In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Korean War Children’s Memorial (2003), which sounds like a site honoring the displaced children of the Korean War, is actually a memorial that valorizes the American armed forces. Founded by Korean War veteran George Drake, the memorial and its accompanying website were created in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Korean War as a way to “hono[r] the American servicemen and women who, during the Korean War and the years following, rendered compassionate humanitarian aid to the children of that war torn nation.”1 The website houses over 1,000 photos and over 1,000 stories to promulgate the men of the armed forces as saviors, who “saved the lives of over 10,000 children and helped sustain over 50,000” through donations and material aid.2 Some of these pictures and stories were featured in a book entitled GIs and the Kids—A Love Story: American Armed Forces and the Children of Korea, 1950–1954 (2005). There is even a traveling photo exhibit of the same title. Written and compiled by Drake and Al Zimmerman, GIs and the Kids— A Love Story is a collection of photos, newspaper clippings, and stories devoted entirely to the love that GIs had for Korean children.3 Even though these children were displaced by the actions of the American armed forces, this essential fact is glossed over with picture after picture and story after story about the “outpouring of love and life-saving gifts by American armed forces in Korea.” As a celebration and artifact of militarized humanitarianism , this book—along with the entire project of the Korean War Children’s Memorial—reframes the brutal and violent American armed forces into “an Army of Compassion” by recoding military violence as humanitarianism and refiguring the GI as a humanitarian. Indeed, in the foreword that introduces the mission and objective of the book, William Asbury expeditiously repackages the first “hot war” of the Cold War into a child rescue mission: 41 2 GENDER AND THE MILITARISTIC GAZE “The extraordinary photographs and stories in this booklet tell the story of the war within the Korean War that followed the Communist assault. That internal war was the long battle to save the lives of Korean children” (emphasis added). Asbury then goes on to naturalize the building of orphanages and the taking care of Korean children via “adoption” as the only viable solution to this internal war: An estimated 100,000 Korean kids were orphaned. Orphanages needed to be created. . . . The GI was up to those needs. He and she took responsibility for individual kids. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and even Merchant Marine units ‘adopted’ entire orphanages. American armed forces became an army of compassion, perhaps as never before or since.4 As a story of the “compassionate and humanitarian aid rendered the children of Korea in the period 1950 to 1954 by American servicemen and women,” GIs and the Kids—A Love Story is neither a story about the mutual love between these two groups nor a story about the love Korean children had for GIs. Rather, it is about the charitable acts of love that GIs displayed toward these children. According to Drake and Zimmerman, while U.S. soldiers had to be taught to kill other human beings, “They did not have to be taught to offer solace to a crying child, feed a hungry child, treat an injured child or seek shelter for a homeless child. That came with being American.”5 It is precisely these seemingly innate acts of patriotic, humanitarian love on which the book focuses. Sections entitled “Saving Lives,” “Orphanages,” “Money Helps,” “‘Peanuts’: Stories of Humanitarian Aid, Compassion, and Love for the Children,” “Christmas Parties,” “Help from Home,” and “Mascots and Adoption” are filled with newspaper clippings and captioned photographs that describe the various ways in which the U.S. armed forces either saved or made better the lives of Korean children. This is the love in this particular love story. “The goal,” according to the authors, “is to make sure that these loving moments in the middle of a horrendous war are not forgotten.”6 While these “loving moments,” as framed by militarized humanitarianism , erect American soldiers as beneficent heroes, Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine provides an alternative love story regarding the GI-South Korean encounter in her artwork entitled “Suck Me-Ho’s First English Lesson” (Figure 3).7 In this piece, Lemoine, a multimedia artist and queer Korean adoptee activist from Belgium, exposes the ways...

Share