Militarized Currents: Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific

12. Genealogies of Unbelonging: Amerasians and Transnational Adoptees as Legacies of U.S. Militarism in South Korea

277 12 Genealogies of Unbelonging Amerasians and Transnational Adoptees as Legacies of U.S. Militarism in South Korea Patti Duncan When peace comes, there are going to be massive casualties. —Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan “Which is better, Korea or America?” a woman asks a group of children. They respond in unison, “America! America!” The Amerasian children sit around a table in the True Love Mission, an alternative educational center run by Yon Ja Kim in South Korea, and represented in the documentary film Camp Arirang. Kim is a former military camptown prostitute, and the children are primarily the mixed-race sons and daughters of current camptown women and U.S. soldiers.1 Because discrimination against mixedrace people prevents them from attending public schools, Kim founded the True Love Mission, which she runs out of her home. Here, the children learn English from student volunteers, spend the night when their mothers work late at the clubs, and are taught that, although born and raised in South Korea, they belong in the United States with their birth fathers, many of whom have presumably abandoned the children and their mothers. In this representation, Amerasian subjects internalize the message not only that they belong in the United States—a message that is compounded, no doubt, by consistent social messages from other Koreans that they do not belong in Korea—but also that the United States is superior to Korea. Such a belief is one byproduct of the long-term occupation of South Korea by U.S. military personnel, as well as social–historical conflicts between the United States and Korea. Paradoxically, this belief that the United States is superior to Korea exists alongside the stigmatization of Amerasian subjects. 278 · PATTI DUNCAN Korean women who associate with U.S. military personnel are often viewed with suspicion and contempt. The documentary highlights the complex relationship between the United States and countries like Korea in which U.S. militarism has played a profound role in shaping national economies. Also, the Amerasian subjects featured in Camp Arirang represent another rarely discussed byproduct of the U.S. military occupation of South Korea. In this chapter, I seek to intervene into assumptions that “war” and “peace” are binarily opposed and mutually exclusive, and I argue that U.S. militarism (and military occupation), neocolonialism, and unequal global economic policies continue to disrupt the lives of people in South Korea. I am concerned with the lingering impact of the Korean War and the subsequent U.S. military presence in South Korea and, in particular, the ways in which certain bodies are not only subjected to practices of militarism and war but also constituted by these very practices.2 While it could be argued that all bodies are in fact constituted by such processes, I focus on the production of certain groups of women and children in South Korea as militarized (non)citizen–subjects. I ask, what are the long-term consequences of war in South Korea, and what or who constitutes the legacies of war that continue long after “peace” has been established? Many authors have documented the ways in which war and militarism continue to negatively impact local communities around the globe, and some researchers have documented the specific ways in which such processes affect women and constructions of gender.3 War and its correlative processes (militarization, violence, and displacement) affect women in myriad ways. As mothers, wives, and daughters of soldiers, as soldiers themselves, as casualties and victims of violence, including sexual violence, as militarized prostitutes, as war refugees and displaced peoples, as wartime production workers, and as resisters to war, women experience war in multiple, complex ways that may also be shaped by additional factors including race, ethnicity, culture, class, national belonging, sexual identity, age, and ability.4 While women’s participation in and experience of war have often been overlooked, and conventional international assumptions about war suggest that it is the purview of men, it is becoming increasingly clear that women experience the effects of war, suffer from war, and, in some cases, benefit from war as much as men do and in distinct, gendered ways. Yet even while some researchers highlight the many ways in which women experience war and militarism, few writers have considered the racialized constitution of gender that shapes such experiences. GENEALOGIES OF UNBELONGING · 279 For local populations, consequences of U.S. militarism include increased poverty and the creation of a global sex...