.Must Read:America's comfort women 2
Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America
by Ji-Yeon Yuh
page 14
America's Comfort Women
For many American soldiers, Korea is synonymous with the proverbial rock 'n' rolling good time, and Korean women treated as playthings easily bought and easily discarded are essential to that experience. The women are seen by the soldiers as innately sexual, even depraved, and doing what they do for fun and money. If anyone has forced them into prostitution, in the eyes of the soldier, it is the Korean madams and pimps, not the U.S. military and certainly not the soldiers themselves.” The continuing prevalence of this belief is apparent in an April 1999 discussion about militarized prostitution in Korea on an e-mail list whose members, judging from their self-descriptions, are primarily Western males (mostly American) who spent some time in South Korea and maintain an interest in the country. The discussion also demonstrates that soldiers are not the only ones who hold this opinion. Most of the list members who posted on this topic refused to acknowledge that the women in this situation are victimized in any way by the U.S. military or individual soldiers. Instead, the discussants insisted that the majority of the women had made free choices to become prostitutes. One man called Camptown women “women who are husband hunting, having fun, or in such [sic] of some sucker with a PX Ration Card." He suggested that "what you really need to do is ‘follow the money,” implying that since money flows from the soldiers to the women and pimps, it is the women and pimps who are benefiting from prostitution. Another man argued Without camptown prostitution, "there would be more rapes, and that the Army is thus keeping down violence against the local community (although that is a terrible thing to say).""‘
Racism and sexism cannot be discounted as powerful factors in such discourses.” These are military manifestations of a deep-rooted Ameri-can racism against Asians, which in the twentieth century has been ex-pressed in the vilification of Asians as the "yellow peril" or the “yellow horde," as the villainous Fu Manchu, and the sexy but dangerous Dragon Lady. Combined with sexist and racist stereotypes of Asian women as ex-otic sex objects, this kind of thinking encourages and permits U.S. sol-diers to treat Asian women, especially but not only prostitutes, as dispensable sex toys.
As Katherine Moon notes in her groundbreaking study of militarized prostitution in South Korea, the U.S. military condones and even encourages such behavior among its troops. One sailor told her that some commanding officers told their men that Asians like prostitution, calling t a way of life.16 Articles in the Pacific Stars and Stripes, the primary military newspaper for U.S. troops in the Pacific, actively encouraged soldiers to seek out the camptown by reviewing clubs. One 1977 article. for example, touted the kisaeng party a night of drinking and dancing with female entertainment as the "ultimate experience" and ”the Orient you heard about and came to find."17 A U.S. Army manual from the 198os turned a blind eye to the troops frequenting rostitutes with a boys will be boys" attitude, telling the reader that ”being a red-blooded American soldier, you will undoubtedly get your chance to experience the various aspects of the village." The manual then provided “tips" for patronizing camptown women, advising the soldiers to check the omen's VD cards, stick to the licensed club women, and stay away from the streetwalkers.
A U.S. Army chaplain interviewed in 1991 by Moon explained:
These distorted and dangerous ideas on the part of Westerners are embedded in the very fabric of the relationship between U.S. soldiers and local camptown women. These women are America’s comfort women, the victims of a system of militarizcd prostitution that is supported and regulated by the US. military for the benefit of its soldiers. Although it is usually Japan that is vilified for the creation of a corps of comfort women during World War II, virtual slaves serving the sexual desires of Japanese soldiers, America also has a history of forcing women
and girls into similar situations of sexual subjugation and exploitation In Vietnam, an installation of prostitutes servicing four thousand U.S. soldiers was specifically created by and for the benefit of the 0.8. military. The brothels, two concrete barracks each containing a bar, bandstand, and sixty curtained-off compartments where the women lived and worked, were located in fenced compounds guarded by military police, compounds that included restaurants and other recreational facilities for the soldiers. During the Korean War, some three hundred politically suspect Korean women, members of the communist party and leaders of people's committees, were confined by the U.S. military to a warehouse in Seoul and repeatedly raped by U.S. soldiers. In Okinawa, U.S. military personnel recruited twelve- and thirteen-year-old Okinawan girls, placed them in cages on the U.S. base there. and forced them into sexual service for the soldiers. In the Philippines, commanding officers in the U.S. military actively promoted prostitution, some of them even owning their own clubs and managing their own groups of prostitutes. And in Korea during the 1970's, military buses were used to transport as many as two hundred prostitutes a day from the camptown of Tongduchon into nearby Camp Casey.22 In each of these cases, commanding officers either tacitly condoned such activities or actively participated in them.
