcoming. Bad Idols: China’s Entertainment Securitization of K-pop Culture. The Journal of Asian Studies. [Equal contribution]
This article analyzes the Chinese government’s framing of Korean popular music (K-pop) idol culture and its underlying motivations for recent regulations in the 2020s. There has been limited theorization and empirical investigation on the government’s recent reactions to K-pop idol culture. Using the concept of “entertainment securitization,” this article argues that the government attempts to securitize K-pop idol culture as a threat to the harmonious social order. Analyzing official documents and news media sources, this study demonstrates that the government frames transnational K-pop idol culture as immoral and irrational. This culture is viewed as encouraging harmful online behavior, lowbrow content, and deformed gender expression, especially to impressionable minors, which all contradict the Xi administration’s aspiration to uphold nationalistic agendas. This research expands the literature on China’s cultural policy on transnational entertainment media by theorizing its framing for securitization and providing new empirical evidence from its recent regulations.
Minju Kwon. 2026. All but the Death Penalty: Incomplete Protection for Civilian Internee Mothers. Feminist Legal Studies. Online First.
Minju Kwon and Wukki Kim. 2026. Through the Rule of Law: United Nations Mission Mandates and Foreign Direct Investment. World Development Perspectives 42, 100780 [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
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)