Publications (Books)
Carranza Ko, Ñusta (Ed.) 2023. New Ways of Solidarity with Korean Comfort Women. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
This book provides a space for victims’ testimonies and memories, engages with their experiences, reflects upon the redress movement, and evaluates policies related to Korean comfort women as victims and survivors from the international, domestic, and bilateral realms. Collectively, this edited volume aims to further diversify the scholarship on comfort women, contribute to the existing literature on social movements related to comfort women and other related studies, and, in doing so, challenge the politicization of comfort women. With this objective, the book presents scholarship from interdisciplinary fields that revisit the meaning of victims’ testimonies, memories, and remembrance, social movement efforts on comfort women, and the related role of government, governance, and society by reflecting on the truths about the historical past. In so doing, it initiates new conversations among political scientists, sociologists, historians, and cultural and literary scholars. What do victims’ testimonies reveal about new ways of imagining historical memory of Korean comfort women? How are memories of comfort women and their experiences remembered in social movements, literature, and cultural practices? Where is the place of comfort women’s experiences in politics, diplomacy, and global affairs? These are some of the questions that guide the contributions to this edited volume, which seek to establish new ways of solidarity with comfort women. |
Carranza Ko, Ñusta. 2021. Truth, Justice, and Reparations in Peru, Uruguay, and South Korea: The Clash of Advocacy and Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
This book presents the first cross-regional analysis of post-transitional justice periods and the conditions that influence states’ behaviors. Specifically, the book examines why states that adopt and ostensibly implement transitional justice norms as policies—criminal prosecutions, reparations policies, and truth commissions—fail to follow through with their recommendations. Applying these perspectives to a comparative study of states from Latin America and East Asia—namely, Peru, Uruguay, and South Korea—which accepted and implemented transitional justice norms but took different trajectories of behavior after the implementation of policies, this book contributes to understanding the relationship of norm influence on states and why states change in compliance after norm adoption. The book explores the conditions that contribute or limit the continued respect for transitional justice norms, emphasizing the political interests and transnational advocacy networks’ roles in affecting states’ policies of addressing past abuses. Publications (Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters) |
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Ko, Ñ. C. 2023. Unacknowledged genocide: Coercive sterilization of indigenous women in Peru. Violence: An International Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/26330024231210306
From 1996 until 2000, under the pretense of upholding women’s rights and expanding access to family planning resources, the Peruvian government launched an aggressive sterilization campaign that disproportionately targeted Indigenous peoples. In total, 272,028 persons were sterilized, the majority of whom were of Indigenous descent and resided in rural and poor areas. Recent studies conclude this to be a case of genocide, with the state systematically subjecting an ethnic minority population—the Indigenous peoples—to a coercive sterilization campaign that sought to eliminate in whole or in part Andean and Amazonian Indigenous communities. Despite the alarming evidence about the genocide committed against Indigenous peoples, victims are yet to be recognized by the state. The denial of victims’ sufferings leaves the work of building and creating humanity after atrocity incomplete. This study focuses on the unacknowledged memories of genocide, engaging in an analysis of the norms of reparations. The denial of the state to grant integral reparations, despite the existence of a modified law on reparations, points to a purposeful silencing of these victims. Furthermore, these practices represent a new layer of genocide against Indigenous peoples that neglects their victimhood and raises questions as to the absence of humanity after atrocity. |
Carranza Ko, Ñ. 2023. Human Rights in East Asia. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.807
East Asia is a region that has been the focus of discussions about economic development, democratization, nuclear proliferation, technological innovations, and health-related issues. Due to its historical past of colonization (including countries that have been colonizers and those that have been colonized), interstate and regional wars, involvement in world wars, and authoritarian governance, it is also a region that has experienced human rights violations, human rights advancements, and human rights–related policy developments. Thus, the study of East Asia and human rights encompasses colonial, Cold War, post–Cold War, and the post September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks periods of history. Based on the vast amount of scholarship on human rights in the region, a spectrum of approaches should be used to study human rights that (a) examines case-specific human rights violations which focus on vulnerable populations in society; (b) theorizes and questions the essence of human rights and its value systems; and (c) explores developments in human rights–related policy that involve transitional justice processes of truth-seeking, reparations, and criminal accountability regarding past human rights crimes. Examination of historic violations of women’s rights and children’s rights in the case of comfort women who were sexually enslaved by Japan’s Imperial Army during the Asia-Pacific War centers the victims and their experiences. A focus on minority rights leads to the consideration of issues of human trafficking of women and girls in Mongolia and North Korea, social and ethnic minority groups’ concerns in Japan and South Korea, and the plight of Uyghur people in China. The Asian (Confucian) values debate leads to consideration of why human rights have been questioned, why they may be considered as impositions, and which approaches can be taken to re-examine human rights with regard to this region. Finally, the discussion of transitional justice as it relates to East Asian states provides a much needed recognition of the importance of the region for innovating transitional justice policies. |