These are just a few of the examples culled from historical records and eyewitness testimony. Although some of them may be dismissed as aberrations, the system of militarized prostitution developed by the United States in Asia suggests otherwise. While Japan, which has no troops stationed overseas. no longer has the opportunity to engage in its version of militarized prostitution, America's comfort women still exist today in the camptowns outside every US. military base in Asia.“ In Okinawa, South Korea, and the Philippines, the U.S. military directly and indirectly regulates clubs and the hostesses-prostitutes who work there, ostensibly to ensure that U.S.soldiers are protected from venereal diseases. In Korea, the system of militarized prostitution is so pervasive and so central to the us. presence, that Korea scholar Bruce Cumings calls it “the most important aspect of the whole relationship (between the United States and
South Korea) and the primary memory of Korea for generations of young Americans who have served there”
America is not the first country, of course, to use Korean women for the entertainment of its soldiers. The sexual exploitation of women by the military, particularly the exploitation of a subjugated country's women by the conquering country’s men, have gone hand in hand throughout history.“ Indeed, the history of prostitution in Korea is intimately linked to Korea's political and military subjugation by foreign countries, first Japan and then the United States.”
Before the twentieth century, wandering bands of entertainers occasionally bartered sex for money or goods, and kisaeng, women trained in music and the arts who entertained upper-class men, sometimes engaged in sexual relationships with their patrons. Ruling elites of past centuries ave used the bodies and sexualized services of women such as the palace ladies-in-waiting, kisaeng, and young maidens sent. as a tribute to Mongol kings, in order to advance their own interests.28 But prostitution as an organized, commercial endeavor was first introduced to Korea by Japan at the turn of the century. As Japanese power over Korea gradually increased, eventually culminating in Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, Japanese troops became a common sight. So did single Japanese men who came to Korea for the economic opportunities offered by this nascent 18 CAMPTOWN, U.S.A. colony. It was for them that Japan created the first legalized prostitution quarters in 1900. The largest were located in Pusan, a southern port city, and Seoul. Illegal prostitution was also deliberately encouraged by the Japanese government, which undertook a policy of transforming bar waitresses and kisaeng into prostitutes. Bar waitress and kisaeng became euphemisms for the prostitute, and what used to be the kisaeng's occasional sexual relationship with a favored patron, better characterized as an illicit love affair often accompanied by love letters and poetry than as sex for-money one-night stands, became obligatory commercial transactions. Japanese troops and government officials formed the customer base for many brothels and bars, while high-ranking Japanese military and government officials frequented the more expensive kisaeng.”
Many of the young women working as prostitutes were sold by destitute families, while others were kidnapped. As this soon became a social issue, the Japanese colonial government in Korea instituted “placement agencies." These agencies ostensibly brokered employment for young women, especially those from poor rural families who came to urban areas seeking work. [Japanese colonial policy dispossessed many Koreans of their land, turning small farm owners into impoverished sharecroppers. The sons and daughters of many such families sought work in urban centers”) But in fact the agencies placed the women in brothels, bars, and kisaeng houses. Once "dirtied" in such a way, patriarchal mores emphasizing female chastity made it difficult for them to find other employment or lead “respectable" lives.31
This legacy of Japanese colonialism remains a strong presence in South Korea. Placement agencies have existed throughout the decades since Japan left the Korean peninsula in 1945, and they have played a significant role in tricking young Korean women into prostitution, including work in the Camptown clubs serving US. soldiers. Contemporary red-light districts are often located in the same areas where Japan created legal prostitution quarters. Kisaeng tourism, a form of sex tourism, draws thousands of Japanese men to Korea each year.
