Introduction

The notion of ethnic homogeneity has served a potent role in building modern nation-states. Governments have often used perceived ethnic homogeneity to unite their citizens, build a unified front against potential foreign enemies, and strengthen the nation-state. Certain tyrannical regimes, such as Nazi Germany, actively perpetuated the concept of ethnic homogeneity to justify totalitarian control. The development of modern Japanese state was no exception to propagating the vision of ethnic homogeneity. Writing in Education about Asia, John Lie notes that “Between 1952 and 1985, the Japanese government projected an ethno-racially homogeneous vision of Japanese society – one race, one ethnicity, one nation.”^[1] Even after 1985, the belief that Japan is a homogeneous society “remains a particularly powerful myth with enduring influence over the identity-formation of Japanese people.”^[2] Contrary to popular notions, however, ethnic minorities have long existed in Japan, including the Ainu in Hokkaido and the people of Okinawa. Motivated by colonial ambitions and ethno-nationalism, the Japanese government during the post-Meiji Reformation period subjugated these groups, suppressed their culture and language, and systematically encouraged them to assimilate into Japanese society. The ethnic minority status was only recently granted for the Ainu at the turn of the 21^st century. 

The Koreans are another ethnic minority group in Japan; until the past few years, recently, they were the largest group. Periodic waves of Korean migration occurred throughout history, such as the migration of the displaced people of Baekje to Kyushu after Baekje’s collapse in 660 and the kidnapping of Koreans after Japanese invasions of Korea from 1592 to 1598 (文禄の役, Bunroku no Eki).^[3] The contemporary Korean population in Japan, however, mainly consists of descendants of those who moved or were forcibly relocated to Japan during Japanese colonial rule of Korea (1910-1945). After Japanese defeat in World War II, the Koreans were progressively stripped away of their previous imperial citizenship and continued to be subjected to economic destitution and social discrimination. For instance, the Zai (在) included in the term used to denote Koreans in Japan, Zainichi Kankokujin (在日韓国人) or Zainichi Chosenjin (在日朝鮮人), “implies ‘temporary’ residence.”^[4] This means that Zainichi have been viewed as ‘non-Japanese’ and considered differently by the Japanese majority.⁵ The Zainichi Koreans were also legally classified as resident aliens, keeping them as “strangers in their native land.”⁶

The division of their homeland by Soviet and US forces also led to the ideological division of Korean society in Japan, between the DPRK-oriented General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongryon (在日本朝鮮人総聯合会), and the ROK-supported Korean Residents Union in Japan, or Mindan (在日本大韓民国民団). The two Korean governments used the Zainichi Koreans to compete against each other and to gain legitimacy as the true representative government in Korea. Without protection from the Japanese or the two Korean governments, this left the Zainichi Koreans vulnerable to discriminatory violence from some Japanese individuals.^[5] 

The advent of globalization within the last three decades brought about a massive exchange of people between faraway places. Japan is no exception to this global trend.^[6] With increasing immigration of Chinese, Indonesian, Filipino and Nikkeijin (日系人, foreigners of Japanese descent) workers, Japan has been slowly turning into a multicultural society (多文化社会, Ta bunka shakai). This “growing awareness of multi-ethnic Japan renders the recognition of Zainichi increasingly mainstream.”^[7] Indeed, numerous Zainichi Koreans have come to the forefront of Japanese society, including Masayoshi Son (손정의,^[8] 孫 正義), the founder and CEO of telecommunications company SoftBank. It thus begs the question: how did the Zainichi identity shift over time, which factors contributed to their higher social standing in Japan today, and what does that mean for greater Japanese society?

To explore these questions, this paper will first examine how the Zainichi identity was formed by delving into the historic background of Korean arrival in Japan, the social and legal discrimination against Zainichi Koreans pre- and post-World War II, and their subsequent isolation within Japanese society. It will then trace how both external factors and internal efforts led to greater acceptance of Zainichi Koreans by the Japanese people. Based on the data and the presented interviews, the paper will argue that the current Zainichi Koreans have created an independent Zainichi identity, not bound to a specific nation-state but situated within the mainstream Japanese society. It will then inquire into the opportunities and challenges the Zainichi Koreans present within a multicultural Japanese society. 

Historical Background

 The Japanese annexation of the Korean Empire in 1910 began a gradual influx of Koreans into Japan, where they were treated poorly. In the 1910s, most migrants were students who wished to “receive Japan’s modern education.”^[9]The labor shortage in the Japanese economy in the 1920s encouraged Koreans seeking better employment prospects to migrate to Japan, leading to a “rapid expansion of the ethnic Korean population in the main Japanese islands.”^[10] The majority of Korean workers became involved in “manual and menial work” such as construction work and mining, since most were “poorly educated and illiterate,” sharing jobs with social outcasts like Burakumin and Okinawans. Koreans usually received lower wages than the Japanese did and lived in “ghettoes because of poverty and discrimination.”^[11]Full-fledged discrimination induced the massacre of Koreans after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. Japanese vigilantes murdered and raped innocent Koreans, swayed by rumours that Koreans were poisoning water wells, committing arson, and pillaging Japanese households, while the Japanese government turned a blind eye. Professor Sonia Ryang describes the extent of violence, comparing it to that suffered by African Americans under Jim Crow Laws:

Perhaps the worst moment for anyone to be a Korean in Japan came in 1923 in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake, when [a] pogrom-like hunt for Koreans spread across the scorched lands of Tokyo and its vicinity. Like the black bodies hanging from those southern trees, Korean bodies were on display without eyeballs, without nose, without breasts, their thighs and arms covered with lacerations and with very little skin surface intact.¹²

The beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 led to the enforced migration of Koreans. The Japanese government brought 700,000-800,000 Koreans to work in factories and mines and conscripted 200,000 Koreans into the Japanese military.¹³ The number of Koreans in Japan increased from 2,246 in 1910 to 300,000 in 1930 and 2 million in 1945.¹⁴

The Japanese defeat in World War II ended colonial rule but perpetuated the legal and social discrimination against Zainichi Koreans, forcing them to live impoverished lives. While most Koreans returned to Korea, “some 600,000 ethnic Koreans remained in Japan,” for they had achieved viable livelihoods, had married ethnic Japanese, or were “weary of the unrest and poverty in the Korean peninsula.”¹⁵ The Japanese government, however, considered Zainichi Koreans as foreigners. Theoretically speaking, the colonial hierarchy and postcolonial legacy transformed Zainichi Koreans into objects of “enmity and rejection” or of “hatred, denial of voting rights, and decline in social status.”¹⁶ They were stripped of their voting rights in 1945, relegated to alien status in 1947 through the Alien Registration Law, and were rendered stateless in 1952 after the Treaty of San Francisco.¹⁷ Moreover, Koreans were barred from employment in the public sector such as the railway and postal service, excluded from most social welfare services, and faced stronger discrimination from employment in the private sector.¹⁸ Zainichi Koreans were thus compelled to engage in “illegal or marginal economic activities such as illegal alcohol production, scrap recycling, and racketeering.”¹⁹ Under abject poverty with a low level of education and dismal living conditions, “deprived of their civil rights” and stable residential status, “Koreans hovered on the edges of Japanese society.”²⁰

