My research is broadly on human rights and the dynamic interaction between international actors and human rights violators. I am interested in how states, international organizations, and NGOs deploy naming and shaming campaigns and how targets respond at both domestic and international levels. I aim to reveal the complex interplay between external pressures and strategic reactions that can significantly impact human rights outcomes. Beyond examining state-to-state interactions, I have been working on projects that explore how non-state actors, including armed groups, navigate international human rights norms. My projects examine human trafficking as a form of violence against civilians, uncovering how different actors strategically navigate external criticism based on their political relationships and institutional contexts.
Dissertation Project
"The Shaming Dilemma: Variation in Emotional Intensity in International Human Rights Monitoring"
While existing research asks whether states shame human rights violators, this project asks "how” they shame and "why” the emotional framing of criticism varies systematically across reviewers, targets, and cycles. Across different human rights review processes, states deploy different levels of emotional intensity when criticizing human rights violations, from technical, bureaucratic language to morally charged condemnations. Yet, considering naming and shaming as a binary phenomenon oversimplifies a rich variation in the framing of commentaries made in international human rights review process such as the UN Universal Periodic Review. I argue that states modulate emotional intensity of their comments based on available legitimacy sources, coordination opportunities, and expected target responsiveness. Furthermore, emotional intensity affects target reaction through cumulative pressure and coalition mobilization over time.
Using over 100,000 recommendations across three UPR cycles (2008 - 2022), I develop a novel 16-point emotional intensity scale that captures variation from redirected criticism and supportive encouragement to urgent demands for immediate action. Using supervised machine learning, semantic text similarity analysis, and temporal modeling, I test how states resolve the “shaming dilemma” to balance moral expression against diplomatic costs, through three mechanisms: legitimacy borrowing from NGO stakeholder reports, coordination with other reviewers, and target responsiveness across cycles. To validate these quantitative patterns and probe the underlying decision-making processes, I complement this text analysis with fieldwork at UPR sessions in Geneva to validate whether these patterns reflect conscious strategic choices than bureaucratic processes.
Methodologically, the project contributes by creating a measurement tool for emotional intensity using diplomatic texts and showing the value of longitudinal analysis in understanding the dynamics of human rights monitoring. Theoretically, it expands the understanding of naming and shaming beyond binary action to a strategic and interactive emotional communication, demonstrating how states use and respond to affective framing to navigate competing normative and strategic pressure in human rights governance.
Working Papers
Chung, Ji Hyeon. "Sudden Backdrop: How do non-state actors trigger change in Anti-trafficking Ratings?"
Chung, Ji Hyeon. “Restriction Spillovers: The Impact of Restrictive NGO Laws on Anti-Trafficking Ratings”
Chung, Ji Hyeon. “External Dynamics and Insurgent Violence: Do external ties affect insurgent group's engagement in Human Trafficking?"
Work in Progress
Arias Perez, Candela and Ji Hyeon Chung. "Restrictive Immigration Policies and Human Trafficking"