Living in Yesterday’s Terror: The Impact of Civil War Violence on the Post-War Election in South Korea

To what extent does civil war violence affect voting behaviour after the war? Evidence from South Korea after the Korean War suggests that the voter’s support or denunciation of civil war violence perpetrators on election day depends on how well the perpetrator controls the context of violence after the war. Using an original precinct-level dataset of the occurrence of civil war violence and the results of the 1950–1954 general elections in South Korea, I find that civil war violence performed by the dominating perpetrator, the South Korean government, had little effect on their vote shares, while violence performed by the opposition had a significant effect on increasing the dominating perpetrator’s vote shares. By antagonising and repressing the victims of their violence as the enemy of the nation, the South Korean government empowered the victims of opposition violence while silencing those victimised by them during the war. It was only after the collapse of the Rhee regime in April 1960 that the civil war violence victims of the South Korean government could mobilise for emancipation.