 The competition between North and South Korea fractured the Zainichi community and complicated their identity. In the 1950s, Chongryon commanded the support of the majority of Zainichi Koreans by providing loans for ethnic Korean businesses and Korean language and culture education to Zainichi.²¹ Motivated by the desire to return to Korea and “the promise of paradise,” Chongryon launched a repatriation project, in which over 90,000 ethnic Koreans migrated to North Korea from 1959 to the 1970s.²² This was motivated by “perilous memories of a colonial past, as well as the abject living conditions and complete disenfranchisement from Japanese civic life.”²³ This trend was disrupted in 1965 with the normalization of diplomatic relationship between South Korea and Japan, which allowed Zainichi Koreans to obtain South Korean citizenship and receive permanent resident status from Japan, whose advantages included “freedom to travel and access to Japanese medical and welfare benefits.”²⁴ However, the South Korean government demanded that Zainichi who register as foreigners in Japan use the label of Kankoku (韓国), not Chosen (朝鮮).²⁵ Coupled with the fact that North Korea proclaimed anyone with the citizenship of “Chosen” to be North Korean citizens, the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea changed the meaning of the term “Chosen,” which used to mean imagined but reunified Korean peninsula.²⁶

At the same time, naturalization became considered taboo among Zainichi Koreans. The Japanese government advocated possessing Japanese citizenship to mean assuming Japanese ethnicity as well. Becoming Japanese further meant accepting the Japanese system of household registration (koseki), giving up the Korean system of lineage registry (jokbo), and adopting Japanese-sounding names.²⁷ For Zainichi who suffered colonial and historical discrimination at the hands of Japanese, these conditions were unacceptable and tantamount to “national betrayal” or treason.²⁸ This effectively set up a frameworkof “Chosen-seki (朝鮮籍)²⁹ =North Korea,” “Kankoku-seki (韓国籍)³⁰ =South Korea,”and “Nihon-seki (日本籍) =Traitor.” ³¹ The Zainichi became more isolated, shunning intermarriage between Koreans and Japanese people and resisting naturalization.³²

Towards Greater Integration

Fed up with systemic discrimination, Zainichi Koreans began to organise themselves to resist it. The second or third generations of Zainichi Koreans especially were frustrated that in spite of having been born in Japan and grown up under Japanese culture, they still experienced discrimination, exclusion, and violence.³³ Mobilisation began in 1970 with the Hitachi Case, in which Chong Sok Pak, a Zainichi Korean, sued Hitachi, one of Japan’s conglomerates. Pak had passed the company exam using his Japanese-sounding alias, but Hitachi withdrew its offer after discovering that Pak was Zainichi, openly stating that “We cannot hire a Korean.”³⁴ A group of Zainichi Koreans and Japanese supported Pak and condemned Hitachi, which argued in court that Pak “had falsified his resume by using a ‘false name.’”³⁵ After four years of trial, the Yokohama District Court ruled in favour of Pak:

The plaintiff wrote his alias in order to appear as if he were Japanese, but the motive that led to this fabrication deserves extraordinary sympathy on many points in light of the historical and social background of Koreans including the plaintiff as explained above, and in light of the reality that Koreans living in Japan are refused employment, particularly by big Japanese companies – except with special exceptions – for the sole reason that they are Korean.³⁶

The court’s sympathetic attitude towards Zainichi Koreans opened the way for a Zainichi civil rights movement. In 1977, the Japanese court struck down a clause which dictated that only Japanese citizens could become lawyers. In the 1980s, Chongsok Han, a Zainichi Tokyo resident, began the anti-fingerprinting movement, contending that “forced fingerprinting during alien registration was a violation of human rights and dignity” and wishing to “create a society that recognizes Zainichis as equal members of Japanese society.”³⁷ Zainichi Koreans refused to be fingerprinted despite threats of arrest, and more and more Japanese citizens began to recognize the discrimination Zainichi faced. Pressured by the Zainichi campaign, Japanese supporters, and the international community, the Japanese government eliminated the forced fingerprinting in 1993. The campaign to be recognised in public life continued in the 1990s with the inclusion of Zainichi in civil service positions and the expansion of local suffrage to Zainichi Koreans.³⁸ The Zainichi civil rights movement not only established the Zainichi’s own identity but also can be considered as part of their effort to live convivially with the Japanese.³⁹

 This internal mobilised resistance to discrimination was accompanied by the support of external events. The Japanese ratification of the International Covenants for Human Rights and UN Refugee Convention in the early 1980s required that Japan provide permanent resident status to Zainichi Koreans without South Korean citizenship.⁴⁰ They gained permanent residency in 1981 with the ability to easily acquire re-entry permits.⁴¹ In 1985, the Japanese citizenship law was amended so that children with Japanese mothers could also obtain Japanese citizenship; previously, only children with Japanese fathers were eligible for Japanese citizenship, per the 1950 law.⁴² This meant that half-Zainichi children with Japanese mothers could receive Japanese citizenship too. At the same time, Lie observes that the 1988 Seoul Olympics and 2002 World Cup positively changed the Japanese attitude about South Korea and that thus “occurred in tandem with the decline of ethnic discrimination.”⁴³ The gradual decrease in the influence of ethnic discrimination and the increase in ethnic recognition through the Zainichi civil rights movement and favourable external events brought the Zainichi closer to the main Japanese cultural and social life. 

Zainichi Today

Statistics shows that the Zainichi are becoming more assimilated into mainstream Japanese society. The number of Koreans living in Japan has decreased recently. In particular, the number of special residents, i.e. Zainichi Koreans, decreased from 471,756 in 2003 to 377,350 in 2012.⁴⁴ This can be attributed to the increasing number of Zainichi choosing to naturalize as Japanese nationals – 10,000 per year – and increasing rate of marriages between Zainichis and Japanese.⁴⁵ These trends are the opposite of phenomena observed until the 1960s with intermarriage shunned and naturalization viewed as taboo. They may also imply that Zainichi with Chosen-seki or Kankoku-seki citizenships will continue to decrease in number as time passes and become assimilated as Japanese citizens.⁴⁶

What is causing such assimilation of the Zainichi as Japanese citizens? An emerging, independent Zainichi identity may be encouraging Zainichi’s faster integration into Japanese society. The first facet of this new Zainichi identity is the recognition of their Korean roots. Hyun-Sun Kim, a sociologist focusing on the lives of Korean immigrants,conducted interviews with six second and third generation Zainichi Koreans living in Osaka from 2007 to 2008. Kim reveals that many of them felt “burdened” or “guilty” by using their Japanese alias instead of their Korean name.⁴⁷Myeong-Sun Park (朴明順) testifies that she “did not like living as a Japanese person” hiding her Korean ethnic identity, even though she hid her Korean roots because of the discrimination she would be subject to, an action she attributes to her “lack of ethnic character.”⁴⁸ Hae-Suk Bae (裵解淑) always questioned why she should continue using her Japanese alias even though she is Korean.⁴⁹ While living as Zainichi is difficult, using their Korean name clarifies their identity and autonomously raises their self-esteem.⁵⁰

