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KORE2034
Gender,
Sexuality, and
Family in Korea
2022-23 Sem 1
Week 5 Militarized Gender and Sexuality
Oct 4, 2022
Today’s class
• Announcements
• Lecture
• Group Exercise
• Midterm Essay prompt
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Announcements
1) midterm prompt at the end of the class
2) Next meeting is Oct 17, bring your laptop or tablet that you can do
library search.
Before coming to class, complete the following course:
ILT04 eLearning@HKUL: Library Essentials for Undergraduate Students,
https://learning.hku.hk/catalog/course/ilt04/
(about 3 hrs)
• No assigned readings for Oct 17, but you must finish above ILT04!
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This week’s readings
1) Katharine Moon, “Prostitute Bodies and Gendered States in U.S.-Korea
Relations,” from Dangerous Women.
2) Na-Young Lee, “Un/forgettable histories of US camptown prostitution in South
Korea: Women’s experiences of sexual labor and government policies,” Sexualities,
2018, Vol. 21: 751–775.
Optional readings:
** Kang Sŏk-kyŏng, “Days and Dreams” (fiction, 1983)
** Sallie Yea, “Marginality, Transgression, and Transnational Identity Negotiations in
Korea’s Kijich’on”
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How is “Comfort women”
connected to US military
prostitution in South Korea?
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Remaining Issues on “Comfort Women”
Issues at hand: lack of documents (not non-existent) vs survivors’ testimonies
à documents destroyed intentionally and unintentionally
How to approach War Crime
• Involving sexual violence
• Forced conscription/draft, human right violence
• Redress: what is the right compensation?
Japanese colonial and war crime redress:
- postwar redress was not full: 1965 Agreement K-J or J-K
- things that were not included (sexual crimes, labor conscription)
- denialism & Japanese revisionist history
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ß 1970s It’aewŏn
Itaewŏn was also an alternative space for S
Koreans. Camptown allows diversity,
transgression, and marginality, like
optional reading Sallie Yea points out. Not
only American music, but also gay bars,
drag queen shows boomed in Itaewŏn.
1980s Tongduch’ŏn à
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1960s: about 60,000 US
military service men
stationed in SK.
2021: about 28,500
(US military does not post
the exact number)
Where is the largest US
military base in Asia?
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Camptown economy: who gets the benefit?
• https://www.sisajournal.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=223369
• (동두천)
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• Katherine Moon, 1997: a
pioneering work on US military
bases and camptown in South
Korea.
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Katherine Moon, “Prostitute Bodies and Gendered
States in U.S.-Korea Relations”
• kijich’on 기지촌: camptown (ex: Yongsan, former Japanese military
head quarter took over by the U.S.A.) since 1945.
• à “R & R” of US military bases all over the world. US Imperialism
• From Lee (771): Camptowns, commercial districts of small villages
that are solely dependent on a US military customer base, have
developed around the main US bases. They have been notorious for
military prostitution throughout Korea’s modern history.
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Bananas, Beaches
and Bases: Making
Feminist Sense of
International Politics
by Cynthia Enloe
(1989 / 2014)
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P 141
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- Stronger state à weaker state military relationship : does not always
yield sexual fraternization of weaker state’s women.
(I.e. Italy or Saudi Arabia)
- must pay close attention to individual actors and groups who may
have varying interests, norms, and goals regarding gender:
à State, military, capitalist interest are not monolithic entities.
Relationships between military prostitution and International politics
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Main Study:
- Camptown Clean-Up Campaign or Camptown Purification Movement,
1971-1976
- tens of thousands Korean military (kijich’on) prostitutes reframed as
patriots help promote the US-ROK security alliance through their
cooperation in the joint US Forces in Korea (USFK) and ROK.
- The process initially started in two tracks: to ease the racial tension
btw African-American US soldiers and local Koreans, and decrease the
rate of venereal disease (VD) among US service men and Korean
prostitutes.
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K. Moon argues…
why 1971, not immediately after the Korean War (1953)?
- 1950s-1960s, clear Cold War era.
- SK involvement to US-led Vietnam War in the 1960s, 50,000 Korean
troops sent to Vietnam.
- 1970s Post-Cold War era, new international politics.
- The Nixon Doctrine 1969 à propose to reduce US military in SK.
- SK afraid of US further withdrawal of US military from SK
à to assuage the critics of US military presence in SK, in the US side &
address skeptics in the Korean gov about the US commitment to Korean
security.
- protest from the sex workers in the early 1970s.
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p. 163.
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What was the sex workers’ reaction?
- annoyance, humiliation due to VD check. Criminalizing women with VD, not the
US soldiers
- socially and economically marginalized women, again used as tool for SK
masculine military diplomacy.