Militarized prostitution in Korea formally began in 1937 with the advent of Japan's expansionist war with China. Japan began mobilizing Korean workers for the war effort, drafting laborers to fill the manpower shortage in Japan and in Japanese settlements in Manchuria, Russia, and Southeast Asia. The mobilization soon expanded to include women, first as manual laborers and then as "comfort women," sexual slaves in a system of brothels organized and maintained by the Japanese government for the exclusive use of the Japanese military. Brothels were established in the war zone in the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, and China, as well as in bases located in Korea. Some of the youngest and prettiest women, usually girls just in their early teens, were sent to special camps in Japan where they were first offered to high-ranking military officials and then, their virginity soiled, sent to the war zone brothels to service rank-and-file troops. Some two hundred thousand Korean women, some girls as young as eleven, were sent to work in these brothels. They were reruited by teachers, local administrators, and anyone else in a position of authority within the Japanese colonial government in Korea. The government issued quotas that had to be met by each locality, and when girls couldn't be recruited with the promise ofearning money in Japanese faetories to support their families, they were simply kidnapped.”
With Japan’s defeat in World War II came Korea’s official liberation from Japanese imperialism. But emerging Cold War realities divided the nation in half at the 38th Parallel, with Soviet troops entering the north and U.S. troops entering the south. In his first proclamation to the Korean people, General McArthur announced that the troops were occupying forces and that the U.S. military would be taking over both the functions and the property of the departing Japanese government. Soon thereafter, the U.S. military government was formalized. The southern part of Korea was now little more than a colony of the United States.M As if to symbolize this, Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, once the headquarters for the Japanese Imperial Army, became the headquarters for the U.S. military. Other Japanese military installations, such as posts in the port city ofusan, also became U.S. military installations.
The Camptowns: A Brief History
The U.S. entry into Korea and the establishment of camptowns were virtually simultaneous. U.S. forces landed in the southern part of Korea on September 8, 1945, in the west coast port city of Inchon. By the end of 30 CAMPTOWN, U.S.A. that year, a nearby town called Bupyong had become the first camptown. Soldiers stationed at Inchon sought liquor and girls for recreation.
Poverty-stricken women, some of them prostitutes who had catered to the Japanese, others part of the rural and urban poor, gathered to fill the soldiers' desires in the hope of making a living. Soon simple frame houses sprang up in a neighborhood called Shinchon. These clubs and brothels housed about a thousand women. Few, if any, spoke English, and they were compensated for their services not with money, but with U.S. military supply items such as rations, cigarettes, and jackets.“ These prostitutes were dubbed yang galbo (Western whore). As militarized prostitution, U.S. style, expanded throughout Korea, other terms were added: yang gongju (Western princess) and yang sacksi [Western bride). The use of "princess" and "bride" to describe these women can be seen as a rhetorical gesture that acknowledges the material comfort and glamor symbolized by the United States while ridiculing the women's efforts to achieve it by selling their bodies to American soldiers.
During the Korean War (1950-53), the number of camp towns expanded. The Camptown centered around the Shinchon neighborhood in Bupyong doubled in size, as an estimated two thousand women gathered in the area's clubs. Makeshift camptowns sprang up wherever bases were located, only to be torn down as troops retreated or advanced. Since troop access to civilian villages was strictly controlled during the war, women carrying blankets made deals outside the villages and did their business in the mountains. This was the beginning ofthe so-called blan-
ket squad, groups of women who followed the troops from place to place. After the war, blanket squads followed soldiers to annual training maneuvers held deep in the Korean countryside. These squads still exist today, organized by pimps with the aid of US. military personnel who provide detailed information on the dates and locations of annual training maneuvers. Largely composed of camptown women, the squads follow troops into remote rural areas where the soldiers conduct war games. There, each woman services thirty to forty men a night.