The second facet of this emerging Zainichi identity is the co-existence of resistance (抵抗, teiko) against Japanese discrimination and symbiosis (共生, kyosei) between Zainichi Koreans and Japanese people. In a survey conducted in 2012 for 216 Zainichi Koreans living in the Kansai region in their 20s to 40s, 61% replied that Japan hurt Koreans the most throughout history, but 71% replied that “one should forgive but not forget” the painful history with Japan.⁵¹ This implies that while the younger generation of Zainichi Koreans are critical towards how Japan tried to eliminate Korean identity in the past, they are not willing to completely erase their Japanese identity. Moreover, Jong-Gon Kim, a proffessor at Konkuk University in Seoul who focueses on the identity of Zainichi Koreans, conducted interviews in 2014 with six young Zainichi Koreans living in Kansai region reveals that the majority of young Zainichi cannot accept hostility towards Japan and want to be part of Japanese society.⁵²

The final aspect of the new Zainichi identity is the flexibility of nationality. This is in contrast to the past when the nationality one held determined one’s allegiance to a particular nation, as seen with the earlier rigid framework of “Chosen-seki vs. Kankoku-seki vs. Nihon-seki.” Jong-Gon Kim points out that many Zainichi Koreans do not speak the Korean language or know Korean culture well.⁵³ Just because one’s passport is South Korean does not mean that they are considered Korean; the derogative term “banjjokbari” (쪽발이) alludes to the discrimination against Zainichi by Korean compatriots.⁵⁴ But it is this discrimination and exclusion due to the difference between Zainichi Koreans and peninsular Koreans that make Zainichi Koreans realize that nationality cannot convey their identity, leading them to think that “defining one’s identity by one’s nationality is unfair.”⁵⁵ Furthermore, for the newer generations of Zainichi Koreans, nationality is becoming more of a choice: one can thus choose nationality according to need and can also change it.⁵⁶

Opportunities and Challenges

What does this evolution of new Zainichi identity mean for Zainichi Koreans and a burgeoning multicultural Japanese society? Lie presents a positive outlook by stating that more Japanese people seek “mutual recognition and reconciliation” under the banner of conviviality (kyosei), and that modern Zainichi Korean identity and multicultural society “suggest one possible outcome” of Zainichi’s century-long struggle.⁵⁷ Moreover, the way Zainichi Koreans integrate into the mainstream Japanese society with pride in their Korean heritage may provide guidance for newer incoming minorities in Japan, such as the Nikkeijin, the Chinese, and South East Asian migrant workers, to cement the blooming multicultural Japanese society. 

However, the claim that there is no longer discrimination against Zainichi Koreans in Japan seems untenable. Moon and Aoki qualify that the instability of employment and the precarity from dissolution of traditional families and communities are fuelling “historical revisionism” and are provoking increasing instances of hate speech against Koreans and Zainichi Koreans.⁵⁸ Indeed, far-right groups like Zaitokukai (Association of Citizens against the Special Privileges of the Zainichi) frequently stage violent anti-Zainichi protests in Korean-majority neighbourhoods.⁵⁹ In the aforementioned survey of Kansai Zainichi Koreans, 66% of them have had experiences with discrimination. In addition, the development of the new Zainichi identity brings about a rift between the older and younger Zainichi generations. For instance, in Toichi Nakata’s 1994 documentary Osaka Story, Nakata’s Zainichi father disowns Nakata’s sister for marrying a Japanese man because the father felt that “Koreans and Japanese are different.”⁶⁰ How members of the older Zainichi generation can reconcile their past experiences with discrimination and the evolution of new Zainichi identity is yet to be seen. Thus, will the new Zainichi identity survive? Professor Sonia Ryang predicts:

Whether such a figure is able to retain his/her heritage with pride remains to be seen: the answer will hinge on the possibility of multicultural tolerance and acceptance on the part of Japanese society, resilience of Koreans in Japan, and taken together, possibility of coexistence of different peoples that were once unequivocally superior and inferior, the master and the subjugated.⁶¹

Conclusion

Zainichi Koreans have suffered systemic discrimination and violence since their first arrival a century ago. Until the 1960s, continued discrimination and exclusion from public life isolated the Zainichi community. Competition between North and South Korea complicated their identity and made the Zainichi more closed-off. However, the civil rights campaigns of the 1970s to 1990s and external events decreased instances of discrimination against Zainichi Koreans. Now, unlike in previous years, Zainichi are no longer bound by nationality, do recognise their Korean roots, and wish to succeed in the mainstream Japanese society. Whether this success can be sustained depends on multicultural tolerance of Japanese people and the perseverance of Zainichi Koreans, and for other minority groups in Japan, the impact of the Zainichi case remains to be seen. 

Works Cited

Fukuoka, Yasunori. “Introduction: ‘Japanese’ and ‘Non-Japanese’.” In Lives of Young Koreans in Japan, 1-12. Melbourne, Australia: Trans Pacific Press, 2000.

“Jjok-bari.” (쪽발이) Standard Korean Language Dictionary. Accessed December 6, 2017. http://krdic.naver.com/detail.nhn?docid=36450500.

Kim, Hyun-Sun. “An Analysis of Nationality and Identity of Koreans in Japan.” (국적과 재일 코리안의 정체성) Economy and Society 83 (2009): 313-341.

Kim, Jong Gon. “A Third-Generation Koreans-in-Japan’s Identity and Value-Oriented.” (재일’ & ‘조선인’으로서의 정체성과 가치지향성) The Journal of the Humanities for Unification 59 (2014): 31-57.

Lie, John. “Zainichi: The Korean Disaspora in Japan.” Education about Asia 14, no. 2 (2009): 16-21.

Moon, Gyeong-Su and Yoshiyuki Aoki. “Zainichi: Three Homelands and Three Eras.” (자이니치, 3개의 조국 그리고 3개의 시대) Shilcheon Munhak, August 2015.

Moon, Rennie. “Koreans in Japan.” Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education. Accessed November 16, 2017. http://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/koreans_in_japan.

Nakata, Toichi, dir. Osaka Story. 1994; Beaconsfield, UK: National Film and Television School, 1995. DVD.

Okunuki, Hifumi. “Forty Years after Zainichi Labor Case Victory, Is Japan Turning Back the Clock?” The Japan Times (Tokyo, Japan), Jan. 21, 2015. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2015/01/21/issues/forty-years-zainichi-labor-case-victory-japan-turning-back-clock/#.Wg2hFWjWw2x.