Carranza Ko, Ñusta. 2022. Complicating Genocide: Missing Indigenous Women’s Stories. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.ORE_POL-02008.R1
Having existed for centuries, genocide is a criminal practice that aims to destroy in whole or in part a population from a particular ethnic, racial, and/or religious background. The study of genocide is one that builds on historic cases of genocidal violence. Specifically, it takes on various approaches to examine genocidal crime, the intent of genocide, and how the motivation to cause physical pain and harm is knowingly implemented as a strategy of war, tool of colonization, and government policy of progress and modernization. Predominantly the scholarship on genocide can be summarized into three methodological approaches: (1) the theoretical that emphasizes the historic context of the crime; (2) the legal that draws from the United Nations Genocide Convention; and (3) the applied perspective that focuses on specific cases of genocide using the theoretical and legal lens. Recently, in the 21st century, genocide studies involving Indigenous populations has gained more traction, as governments have been forced to recognize their own involvement in genocide, such as the forced removal of children in Canada and Australia from Indigenous families in efforts to assimilate them to the majority culture. Among this group however, the Indigenous populations of the Americas, specifically the Indigenous women, have been further targeted for genocide more than other communities of color due to their historic relations with settler-colonial and post-conquest emerging societies. The experiences of Indigenous women and their genocides involving sexual violence and coercive sterilization practices are the missing story in the genocide literature. |
Carranza Ko, Ñusta. 2020. "Making the Case for Genocide-Indigenous Peoples Stories from Peru." Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal Vol 14, no. 2: 90-103.
Peru’s national health program Programa de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación Familiar (PSRPF) aimed to uphold women’s reproductive rights and address the scarcity in maternity related services. Despite these objectives, during PSRPF’s implementation the respect for women’s rights were undermined with the forced sterilization of women predominantly of indigenous, poor, and rural backgrounds. This study considers the forced sterilization of indigenous women as a genocide. Making the case for genocide has not been done previously with this particular case. Using the normative markers of the Genocide Convention, this study categorically sets forced sterilization victims from the state-led-policy as victims of genocide, considering the effects the health malpractice had on victims’ reproductive rights and the prevention of births of future indigenous populations. In doing so, this study proves the genocidal intent from the state to destroy in whole or in part, an ethnic minority group. |
Carranza Ko, Ñusta. 2019. "Truth, History Revision, and South Korea’s Mnemonic Representation of the Past." In Korean Memories: Compressed Modernity, Psychohistorical Fragmentation, ed. Mikyoung Kim. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 281-304.
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Carranza Ko, Ñusta. 2019 “Repairing and Reconciling with the Past: “El Ojo que Llora” and Peru’s Public Monuments.” In Monument Culture: International Perspectives on the Future of Monument in a Changing World, ed. Laura A. Macaluso. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 71-84.
Public monuments, memorials, and policies of memorialization play a unique role in the process of societal reconciliation in states transitioning from authoritarian pasts to a democracy. They complement transitional justice processes of truth-seeking, reparations, and prosecutions of human rights criminals, with an emblematic production of collective memory and history that provides recognition for victims and their family members. This study builds on the growing interest in memorialization practices by bringing to light the integral and visible role public memorials have played in reparations processes. Drawing from observations of Peru that experienced two decades of internal armed conflict from 1980 to 2000, transitioned to a democracy in 2001, engaged in truth and reconciliation commission work (2001-2003), reparations programs (2005; 2016), and prosecution of a democratically elected head of state for human rights crimes (2009), the chapter examines Peru’s El Ojo que Llora—one of the few national memorials that is not physically confined to the site of conflict and serves as a performance of memory. From the framework that regards public memorials as instruments of reparations that keep the past visible, this study analyzes El Ojo que Llora as an active symbolic reparative tool for victims and their family members and society’s reconciliation efforts. Using interviews from non-governmental human rights organizations and victims’ family members, the chapter finds that El Ojo que Llora represents both a step towards active commemoration and collective memory building involving contested interpretations about Peru’s recent past, and facilitates the healing of Peruvian society in transition, as a public space that binds the narratives of violence from the past with the present through allegorical portrayals of victims and their lives. |
Carranza Ko, Ñusta. 2018. "Collective Memory of Past Human Rights Abuses-South Korea." Memory Studies.
