Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America

1. Camptown, U.S.A.

chapter 1 Camptown, U.S.A. The first Korean woman to enter the United States as the bride of a U.S. citizen arrived in 1950. She was the only one that year, and in all likelihood her husband was an American soldier. In the nearly half-century since then, close to a hundred thousand Korean women have followed as brides of U.S. soldiers.1 These marriages have been made possible by the continued American military presence in South Korea, which provides the immediate context in which Korean women and U.S. soldiers meet and marry. The American presence not only creates the physical context—military bases and nearby camptowns , towns that revolve economically around the bases and which contain red-light districts catering to U.S. soldiers, where the two meet—but it also helps create the social and cultural contexts—militarized prostitution , local civilian employment on military bases, and the lure of America—that make marriage to U.S. soldiers, an appealing option for Korean women. Relationships between Korean women and American soldiers have been shaped by the unequal relationship between the United States and Korea. These marriages might be based on personal choices made at the individual level but they are also a consequence of a half-century of American military domination over Korea. At least for the women, the choice to marry an American soldier is profoundly shaped by this larger context of Korean subordination. America’s military presence in Korea serves as a constant reminder of the glaring contrast between Korean 9 poverty and American wealth, which is too often interpreted as the contrast between Korean backwardness and American modernity. Additionally , the sexual subordination of Korean women on and around U.S. military bases in the region cannot be overlooked when examining the nature and the origins of relationships between Korean women and American soldiers. The relationship between Korea and the United States is itself gendered , with Korea inscribed as the feminine other in need of protection and the United States playing the role of the masculine superior and guardian. This gendered context of neoimperialism is a major factor in the skewed gender profile of intermarriages between Koreans and Americans , the overwhelming majority of which are between American men and Korean women.2 The flip side of protection, of course, is that the masculine guardian also has the power to exploit the feminine other. This aspect of the gendered nature of the U.S.-Korea relationship is perhaps most notoriously reflected in the phenomenon of militarized prostitution, which can be found around every U.S. military base in Asia. South Korea, Okinawa, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have been or still are locations where Asian women serve the sexual desires of U.S. soldiers in clubs and bars clustered in so-called camptowns (also known as base towns or GI towns) that develop near military bases.3 In Korea, these camptowns are found next to every major U.S. military installation, small ones near the small bases, larger ones next to the larger bases. Camptown activists estimate that between twenty to twenty-five thousand women are currently engaged in sex work within these communities.4 Itaewon, located in the heart of Seoul, South Korea’s capital, is one of the better known and larger camptowns. Replete with U.S. fast-food restaurants and stores selling Korean-made goods such as leather jackets and baseball caps, by day Itaewon serves as a shopping district for American tourists and expatriates longing for a taste of home. By night, it becomes the red-light entertainment district for soldiers stationed at nearby Yongsan, home of the Eighth Army and headquarters of the USFK, U.S. Forces Korea. An American reporter describes Itaewon this way: A mile or so outside of Yongsan U.S. Army Garrison in central Seoul, past the tourist shops and street vendors selling Bulls, Raiders, et al apcamptown , u.s.a. 10 parel, past the Burger King and the newly-opened Orange Julius and down a series of narrow roadways packed with American soldiers who are falling in and out of ramshackle clubs—Cadillac Bar, Love Cupid, Texas Club, Boston Club, the King Club, the Palladium, the Grand Ole’ Opry—is one of the 180 GI camptowns that exist outside of every significantly sized military base in South Korea. . . . On any given night in Itaewon, women in prostitution costume hang out club doors...