Ra, Gyeong-Su. “The Multiculturalism of Japan and Current State of Zainichi.” (일본의 다문화와 자이니치의 현재) Research Group for Global Korean Business and Culture 35 (2010): 75-85. Accessed November 16, 2017. http://www.dbpia.co.kr/Article/NODE02089848

Ryang, Sonia. “The Rise and Fall of Chongryun—From Chōsenjin to Zainichi and beyond.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 14, no. 15 (2016): 1-16.

Son, Seung-Cheol. “Kidnapped Koreans during Imjin War.” (임진왜란피로인, 壬辰倭亂捕虜人) Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Last modified January 22, 2015. http://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Contents/Index.

Thorp, Vivien Kim. “February Issue: I am Zainichi.” KoreAm, February 2012. http://kore.am/february-issue-i-am-zainichi/

Yi, Ji-Ho. “Examining the Identity of Counter-Protesters against Anti-Korean Movement in Japan.” (일본의 反혐한 시위대, 그들의 정체를 알아보니..) The Chosun Ilbo (Seoul, Korea), Oct. 7, 2013. http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/10/07/2013100701540.html?Dep0=twitter&d=2013100701540.

Yoo, Hyuck Soo. “Struggles and Challenges of the Zainichi Korean/Chosen Society: Focusing on the Relations between “Old” and “New” Comers.” (재일한국/조선인 사회의 갈등과 과제) Korean Journal of Japanese Studies 10 (2014): 308-329.

References

^[1] John Lie, “Zainichi: The Korean Disaspora in Japan.” Education about Asia 14, no. 2 (2009): 18.

^[2] Yasunori Fukuoka, “Introduction: ‘Japanese’ and ‘Non-Japanese’,” in Lives of Young Koreans in Japan, (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2000), 2.

^[3] Seung-Cheol Son, “Kidnapped Koreans during Imjin War,” (임진왜란피로인, 壬辰倭亂捕虜人) Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, last modified January 22, 2015, http://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Contents/Index. Son notes that Japanese and Korean scholars disagree on the number of Koreans Japanese military kidnapped, from 20,000 to 400,000. 

^[4] Ibid., 12.

⁵ Lie, “Zainichi,” 16. Lie explains that while the term Zainichi “can refer to non-Koreans,” it “has become synonymous with the ethnic Korean population in Japan.” This paper will use both Zainichi and Zainichi Koreans interchangeably throughout. 

⁶ Vivien Kim Thorp, “February Issue: I am Zainichi,” KoreAm, February 2012, http://kore.am/february-issue-i-am-zainichi/

^[5] Jong Gon Kim, “A Third-Generation Koreans-in-Japan’s Identity and Value-Oriented,” (재일’ & ‘조선인’으로서의 정체성과 가치지향성) The Journal of the Humanities for Unification 59 (2014): 53. 

^[6] Gyeong-Su Ra, “The Multiculturalism of Japan and Current State of Zainichi,” (일본의 다문화와 자이니치의 현재) Research Group for Global Korean Business and Culture 35 (2010): 75, accessed November 16, 2017. http://www.dbpia.co.kr/Article/NODE02089848.

^[7] Lie, “Zainichi,” 21. 

^[8] These are the Korean characters for Masayoshi Son’s Korean name, Son Jeong-ui. 

^[9] Ra, “The Multiculturalism,” 77.

^[10] Lie, “Zainichi,” 16.

^[11] Rennie Moon, “Koreans in Japan,” Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education, accessed November 16, 2017, http://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/koreans_in_japan; Fukuoka, “Introduction,” 1. Burakumin are the “descendants of people defined as outcastes during the feudal Middle Ages.” They worked as executioners, butchers, and tanners: occupations that were considered impure. Burakumin were thus ostracized from the mainstream society and lived in enclaves;  Moon, “Koreans in Japan.”

¹² Sonia Ryang, “The Rise and Fall of Chongryun—From Chōsenjin to Zainichi and beyond,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 14, no. 15 (2016): 1. 

¹³ Moon, “Koreans in Japan.”

¹⁴ Ra, “The Multiculturalism,” 77. 

¹⁵ Lie, “Zainichi,” 16.

¹⁶ JG Kim, “A Third Generation,” 37.

¹⁷ Moon, “Koreans in Japan.”

¹⁸ Gyeong-Su Moon and Yoshiyuki Aoki. “Zainichi: Three Homelands and Three Eras,” (자이니치, 3개의 조국 그리고 3개의 시대) Shilcheon Munhak, August 2015, 329.

¹⁹ Moon, “Koreans in Japan.”

²⁰ Ryang, “The Rise,” 7.

²¹ Lie, “Zainichi,” 16.

²² Ibid., 17; Ryang, “The Rise,” 7.

²³ Ibid., 8.

²⁴ Moon, “Koreans in Japan.”

²⁵ JG Kim, “A Third Generation,” 44.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Lie, “Zainichi,” 18.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Chosen-seki (朝鮮籍). The Japanese government assigns this nationality to Zainichi Koreans who have neither Japanese nor South Korean citizenship.

³⁰ Kankoku-seki (韓国籍). This denotes South Korean citizenship.

³¹ Nihon-seki (日本籍). This denotes Japanese citizenship; JG Kim, “A Third Generation,” 34.

³² Lie, “Zainichi,” 19.

³³ JG Kim, “A Third Generation,” 38.

³⁴ Hifumi Okunuki, “Forty Years after Zainichi Labor Case Victory, Is Japan Turning Back the Clock?” The Japan Times (Tokyo, Japan), Jan. 21, 2015, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2015/01/21/issues/forty-years-zainichi-labor-case-victory-japan-turning-back-clock/#.Wg2hFWjWw2x.

³⁵ Ra, “The Multiculturalism,” 80; Okunuki, “Forty Years.”

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Ra, “The Multiculturalism,” 80. Prior to the 1990s, Japanese alien registration law required Zainichi Koreans to be fingerprinted during alien registration; Lie, “Zainichi,” 20

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Ra, “The Multiculturalism,” 80. 

⁴⁰ Ryang, “The Rise,” 8.

⁴¹ Ibid. 

⁴² Hyun-Sun Kim, “An Analysis of Nationality and Identity of Koreans in Japan,” (국적과 재일 코리안의 정체성) Economy and Society 83 (2009): 321.

⁴³ Lie, “Zainichi,” 20.

⁴⁴ H-S Kim, “An Analysis,” 320; Hyuck Soo Yoo, “Struggles and Challenges of the Zainichi Korean/Chosen Society: Focusing on the Relations between “Old” and “New” Comers,” (재일한국/조선인 사회의 갈등과 과제) Korean Journal of Japanese Studies 10 (2014): 312.

⁴⁵ H-S Kim, “An Analysis,” 321-322.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 329. It is difficult to estimate the proportion of Zainichi Koreans who opt to use Korean names. Using Korean names in public is still stigmatised, and it takes a lot of personal courage for individual Zainichi Koreans to ‘come out’ and start using their Korean names.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 327.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 328.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 329.

⁵¹ JG Kim, “A Third Generation,” 40. 

⁵² Ibid., 41.

⁵³ Ibid., 47. 