Embedded in transitional justice processes is an implicit reference to the production of collective memory and history. This article aims to study how memory initiatives become a crucial component of truth-seeking and reparations processes. The article examines South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the creation of collective memory through symbolic reparations of history revision in education. The South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended a set of symbolic reparations to the state, including history rectification reflective of the truth on human rights violations. Using political discourse analysis, this study compares the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report to the 2016 national history textbook. The article finds that the language of human rights in state sponsored history revisions contests the findings of the truth commission. And in doing so, this analysis argues for the need to reevaluate the government-initiated memory politics even in a democratic state that instituted numerous truth commissions and prosecuted former heads of state. |
Carranza Ko, Ñusta. 2018. "Truth-Seeking for Cheju and the Debates on Compliance." S/N Korean Humanities 4 (2): 67-93.
The April 3 Incident in the Island of Jeju marked one of the gravest human rights violations in Korean history involving a majority of victims who were non-politically motivated innocent civilians caught in the crossfire between the state, foreign actors, and a leftist political party and its armed affiliates. The violence, which continued from 1947 to 1954, resulted in the highest number of casualties, following that of the Korean War (1950-1953). Despite the gravity of the human rights violations, it was only after South Korea transitioned to a democracy and prosecuted two former heads of states that the state engaged in efforts to address the April 3 Incident. This study examines the Special Act for the Investigation of the Jeju April 3 Incident and Recovering the Honor of Victims (1999) and the National Committee for the Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju April 3 Events, which established the Jeju April 3 Commission (2000). Specifically, the study focuses on the status of state compliance with the list of recommendations and article provisions from the Special Act and the National Committee, which included policies for truth-seeking, reparations, and accountability measures for the state. The article finds that while on truth-seeking and symbolic reparations the state reflected a good record of complying with the recommendations, on financial and medical reparations, and criminal accountability measures, the state was relatively less proactive in compliance. The selective level of compliance from the state provides some insight as to the state’s respect for these policies and the possible conditions that may have resulted in the differences of state behavior. |
Carranza Ko, Ñusta. (Ebook 2018; Print Edition 2019). "Forcibly Sterilized: Peru’s Indigenous Women and the Battle for Rights." In Changing Human Rights Practices, eds. Marie-Christine Doran, Blouin-Genest, and Paquerot. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 149-172.
In 2003, Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its Final Report concluding that 69,000 Peruvians were killed or disappeared during the internal armed conflict (1980-2000). The majority of the victims spoke Quechua or other indigenous languages as their mother tongue and lived in Andean provinces and the Amazon region. These demographic characteristics pointed to deep-rooted racism and inequality within Peruvian society against the indigenous peoples that played a part in the violence. Despite successes in accountability and public recognition of indigenous peoples as core victims of the conflict after truth-seeking, the situation of indigenous peoples’ rights in Peru today continues to be contested politically. This study examines Peru’s current status of indigenous peoples’ rights. Specifically, it assesses the state’s respect towards indigenous rights through a case omitted by the TRC but one that continues to dominate political rhetoric: the forced sterilization of women of indigenous and poor economic backgrounds. Relying on interviews with prominent human rights practitioners and archival sources collected by domestic and international advocacy groups on forced sterilization, this study proposes an intersectional human rights analysis for understanding the case of forced sterilization of indigenous women. The findings, which include an intersectional analysis of ethnicity, gender, and class domestically and also via international human rights agreements, demonstrate how forced sterilization is perpetuated by the intersecting set of domestic oppressive forces of sexism, racism, and class-based discrimination directed at an economically marginalized population, who are also a vulnerable group in Peru’s patriarchal society. This status of indigenous peoples’ rights reflects the structural inequality embedded in historical power relationships between dominant white society and the marginalized indigenous sectors, and the domestic political interests that shape and condition the respect for indigenous peoples’ rights in Peru. |