The development of camptowns transformed and often destroyed once peaceful rural farming villages throughout South Korea. The 1990 novel Silver Stallion describes this process, linking it to the social demarcation between virtuous and unvirtuous women. Set during the Korean War, the novel begins with the appearance of U.S. troops in a small farming village, apparently checking the area for enemy soldiers. They set up base not far from the village. One night, a widow living alone with her two children is raped by U.S. soldiers. She is shunned by the vilagers, who are simultaneously stunned at her misfortune and ashamed at her loss of female virtue. They are also terrified that a similar fate will befall them as well, and they set up night patrols to watch for marauding soldiers. On several occasions, soldiers ransack houses looking for women.“ Soon, however, prostitutes begin to gather near the base and a small camptown is established. Although distressed at the proximity of such filth, the town heaves a collective sigh of relief, for at least the village women will be safe from the sexual violence of the foreign troops.”
The novel's separation between "virtuous" women and ”dirty" women mirrors that of Korean society, where women who work in the camptowns are social pariahs but are also seen as a necessary evil since their existence safeguards the chastity ofthe “virtuous" women. Camptowns and yang gongju became a permanent fixture in Korean society after the Korean War, and the camptown woman became the archetypal fallen woman." Because the war ended not with a peace treaty but with a truce, the U.S. military has continued to maintain troops in South Korea. As a result, the number of camptowns increased with the number of military installations, as did the number ofyanggongju.
In addition to Bupyong, some of the earliest and largest camptowns include Itacwon, areas of Pusan called Hialeah and Texas, Tongduchon, and Songtan. The camptowns in Pusan were among the most stable, as U.S. soldiers were stationed there throughout the war. [This was possible because Pusan, a port city located at the southeastern tip of Korea, left UN control only briefly during the war.) The U.S. military used Pusan as a landing port, and the camptowns of Hialeah (next to Camp Hialeah) and Texas soon appeared. Hialeah remains a camptown today, while Texas (located next to the Pusan train station) has become a camptown serving not only the us. military but also sailors and other itinerant travelers assing through the port.m
The 1960's were the heyday of the camptowns, when more than thirty thousand women earned their living entertaining some sixty-two thousand U.S. soldiers stationed in virtually every corner of South Korea. The Paju area northwest of Seoul, militarily important due to its proximity to the DMZ39 that serves as the truce line between North and South Korea,
33 CAMPTOWN, U.S.A. contained the highest concentration of US. troops until 1971. Nicknamed the "GI's Kingdom," the area was home to the [st Marine Division and the 24th, 7th, and 2nd Infantry Divisions. The largest camptown during this period was Tongduchon, nicknamed Little Chicago and located just east of Pain and north of Seoul. When Camp Casey was established as the main infantry base at the end of the Korean War, Tongduchon was transformed from a remote farming village into a chaotic world of drugs, sex, crime, and black market deals in PX goods. During its height in the mid-1960's, some seven thousand women in Tongduchon worked as prostitutes serving the US. military.“
Because U.S. bases were one of the few, if not the only, sources of income in the poverty-stricken years of the 19405 through the 197os, the camptowns attracted not only poor women, including war widows and orphans seeking to make a living, but also entrepreneurs and criminals. In collusion with GIs, Korean civilians smuggled military supplies and PX goods out of the bases, selling them for a handsome profit on the black market. Pimps and madams established clubs catering to the soliers, hiring women at starvation wages to work as hostesses-cum-prostitutes. Villagers opened laundries, restaurants, stores, and other businesses serving the more mundane needs of the soldiers and the camptown women. The Dong-A Ilbo, one of South Korea's major newspapers,reported on the development of these camptowns, using as a model Uijongbu, a camptown just north of Seoul but south of the larger Tongduchon. Before the war, Uijongbu had about ten thousand residents and one silk mill as its sole industry. But with the war, hundreds of unemployed people, UN forces, and criminals literally invaded the town, bringing with them various underworld activities. About two thousand women worked as yang gon‘gju, and the small town was suddenly filled with cabarets, bars, tailor and dress shops, and other stores. By the 196os, an estimated 60 percent. of the sixty-five thousand Koreans in Uijongbu were engaged in some form of business catering to the U.S. military.“l