⁵⁴ “Jjok-bari,” (쪽발이) Standard Korean Language Dictionary, accessed December 6, 2017, http://krdic.naver.com/detail.nhn?docid=36450500. “Ban” means half (半) while “jjokbari” is the Korean derogatory term for Japanese people. “Jjokbari” roughly translates to ‘split feet,’ which refers to the fact that the Japanese people traditionally wore the geta, which are wooden sandals that separate the big toe from other toes, akin to modern day flip-flops; JG Kim, “A Third Generation,” 47.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 48. 

⁵⁶ H-S Kim, “An Analysis,” 338; JG Kim, “A Third Generation,” 49.

⁵⁷ Lie, “Zainichi,” 21. 

⁵⁸ Moon and Aoki, “Zainichi: Three,” 336. 

⁵⁹ Ji-Ho Yi, “Examining the Identity of Counter-Protesters against Anti-Korean Movement in Japan,” (일본의 反혐한 시위대, 그들의 정체를 알아보니..) The Chosun Ilbo (Seoul, Korea), Oct. 7, 2013. http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/10/07/2013100701540.html?Dep0=twitter&d=2013100701540. 

⁶⁰ Osaka Story, directed by Toichi Nakata (1994; Beaconsfield, UK: National Film and Television School, 1995), DVD.

⁶¹ Ryang, “The Rise,” 14. 

Introduction

The fall of the Communist bloc in 1991 brought high hopes for the international community. In particular, there arose an “early optimism about the potential of the” United Nations to “help settle internal conflicts.”[1] Previously, the constant clashes between the United States and the Soviet Union and the resulting vetoes prevented the United Nations Security Council from intervening to maintain international security. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Security Council seemed to be free to finally exercise its primary responsibility through the active deployment of UN peacekeepers.  

This hope was unfortunately shattered by the marked failures of the UN peacekeeping operations of the 1990’s. In Rwanda, understaffed Belgian troops could do nothing but watch as Hutu rebels massacred Tutsi refugees and moderate Hutus. In Srebrenica, Serb forces held Dutch peacekeepers hostage and killed more than 8,000 Bosniaks. These tragedies increased scepticism about the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping. This doubt still remains even after the United Nations resolved to emphasise its protection of civilians in later peacekeeping operations.

No wonder the scholarship remains divided on whether UN peacekeeping reduces intentional violence perpetrated against civilians. Specifically, does UN peacekeeping decrease the count of one-sided violence, defined as “purposeful killings” of civilians by combatants?[2] Answering this question through the examination of empirical data has proved especially difficult. For example, based on a dataset from intrastate conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa from 1991 to 2008, Hultman, Kathman and Shannon claim that “UN peacekeepers prevent civilian killings when they are appropriately tasked and deployed in large numbers.”[3] Kocher, however, finds “little evidence that” peacekeeping has “affected the level of violence against civilians,” after examining the very same dataset Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon used.[4] Conflicting scholarship has led to opposing policy advice on whether to increase or decrease the involvement of UN peacekeeping in resolving civil conflicts.

This quandary raises two central questions. First, does peacekeeping truly reduce violence committed against civilians in civil wars? If so, then what are the mechanisms that allow UN peacekeeping to reduce one-sided violence against civilians most effectively? To answer these questions, this essay will first examine the evolution of peacekeeping throughout history and explore the different types and components of UN peacekeeping operations. It will then examine the motivations of different actors, such as the rebels and the government forces, in perpetrating violence against civilians. After discussing the challenges to empirical study of peacekeeping, the essay will scrutinise the causal mechanisms by which different features of peacekeeping operations, from their size to their quality, help reduce civilian casualties under specific conditions.

The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping

Although peacekeeping has now become an essential arm of the United Nations in its mission to maintain global peace and security, it was not originally included in the United Nations Charter, the founding document of the UN. The UN Charter describes the possible strategies that UN member nations can take to prevent war in Chapter VI, entitled “Pacific Settlement of Disputes,” and in Chapter VII, named “Action with Respect to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression.” Notably, Article 42 of Chapter VII states that should economic or diplomatic sanctions be insufficient to contain threats to peace, the Security Council may stage “demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces” provided by the member nations.[5] But this power was not exercised regularly due to disagreements between veto-holding members of the Security Council, with the noteworthy exception being the intervention in the Korean War in 1950.[6] Instead, peacekeeping was a measure originally formulated in response to the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956,[7] to “supervise the retreat of foreign troops from the canal zone.”[8]

Until the end of the Cold War, peacekeeping was primarily used to mediate inter-state conflicts. Fortna notes that prior to 1989, the purpose of peacekeeping was “to contain the conflict to prevent direct superpower intervention,” in lieu of directly preventing the resumption of war.[9] Most missions consisted of observers and small-scale troops “unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops” who monitor ceasefires and build confidence between warring parties, with the notable exceptions being the large-scale deployments to Congo in 1960 and to Cyprus in 1974.[10] The mostly limited character of UN peacekeeping before the fall of the Berlin Wall was thus very different from how people conceive of the role of peacekeeping today.[11]

The dynamics in peacekeeping shifted after the 1990’s. With incidences of inter-state war decreasing and those of intra-state civil conflict rising, UN peacekeeping also began to focus not just on the cessation of war but also on building sustainable peace. This meant that UN peacekeepers incorporated “multidimensional” missions that included human rights monitoring, security sector reform, disarmament, and re-integration of former combatants alongside more “traditional” missions involving military personnel observations.[12] After the widely-criticised missions in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia, the Security Council began mandating many peace enforcement missions under Chapter VII to use force beyond simply self-defence purposes, in order to achieve their objectives.[13] At the same time, the UN decided to include civilian protection in the main agenda of peacekeeping missions, reflecting on the mistakes in Rwanda and Bosnia. Today, the number of deployed peacekeepers has increased to 110,000, a staggering surge from mere hundreds in the mid-20^th century. In addition, peacekeeping forces now include military troops, police officers, and civilians, such as legal experts and humanitarian workers, illustrating a noticeable transformation from the unarmed or lightly-armed observers and military personnel in the early days of peacekeeping.[14]

Types and Components of UN Peacekeeping

Contrary to popular perception, the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces come in numerous forms, varying in their missions and compositions. Distinguishing different types of peacekeeping missions allows us to disentangle how peacekeepers affect the outcomes of war and the incentives of the involved actors. Peacekeeping missions differ in their scale of involvement, from observation missions composed of observers that monitor ceasefires or troop withdrawals to multidimensional missions that “help implement comprehensive peace agreements” with substantial military and civilian involvement, to cite just a few.[15]

These peacekeeping missions can be further disaggregated into three types of roles. As UN troops intercede between combatants and disarm the belligerents, UN police forces patrol behind the frontlines and protect vulnerable populations[16]. Meanwhile, UN observers document combatants’ actions for the general public, “report to a global audience on atrocities committed by combatants,” but unlike UN troops or police they are not armed and do not have the mandate to use force.[17] Differentiating these components is important in analysing UN peacekeeping’s effect on reducing violence against civilians, since their presence and actions alter the motivations of government forces and rebels differently.

