[Soodang Security Studies Colloquium #15] When War Goes South: Violence Against Civilians During the Early Korean War

• Date and Time: December 17, 2021 / 5PM
• Presenter: Seung Joon Paik (Researcher, Peace & Democracy Institute, Korea University)
• Discussant: Nam Kyu Kim(Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations)
• Organized by: Peace & Democracy Institute, Department of Political Science and International Relations

On December 17, 2021, Korea University’s Peace & Democracy Institute held the 15th Soodang Security Studies Colloquium.

Dr. Seung Joon Paik of PDI participated as a presenter, and Professor Nam Kyu Kim of the Department of Political Science and International Relations of Korea University participated as a debater.

In Colloquium, the author released the first draft <When War Goes South: Violence Against Civilians During the Early Korean War>. Many conventional conflicts and violence against civilians who are noncombatants between them have been noted in many previous studies.  But despite all this academic interest, existing studies have looked at the interstate comparison of violence and the change in the substate, but have not yet expanded its understanding of the internal dynamics of violence.

In response, the author analyzed the pattern of violence against civilians during the Korean War by asking the research question, “What determines the location, size, and timing of violence against civilians during the conventional war?” According to the author, the prospects for the actors’ victory affected the level of violence before and after the territorial change, especially when they were likely to acquire and continue to occupy the territory, and when they lost it and seemed difficult to find it again. Here, the prospect of the actor’s victory influenced the magnitude of the violence. Actors with good prospects for victory regarded civilians as their future citizens and took a more cautious stance in using violence, but actors who were pessimistic about victory tended to use violence more. To prove this, the author constructed a dataset and analyzed aspects of violence against civilians in 162 South Korean administrative districts during the 38-month conflict in the Korean War. As a result, in the case of the Korean War, both South and North used violence against civilians in places where their owners changed frequently, and the pattern of violence was also strengthened or reduced according to the prospect of victory.