With the construction of U.S. military bases came not only the transformation but also the literal destruction of Korean villages. In July 1951, Songtan, about an hour south of Seoul by bus, was invaded by the bulldozers of the 417th Squadron of the U.S. Air Force. The squadron built an airfield, causing five thousand people (one thousand families) to lose their homes. These families had farmed the same plots of land in Songtan for generations, making their living from the annual rice harvest and the charcoal they made from the wood they chopped in surrounding forests. As they left their ancestral lands. each family held a piece of paper from the US military promising monetary compensation in neatly typed Korean and English. The promised compensation. which was much less than the market value of the land, never materialized despite years of legal battles."2 Over the years, more residents were displaced as Osan Air Force Base expanded to become the largest base in Korea and the second largest Air Force base in Asia. (Since the 1992 closing of Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, Osan is now the largest.) Journalist Oh Yun Ho describes the transformation of Songtan:
Oblivious to the local residents' resentment. the airfield was completed at top speed within six months. The. surrounding area became the land of the stars and stripes. Thatched-roof houses gave way to all kinds of stores with English signs. aluminum cans replaced gourds, and a village full of shy maidens with their long braided hair instantly became a village full of yang gongju.“ With the construction of the airfield, Songtan became home to a major hub of U.S. military activity in Asia and a thriving camptown. When the United States began to reduce its land forces in 1971, army camptowns such as Tongduehon suffered. but Songtan grew as the United States continued to emphasize airpower. An air squadron is stationed there, and soldiers from other units regularly fly in from Okinawa for weekend training sessions.“ Songtan today is one of the largest camptowns, with about one thousand five hundred prostitutes. The projected move to
Osan of the Eighth Army and USFK headquarters (currently located at Yongsan in Seoul) is sure to make Songtan Korea's camptown capital. American Town is a camptown developed with the collusion of both the South Korean and American governments. Built by a South Korean general and a landowner in 1969 during the height of the Park Chung l-lee regime, American Town turned farmland in North Cholla Province into a sanctioned tied-light district for us. soldiers. Distinctly marked off from the nearby civilian town of Kunsan and the surrounding country-
side by chain-link fences, American Town at first was wholly owned by 34 CAMPTOWN, U.S.A. the two developers, but later became a corporation with shareholders.
During the 1970's business was so good that the clubs opened even during the day and a fleet of buses ferried soldiers between Kunsan Air Force Base and the town. Today (2001), two buses operate daily between the camptown and the base. The town includes dormitory housing for the women, about twenty clubs, a dozen stores, and a government-run health clinic where the women receive mandatory testing for sexually transmitted diseases.”
These camptowns perform crucial social functions for both South Korea and the United States. Both governments seem to consider campowns a necessary evil. For South Korea, the camptowns hold the promise of containing unhealthy American influences, protecting "virtuous” women from the threat of rape, and especially during the early years of economic development earning foreign exchange.“ It is also a way for a subjected government to cater to the dominant country. For the U.S. military. camptowns provide a release for the troops and help to maintain troop morale. They also help to keep unruly soldiers away from “normal” civilians and thus reduce tension with the Korean public at large. While the us. military officially decries prostitution as an unhealthy influence on its soldiers. it also lets the soldiers know that frequenting prostitutes in Korea is acceptable behavior.
As one military chaplain says, In Korea. the guys are inundated with prostitutes. And the us. forces and the American government are saying “Hem. hem be tolerant."
Where we could make a difference is. where we could take the rules. the strictures like in Germany or in other nations where they are stricter. where this kind of thing doesn't go on, and apply it to Korea. we could fix this problem in 20 minutes. . . . But in Korea. we just say. “Aw. it’s the culture" and wink at what goes on."