Motivations for Committing Violence against Civilians

Why do belligerents attack civilians in civil conflicts? The rationalist school of literature argues that in civil wars, combatants are motivated “to misrepresent privately held information” to bargain for a more beneficial outcome and wage war, rather than to pursue “peaceful solutions to their grievances.”[18] They are thus motivated to show their will to continue fighting by inflicting significant losses on others. Since attacking civilians involves lower risk for the perpetrator than confronting armed adversaries does, belligerents often target civilians strategically to improve their relative position vis-à-vis their opponents.[19] Combatants might also resort to coercion and violence against civilians to secure their loyalty and punish them for supporting their adversaries.[20] This violence could intensify if there is a possibility that adversaries are hiding among civilians for support.[21] In addition, belligerents may commit violence against civilians to acquire valuable resources and land.[22]

Combatants, however, also have the incentive to attack civilians even after the cessation of conflict. A particularly strong motivation comes from the commitment problem, in which the belligerents believe that “gains from fighting outweigh the concessions offered by a negotiated outcome,”[23] especially when there is “uncertainty over future distribution of political power.”[24] The security dilemma from disarmament aggravates this,[25] since combatants give up their ability to protect themselves by disarming and make themselves vulnerable to government forces that can renege on their “previous commitments to the group.”[26] This compels warring factions to maintain military capabilities and “use violence to shape civilian” behaviour to grab power in the post-conflict political process.[27]

Factionalism within combatting groups may also motivate belligerents to victimise civilians. Hardliners or informal militia members sometimes worry that the negotiated settlement could marginalise them from the post-conflict political process; as such they may view settlements as more costly than continued fighting.[28] In this case, inflicting violence on civilians can “signal a fringe faction’s willingness to continue the fight” and to spoil the peace negotiations by portraying their more moderate partners as noncredible.[29]

Finally, profit-seeking behaviour among armed factions lends itself to violence against civilians. The absence of “a strong security apparatus” allows former combatants to loot resources from unarmed civilians.[30] Some combatants might also form new organisations or “apolitical militia groups” solely dedicated to exploit profitable resources, potentially instigating another civil conflict and jeopardising the recently-attained peace.[31]

These motivations illustrate how combatants could be incentivised to perpetrate violence against civilians, both during and after the conflict. The success of peacekeeping operations in protecting civilians from these threats hinges on their capacity to attenuate or alter these malicious incentives. How can peacekeeping operations achieve that?

Challenges to the Quantitative Studies of UN Peacekeeping

Identifying causal mechanisms require a closer examination of the relationship between causes and effects. Many scholars use some forms of regression to empirically studying this relationship. But grave danger exists in naively regressing civilian casualties on the presence of UN peacekeepers, because many regression models require strict quantitative assumptions that the data often does not meet.[32] There are two empirical challenges to studying the effect of peacekeepers on civilian casualty reduction, which merit discussion before exploring the causal mechanisms themselves.

Issue with Coding Peacekeeping as a Dichotomous Variable

The aforementioned variety in peacekeeping implies that UN peacekeeping differs in their forms and abilities. But many scholars rely on a blunt measure of peacekeeping by merely documenting the absence or the presence of peacekeepers. This does not “capture nuances across and within missions.”[33] For instance, the peacekeeping mission sent to Burundi in 2005 included only 200 observers, whereas the one to Somalia had 30,000 military troops in late 1993.[34] Moreover, the peacekeeping mission to Mozambique grew in size from 200 to 1,000 police members within 10 months in 1994.[35] Yet, the binary coding will treat these different peacekeeping missions in identical fashions, failing to measure the variations across and within missions. It would also “ignore the tools available” to peacekeeping operations and “their capacities for” dealing with post-conflict instability.[36] The diverse features in peacekeeping must therefore be disaggregated to scrutinise how each mission affects the level of violence inflicted on civilians differently.

Issue with Causality in the Study of Peacekeeping

Another challenge in empirically investigating peacekeeping operations comes from issues with causality. Researchers must thus employ innovative empirical strategies to ensure that their results are robust against statistical insignificance. A prominent concern is the non-randomness of peacekeepers’ placement and the resulting endogeneity. For instance, the assignment of peacekeeping forces “may seem to lead to more deaths” if peacekeepers are intentionally sent to regions with high civilian casualties, when even higher level of civilian victimisation could have occurred without the presence of the peacekeepers.[37] In essence, these studies fail to establish a baseline for what would have happened had the UN not sent peacekeepers.[38] While a randomised control trial involving the random assignment of peacekeepers to different regions in a conflict would be the most effective way to measure the causal effect of peacekeepers on civilian casualties, this method be unfeasible and also highly unethical. It would be difficult to conduct the experiment on a national scale, and no scholar or policymaker would tolerate inflicting harm on civilians. A possible way to overcome this issue could be to use a matching strategy.[39] This would ensure a more balanced dataset that ensures results will not be caused by systematic differences between regions with or without peacekeeping deployment.[40] Another strategy would be to use an exogenous instrumental variable that causes an “as-if random” variation on the assignment of peacekeepers. For instance, using the rotating presidency in the Security Council that determines the placement of peacekeeping forces could account for possible unobservable factors that could affect the level of civilian victimisation.[41]

Features and Causal Mechanisms of UN Peacekeeping

Previous sections discussed the evolution of UN peacekeeping, its diverse types and components, and the combatants’ incentives to inflict violence on civilians. The following part of this paper moves on to describe in greater detail how certain features of peacekeeping better reduce violence against civilians than other features do, with robust empirical evidence from recent studies. In particular, peacekeeping operations’ size, role, diversity, and quality will be considered, along with the type of violent perpetrator.

Returning to the controversy mentioned in the introduction, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon claim that greater numbers of UN troops and police are associated with fewer civilian deaths, while more observers increase civilian casualties. They point to the role of UN troops in creating buffer zones between combatants as barriers and disarming them. This alleviates the security dilemma by removing “each faction’s threat of subjugation by the other”[42] and in turn remove the “incentives to coerce civilian loyalty” and the means to “inflict harm upon the civilian population.”[43] Similarly, the UN police patrolleds behind the frontlines and increased “the costs to the combatants” for inflicting violence on civilians. The researchers maintain that the increase in the numbers of deployed troops and police amplifies “the capacity and the credibility of the UN’s commitment to protecting civilians.”[44] To the contrary, the presence of observers creates more incentive for belligerents to target civilians, since observers cannot actively protect civilians, which belligerents interpret as the UN’s lack of resolve.[45] Alternatively, the arrival of observers may signal the imminent arrival of stronger UN peacekeepers, which increases the belligerents’ incentives to improve their relative power before the status quo is consolidated.[46]