Difference between Comfort Women and camptown prostitutes
- continuation of militarized sex work from the colonial era to post-colonial era
- forced vs freedom: can this be possible under capitalism? “debt slavery”
- Japanese colonialism vs US imperialism
- Korean men’s reaction
- system: recruitment & management à responsibility of USFK & ROK gov.
- Current US camptowns in SK: read Yea’s article, and other recent works.
- Sex workers are far more ethnically diverse these days.
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Na-Young Lee, “Un/forgettable histories of US camptown
prostitution in South Korea: Women’s experiences of sexual
labor and government policies”
• Main arguments:
• US camptown prostitution history
• Sexual labor
• Sexual labor and government politics
• the purpose of the article is to trace the history of the US military camptown in
Korea, adding hidden stories of women’s experience.
• Prostitution: common studies about prostitution and sex work often fall to
dichotomies of
• legalization vs. criminalization
• Choice vs. force
• Active agent vs. helpless victim
• Subject vs. object.
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• argument: the SK government cooperated with the US military with
changes in policy from “tacit permission” to “permissive promotion”
and then “active support.”
à camptown women experienced absurd, unjust, and contradictory
sociopolitical changes, but they were not just absolute sexual objects nor
helpless victims. (multiple subjectivities) They struggled for their own
survival, and Lee argues, women in camptowns represent a symbol of
transgression against both androcentric Korean society and ethnocentric
nationalism.
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• Introduction
• July 2014, a lawsuit was filed in Seoul District Court by 112 former prostitutes in US
military bases under the name of military “comfort women” in US camptown, against the
Korean national government for condoning, supporting and regulating the prostitution of
women to serve the US military. (752).
à Last week, the Supreme Court upheld the High Court’s decision…(link)
• The military camptown in SK is a legacy of colonialism and a symbol of national
insecurity in Korean history:
• à US military arrived in SK (for the North is the Soviet Union) for a transfer of power
from the J colonial empire to SK people, and never left.
• The US Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK): 1945-1948.
• “licensed prostitution system” created by the Japanese colonial government à red-light
district (yukwak, 遊廓 yūkaku), a government-controlled registration system, and
compulsory venereal disease examination of the women.
• à continued by the US military government.
• USAMGIK prohibited the Trafficking in women and licensed prostitution in 1948 à
moved the public brothels to camptowns.
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• Women in camptown: prostitutes/sex workers were called in
derogatory names such as yangbalbo (Western whore) and yanggongju
(Western princess).
Policies on prostitutions:
- the regulatory model: legalization and decriminalization of
prostitution.
- The abolitionist model: abolish prostitution by criminzlizing all
prostitution.
- “Nordic model”: Sweden, Norway Iceland, neo-abolitionist
model, criminalizes the demand sides, purchasing sexual services and
pimping and running brothels, NOT prostitutes and prostitution.
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1950-1960: legacies of the Korean War, “tacit permissions”
- how did the camptown prostitution form?
- Korean War (1950-1953)
- more than 4 million Korean causalities, leaving approx. 30,000 widows,
poverty.
- US army base camps: Camp Casey in 1952, Tongduch’ŏn.
- 1954: an R&R (rest and recreation) system after the US-ROK Mutual
Defense Treaty.
- in the 1950s, 18 camptowns were formed throughout South Korea.
- throughout the 1950s, the term “comfort women” was commonly used in
newspaper articles to refer military prostitutes serving American soldiers.
- 1957: US military and K gov agreed to concentrate prostitutes in several
areas where American troops were stations. à STD clinics clustered near major US
military bases. à after prostitutes were screened for STD, USFK (US Forces in
Korea) permitted its soldiers to stay overnight out of the barracks.
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1961-1970: permissive promotion by the gov
- Park Chung Hee (961-1979)
- 1961, Prostitution Prevention Law to replace the Public Prostitution
Elimination Law (issued by USAMGIK).
- 1962, SK gov authorized United Nations’ 1949 Convention for the
Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the
Prostitution of Others.
- BUT 1962, Park’s gov established “special districts”, 104 in total. 32 of
them in the military camptowns, prostitutions were legally permitted, and
closely monitored.
- 1964, the number of Special Districts grew to 145, 60% were in US
military camptowns.
- brought foreign currency, monetary gains by sex workers and PX
economy (Pudae chigae부대찌개)
- The Korean American Friendship Society
- The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in 1966: Japan has one too. 27
1970-1980: active support and tight control for the national
interests
• 1969, the Nixon Doctrine.
• Women’s tactical and strategic resistance for survival
- Women’s agency, multiple subjectivities.
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Group discussion 10 min
1) Did you hear/see about Yanggongju or camptown prostitution from
Korean popular culture before? Did you notice any stigma of White
American soldier dating/marrying Korean woman?
2) why is the control of VD/STD so important for the camptown
managers, both the USFK and ROK gov?
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https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/미군_위안부
http://usacrime.or.kr/doku/doku.php
à기지촌 활동 à 항소심.
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