Both the South Korean and US. governments, however. do more than simply “wink at what goes on." For the South Korean government. these camptowns and the regulation of camptown women have been crucial to maintaining smooth relations with the us. government. Katherine Moon points out that making sure that camptown women played their proper role as entertainers and sexual playmates who would foster goodwill toward Korea among American soldiers was an essential aspect of the South Korean government's strategies for national security. The United States, for its part. takes it for granted that its soldiers ”need" paid sexual companions for high morale and demands that camptown women be kept free of venereal disease so that soldiers do not become infected. Thus. as Moon demonstrates, the South Korean government and the 0.8. military have engaged in a decades-long collaboration to regulate camptown women and their behavior. In the process. they have subtly. sometimes overtly. promoted the sexual exploitation of Korean women. The women redoubly victimized: betrayed by their own government and virtually sold as a kind of war booty to the United States, and exploited by a foreign government interested only in the women‘s usefulness as sexual diversions for the ostensible purpose of maintaining troop morale.
The U.S. military has also long regarded prostitution as a moral and health issue. however, sometimes worrying that it damaged U.S. reputations in the eyes of the local civilians. But despite official handwringing over the moral state of "our boys," the United States has never seriously attempted to eliminate prostitution around its military bases in South Korea. This is in contrast to its efforts to eliminate prostitution around its European bases. as the chaplain quoted above notes. Although soldiers re officially forbidden any involvement in prostitution. unofficially they are given a wink and a nod. A 1965 report conducted by the Eighth U.S. Army frankly admitted that "fraternization (in the form of prostitution] is near the core of troop-community relations here." It also found that most soldiers believe that such “fraternization” endears Korea to the soldiers. making them more willing to fight, and that “most officers be-
lieve that fraternization is generally a constructive force." in the end, the United States adopted a "boys will be boys" policy toward camptown prostitution in South Korea. Before the 197os, the 0.5. military engaged in sporadic efforts to regulate clubs and club women, primarily to control the spread of venereal disease. 0.8. medical officers intermittently checked camptown women for sexually transmitted diseases. military authorities unilaterally declared as off-limits clubs that were deemed problematic because infected women worked there. and military police went on patrol through the towns. Bases also instituted VD contact identification systems, pressuring soldiers to identify those they had patronized. Club women identified by soldiers were summarily taken to military medical centers where they were tested and medicated. But such regulation contradicted the official position that the military had nothing whatsoever to do with prostitution. US. officials therefore continually pressured the Korean government to regulate the camptowns and the prostitutes.
Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America
by Ji-Yeon Yuh
page 14
America's Comfort Women
For many American soldiers, Korea is synonymous with the proverbial rock 'n' rolling good time, and Korean women treated as playthings easily bought and easily discarded are essential to that experience. The women are seen by the soldiers as innately sexual, even depraved, and doing what they do for fun and money. If anyone has forced them into prostitution, in the eyes of the soldier, it is the Korean madams and pimps, not the U.S. military and certainly not the soldiers themselves.” The continuing prevalence of this belief is apparent in an April 1999 discussion about militarized prostitution in Korea on an e-mail list whose members, judging from their self-descriptions, are primarily Western males (mostly American) who spent some time in South Korea and maintain an interest in the country. The discussion also demonstrates that soldiers are not the only ones who hold this opinion. Most of the list members who posted on this topic refused to acknowledge that the women in this situation are victimized in any way by the U.S. military or individual soldiers. Instead, the discussants insisted that the majority of the women had made free choices to become prostitutes. One man called Camptown women “women who are husband hunting, having fun, or in such [sic] of some sucker with a PX Ration Card." He suggested that "what you really need to do is ‘follow the money,” implying that since money flows from the soldiers to the women and pimps, it is the women and pimps who are benefiting from prostitution. Another man argued Without camptown prostitution, "there would be more rapes, and that the Army is thus keeping down violence against the local community (although that is a terrible thing to say).""‘
Racism and sexism cannot be discounted as powerful factors in such discourses.” These are military manifestations of a deep-rooted Ameri-can racism against Asians, which in the twentieth century has been ex-pressed in the vilification of Asians as the "yellow peril" or the “yellow horde," as the villainous Fu Manchu, and the sexy but dangerous Dragon Lady. Combined with sexist and racist stereotypes of Asian women as ex-otic sex objects, this kind of thinking encourages and permits U.S. sol-diers to treat Asian women, especially but not only prostitutes, as dispensable sex toys.