While Kocher objects to Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon’s interpretation, his argument is questionable. Kocher observes that “declines in violence typically led, rather than lagged, the introduction of peacekeepers,”[47] hypothesising that combatants might have “reduced their targeting of civilians” with anticipation of peacekeepers’ arrival.[48] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, however, already accounted for this argument by including a variable that represents the passing of a Security Council resolution to launch a peacekeeping operation in the regression. They confirm that the interpretation of their regression coefficients does not change after including the variable.[49] Furthermore, Kathman and Wood demonstrate that greater numbers of peacekeeping troops reduce anti-civilian violence,[50] a valuable result keeping in mind that post-conflict violence against civilians remains a serious concern. They show that the causal mechanisms Hultman et al. explain remain mostly valid for post-conflict violence, further noting that increasing troop deployments allow peacekeepers “to distribute resources to other tasks that promote human security”.[51] One difference between the results of Kathman and Wood and those of Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon is that the effect of the UN police force on reducing violence against civilians varies across the types of violent perpetrators. While the UN police’s alleviation of the security dilemma reduces violence committed by rebels, it does not decrease that of militia who treat the UN police as “a threat to their ability to engage in illicit activities” and inflict further violence to resist political order.[52]

Peacekeeping operations’ reduction of civilian violence also has a different effect if the state is the main perpetrator of the violence. Carnegie and Mikulaschek show that after “exploiting exogenous variation in power” within the Security Council, peacekeepers have a greater impact on civilian casualties inflicted by rebels than those by government forces.[53] This is because peacekeepers are incentivised “to not respond harshly to civilian” victimisation by government forces, due to their need to actively collaborate with host government.[54] This is especially crucial towards a successful peacekeeping mission, since host governments often provide knowledge on local language, customs, and geography. Conversely, peacekeepers can “reduce rebel-caused civilian fatalities” through disarmament.[55] Moreover, higher number of peacekeepers “can signal the UN’s determination to stop the conflict to combatants,” since their size makes them more visible, and their withdrawal would “incur greater costs.”[56]

Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson find using subnational data that while the local presence of peacekeepers reduces rebel-inflicted anti-civilian violence, it is less effective in preventing government-inflicted violence.[57] They argue that since the presence of peacekeeping forces increases the costs of violence for rebels, which may include directly fighting the peacekeepers or facing disarmament,[58] the likelihood of violence against civilians by rebelling groups would be lower.[59] In contrast, since host governments facilitate the peacekeepers’ “access to civilian population” and can effectively veto UN’s access to particular areas,[60] the deployment of UN peacekeepers would not affect the probability of anti-civilian violence by government forces. To reconcile this result with previous national-level research, Fjelde et al. suggest that applying political cost on the national level through international shaming may be more effective for reducing anti-civilian violence by government forces.[61]

Meanwhile, characteristics like troop quality and diversity can influence the efficacy of UN peacekeeping in reducing violence against civilians. Haass and Ansorg assert that peacekeeping forces with higher troop quality protect civilians better. Firstly, high-quality missions “deter violence” by further increasing the “combatants’ costs of civilian victimisation.”[62] Secondly, they can create buffer zones more easily using superior military equipment like transport helicopters and airplanes, which are crucial “in the absence of functioning streets and railways”.[63] Finally, high-quality peacekeeping missions can monitor combatants’ behaviour better through effective reconnaissance with superior equipment like airplanes and satellite imagery. Financially committed home governments can also apply greater diplomatic pressure on warring parties, enhancing the quality of their peacekeeping missions..[64] Using the contributing nations’ military expenditure per capita as a proxy for troop quality, Haass and Ansorg report that “substantial commitment by troop contributing countries with a better equipped military can substantively reduce the killing of civilians.”[65]

Similarly, Bove and Ruggeri claim that greater diversity in the peacekeepers’ countries of origin improves their capacity to protect civilians, and “incorporating linguistic and geographic distances” into the measures of diversity strengthens the effect of peacekeepers’ diversity on reducing civilian casualties.[66] Bove and Ruggeri attribute this to diversity’s complementarity: greater diversity increases the probability of “having more technical capabilities and more recent campaigning experience,” which discourages combatants from using violence.[67] Furthermore, they claim that peacekeepers from multicultural backgrounds are more effective in dealing with culturally diverse environments. In addition, diversity ensures “mutual monitoring among contingents” and reduces incidences of misconduct,[68] which debilitate the cooperation between peacekeepers and locals and adversely affect their ability to protect the local civilians.

Whether the effect of higher quality troops dominates the effect of greater diversity among troops or vice-versa is uncertain. It is also possible that the two effects are complementary, as Bove and Ruggeri suggest: pooling skills from troops of diverse backgrounds could aggregate their expertise and supplement their ability to protect civilians. Discerning this would require a careful empirical evaluation, preferably through randomisation.

Conclusion

Taking into account the evolution of UN peacekeeping, its diverse types of missions, and the challenges in empirically studying it, UN peacekeeping is effective in reducing violence against civilians through altering the motivations of perpetrators, under certain conditions. Military troops of substantial size and high technical capabilities tend to protect civilians best. If they are stationed near the population and the conflict zone, they also contain threats from non-state actors better than those from government forces.

What does this mean for future peacekeeping operations? It should be recognised that the success of peacekeepers in protecting civilians depends not only on their presence but also on their characteristics like size, quality, and place of origin. Moreover, imposing military cost works better when subduing rebels, whereas inflicting political cost affects government forces better. Policy-makers should thus consider the spatial and political environments of the region, in order to craft the most context-appropriate peacekeeping operation for that specific time and place.

Bibliography

Aarvik, Egil. “Award Ceremony Speech.” Nobel Media AB. Accessed December 12, 2018. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1988/ceremony-speech/.

Boot, Max. “Paving the Road to Hell: The Failure of U.N. Peacekeeping.” Foreign Affairs. March 1, 2000. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2000-03-01/paving-road-hell-failure-un-peacekeeping

Bove, Vincenzo, and Andrea Ruggeri. “Kinds of Blue: Diversity in UN Peacekeeping Missions and Civilian Protection.” British Journal of Political Science 46, no. 3 (2016): 681-700. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123415000034.

Carnegie, Allison, and Christoph Mikulaschek. “The Promise of Peacekeeping: Protecting Civilians in Civil Wars.” Working paper, 2017. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2909822.

Fjelde, Hanne, Lisa Hultman, and Desirée Nilsson. “Protection Through Presence: UN Peacekeeping and the Costs of Targeting Civilians.” International Organization 73, no. 1 (2019). Published electronically August 29, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818318000346.

Fortna, Virginia Page. Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents’ Choices after Civil War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Haass, Felix, and Nadine Ansorg. “Better Peacekeepers, Better Protection? Troop Quality of United Nations Peace Operations and Violence against Civilians.” Journal of Peace Research 55, no. 6 (2018): 742-758. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022343318785419.

Hultman, Lisa, Jacob Kathman, and Megan Shannon. “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection in Civil War.” American Journal of Political Science 57, no. 4 (2013): 875-891.

Hultman, Lisa, Jacob Kathman, and Megan Shannon. “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics and the Duration of Post-Civil Conflict Peace.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 33, no. 3 (2015): 231-249. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0738894215570425.

Kathman, Jacob D., and Reed M. Wood. “Stopping the Killing During the ‘Peace’: Peacekeeping and the Severity of Postconflict Civilian Victimization.” Foreign Policy Analysis 12, no. 2 (2016): 149-169. https://doi.org/10.1111/fpa.12041

Kocher, Matthew A. “The Effect of Peacekeeping Operations on Violence against Civilians in Africa: A Critical Re-Analysis.” Working paper, Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 2014.

“Our History.” United Nations Peacekeeping. Accessed December 12, 2018. https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/our-history. UN Charter. June 26, 1945. Accessed December 12, 2018. http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-vii/index.html

[1] Virginia Page Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents’ Choices after Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 1.

[2] Lisa Hultman, Jacob Kathman, and Megan Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection in Civil War,” American Journal of Political Science 57, no. 4 (2013): 883. This count thus only reflects “direct targeting of civilians,” not “spurious effects associated with random elements of war,” which includes “accidental civilian deaths.”

[3] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” 888.

[4] Matthew A. Kocher, “The Effect of Peacekeeping Operations on Violence against Civilians in Africa: A Critical Re-Analysis,” Working paper, Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 2014: 11.

[5] UN Charter art. 42 (June 26, 1945), accessed December 12, 2018, http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-vii/index.html.

[6] When the Korean War broke out in June 1950, the Soviet Union was absent from Security Council discussions, because it was protesting the fact that Republic of China, not People’s Republic of China, held a Security Council seat. This prevented the USSR from vetoing the UN measure to intervene in the War on behalf of Republic of Korea.

[7] The Suez Canal Crisis broke out in 1956 when Israel, the United Kingdom, and France invaded Egypt in response to Egyptian nationalisation of the Suez Canal. The UK and France vetoed a resolution that called on Israeli forces to withdraw behind the borders.

[8] Egil Aarvik, “Award Ceremony Speech,” Nobel Media AB, accessed December 12, 2018, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1988/ceremony-speech/. This explanation comes from the presentation speech of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988, which was awarded to the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces.

[9] Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work?,4.

[10] “Our History,” United Nations Peacekeeping, accessed December 12, 2018, https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/our-history.

[11] Fortna notes on page 4 that due to this reason, peacekeeping missions before 1989 reveal little about peacekeeping’s ability to maintain peace. This also means that empirical studies on peacekeeping’s effect on reducing violence or preventing resumption of civil war often limit themselves to studying peacekeeping missions deployed after 1989.

[12] “Our History.”

[13] Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work?,5.

[14] “Our History.”

[15] Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work?,7.

[16] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” 879-880.

[17] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” 880.

[18] Lisa Hultman, Jacob Kathman, and Megan Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics and the Duration of Post-Civil Conflict Peace,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 33, no. 3 (2015): 232, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0738894215570425.

[19] Hanne Fjelde, Lisa Hultman, and Desirée Nilsson, “Protection Through Presence: UN Peacekeeping and the Costs of Targeting Civilians,” International Organization 73, no. 1 (2019): 4-5, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818318000346. Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson remark that this is “generally considered a cheap tactic.”

[20] Allison Carnegie and Christoph Mikulaschek, “The Promise of Peacekeeping: Protecting Civilians in Civil Wars,” working paper, 2017: 4-5, https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2909822.

[21] Carnegie and Mikulaschek, “The Promise of Peacekeeping,” 5.

[22] Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson, “Protection Through Presence,” 4.

[23] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics,” 233.

[24] Jacob D. Kathman and Reed M. Wood, “Stopping the Killing During the ‘Peace’: Peacekeeping and the Severity of Postconflict Civilian Victimization,” Foreign Policy Analysis 12, no. 2 (2016): 152, https://doi.org/10.1111/fpa.12041

[25] Security dilemma refers to a case in which under anarchy, states’ actions designed to increase its security unintentionally provoke other states to take similar measures, eventually leading them towards military conflict.

[26] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics,” 234.

[27] Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing,” 152.

[28] Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing,” 152.

[29] Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing,” 152-153.

[30] Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing,” 153.

[31] Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing,” 153.

[32] As an example, consider a simple regression model, the ordinary least squares (OLS). According to the Gauss-Markov Theorem, for OLS to be an efficient estimator, it must meet three assumptions: a) that the model is correctly specified as ; b) the error term  is independently and identically distributed with mean of 0 and a finite variance; c) the variance of  is strictly positive. In this case, the second assumption is easily violated, since the deployment of peacekeepers can be correlated with unobserved omitted factors captured by the error term.

[33] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” 876.

[34] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics,” 232.

[35] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics,” 232.

[36] Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing,” 155.

[37] Carnegie and Mikulaschek, “The Promise of Peacekeeping,” 2.

[38] Carnegie and Mikulaschek, “The Promise of Peacekeeping,” 2.

[39] The technical explanation for this strategy is beyond the scope of this paper. Essentially, using the matching strategy allows researchers to compare datapoints from similar contexts and backgrounds.

[40] Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson, “Protection Through Presence,” 13.

[41] Carnegie and Mikulaschek, “The Promise of Peacekeeping,” 2.

[42] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” 888.

[43] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” 879.

[44] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” 880.

[45] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” 880.

[46] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” 881.

[47] Kocher, “The Effect of Peacekeeping Operations,” 10.

[48] Kocher, “The Effect of Peacekeeping Operations,” 11.

[49] Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” 887.

[50] Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing,” 149.

[51] Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing,” 156.

[52] Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing,” 164.

[53] Carnegie and Mikulaschek, “The Promise of Peacekeeping,” 20.

[54] Carnegie and Mikulaschek, “The Promise of Peacekeeping,” 6.

[55] Carnegie and Mikulaschek, “The Promise of Peacekeeping,” 7.

[56] Carnegie and Mikulaschek, “The Promise of Peacekeeping,” 7.

[57] Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson, “Protection Through Presence,” 26.

[58] Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson, “Protection Through Presence,” 6.

[59] Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson, “Protection Through Presence,” 8.

[60] Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson, “Protection Through Presence,” 7.

[61] Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson, “Protection Through Presence,” 26.

[62] Felix Haass and Nadine Ansorg, “Better Peacekeepers, Better Protection? Troop Quality of United Nations Peace Operations and Violence against Civilians,” Journal of Peace Research 55, no. 6 (2018): 744, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022343318785419.

[63] Haass and Ansorg, “Better Peacekeepers, Better Protection?”, 744.

[64] Haass and Ansorg, “Better Peacekeepers, Better Protection?”, 744-745.

[65] Haass and Ansorg, “Better Peacekeepers, Better Protection?”, 751.

[66] Vincenzo Bove and Andrea Ruggeri, “Kinds of Blue: Diversity in UN Peacekeeping Missions and Civilian Protection,” British Journal of Political Science 46, no. 3 (2016): 683, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123415000034.

[67] Bove and Ruggeri, “Kinds of Blue,” 686.

[68] Bove and Ruggeri, “Kinds of Blue,” 687.