As Katherine Moon notes in her groundbreaking study of militarized prostitution in South Korea, the U.S. military condones and even encourages such behavior among its troops. One sailor told her that some commanding officers told their men that Asians like prostitution, calling t a way of life.16 Articles in the Pacific Stars and Stripes, the primary military newspaper for U.S. troops in the Pacific, actively encouraged soldiers to seek out the camptown by reviewing clubs. One 1977 article. for example, touted the kisaeng party a night of drinking and dancing with female entertainment as the "ultimate experience" and ”the Orient you heard about and came to find."17 A U.S. Army manual from the 198os turned a blind eye to the troops frequenting rostitutes with a boys will be boys" attitude, telling the reader that ”being a red-blooded American soldier, you will undoubtedly get your chance to experience the various aspects of the village." The manual then provided “tips" for patronizing camptown women, advising the soldiers to check the omen's VD cards, stick to the licensed club women, and stay away from the streetwalkers.
A U.S. Army chaplain interviewed in 1991 by Moon explained:
What the soldiers have read and heard before ever arriving in a foreign country influences prostitution a lot. For example, stories about Korean women being beautiful, subservient-they’re tall tales, glamorized. . . . U.S. men would fall in lust with Korean women. They were property, things, slaves. . . . Racism, sexism it's all there. The men don't see the women as human beings they're disgusting, things to be thrown away. . . . They speak ofthe women in the diminutive.”
These distorted and dangerous ideas on the part of Westerners are embedded in the very fabric of the relationship between U.S. soldiers and local camptown women. These women are America’s comfort women, the victims of a system of militarizcd prostitution that is supported and regulated by the US. military for the benefit of its soldiers. Although it is usually Japan that is vilified for the creation of a corps of comfort women during World War II, virtual slaves serving the sexual desires of Japanese soldiers, America also has a history of forcing women
and girls into similar situations of sexual subjugation and exploitation In Vietnam, an installation of prostitutes servicing four thousand U.S. soldiers was specifically created by and for the benefit of the 0.8. military. The brothels, two concrete barracks each containing a bar, bandstand, and sixty curtained-off compartments where the women lived and worked, were located in fenced compounds guarded by military police, compounds that included restaurants and other recreational facilities for the soldiers. During the Korean War, some three hundred politically suspect Korean women, members of the communist party and leaders of people's committees, were confined by the U.S. military to a warehouse in Seoul and repeatedly raped by U.S. soldiers. In Okinawa, U.S. military personnel recruited twelve- and thirteen-year-old Okinawan girls, placed them in cages on the U.S. base there. and forced them into sexual service for the soldiers. In the Philippines, commanding officers in the U.S. military actively promoted prostitution, some of them even owning their own clubs and managing their own groups of prostitutes. And in Korea during the 1970's, military buses were used to transport as many as two hundred prostitutes a day from the camptown of Tongduchon into nearby Camp Casey.22 In each of these cases, commanding officers either tacitly condoned such activities or actively participated in them.
These are just a few of the examples culled from historical records and eyewitness testimony. Although some of them may be dismissed as aberrations, the system of militarized prostitution developed by the United States in Asia suggests otherwise. While Japan, which has no troops stationed overseas. no longer has the opportunity to engage in its version of militarized prostitution, America's comfort women still exist today in the camptowns outside every US. military base in Asia.“ In Okinawa, South Korea, and the Philippines, the U.S. military directly and indirectly regulates clubs and the hostesses-prostitutes who work there, ostensibly to ensure that U.S.soldiers are protected from venereal diseases. In Korea, the system of militarized prostitution is so pervasive and so central to the us. presence, that Korea scholar Bruce Cumings calls it “the most important aspect of the whole relationship (between the United States and
South Korea) and the primary memory of Korea for generations of young Americans who have served there”
America is not the first country, of course, to use Korean women for the entertainment of its soldiers. The sexual exploitation of women by the military, particularly the exploitation of a subjugated country's women by the conquering country’s men, have gone hand in hand throughout history.“ Indeed, the history of prostitution in Korea is intimately linked to Korea's political and military subjugation by foreign countries, first Japan and then the United States.”
Before the twentieth century, wandering bands of entertainers occasionally bartered sex for money or goods, and kisaeng, women trained in music and the arts who entertained upper-class men, sometimes engaged in sexual relationships with their patrons. Ruling elites of past centuries ave used the bodies and sexualized services of women such as the palace ladies-in-waiting, kisaeng, and young maidens sent. as a tribute to Mongol kings, in order to advance their own interests.28 But prostitution as an organized, commercial endeavor was first introduced to Korea by Japan at the turn of the century. As Japanese power over Korea gradually increased, eventually culminating in Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, Japanese troops became a common sight. So did single Japanese men who came to Korea for the economic opportunities offered by this nascent 18 CAMPTOWN, U.S.A. colony. It was for them that Japan created the first legalized prostitution quarters in 1900. The largest were located in Pusan, a southern port city, and Seoul. Illegal prostitution was also deliberately encouraged by the Japanese government, which undertook a policy of transforming bar waitresses and kisaeng into prostitutes. Bar waitress and kisaeng became euphemisms for the prostitute, and what used to be the kisaeng's occasional sexual relationship with a favored patron, better characterized as an illicit love affair often accompanied by love letters and poetry than as sex for-money one-night stands, became obligatory commercial transactions. Japanese troops and government officials formed the customer base for many brothels and bars, while high-ranking Japanese military and government officials frequented the more expensive kisaeng.”
Many of the young women working as prostitutes were sold by destitute families, while others were kidnapped. As this soon became a social issue, the Japanese colonial government in Korea instituted “placement agencies." These agencies ostensibly brokered employment for young women, especially those from poor rural families who came to urban areas seeking work. [Japanese colonial policy dispossessed many Koreans of their land, turning small farm owners into impoverished sharecroppers. The sons and daughters of many such families sought work in urban centers”) But in fact the agencies placed the women in brothels, bars, and kisaeng houses. Once "dirtied" in such a way, patriarchal mores emphasizing female chastity made it difficult for them to find other employment or lead “respectable" lives.31
This legacy of Japanese colonialism remains a strong presence in South Korea. Placement agencies have existed throughout the decades since Japan left the Korean peninsula in 1945, and they have played a significant role in tricking young Korean women into prostitution, including work in the Camptown clubs serving US. soldiers. Contemporary red-light districts are often located in the same areas where Japan created legal prostitution quarters. Kisaeng tourism, a form of sex tourism, draws thousands of Japanese men to Korea each year.
Militarized prostitution in Korea formally began in 1937 with the advent of Japan's expansionist war with China. Japan began mobilizing Korean workers for the war effort, drafting laborers to fill the manpower shortage in Japan and in Japanese settlements in Manchuria, Russia, and Southeast Asia. The mobilization soon expanded to include women, first as manual laborers and then as "comfort women," sexual slaves in a system of brothels organized and maintained by the Japanese government for the exclusive use of the Japanese military. Brothels were established in the war zone in the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, and China, as well as in bases located in Korea. Some of the youngest and prettiest women, usually girls just in their early teens, were sent to special camps in Japan where they were first offered to high-ranking military officials and then, their virginity soiled, sent to the war zone brothels to service rank-and-file troops. Some two hundred thousand Korean women, some girls as young as eleven, were sent to work in these brothels. They were reruited by teachers, local administrators, and anyone else in a position of authority within the Japanese colonial government in Korea. The government issued quotas that had to be met by each locality, and when girls couldn't be recruited with the promise ofearning money in Japanese faetories to support their families, they were simply kidnapped.”
With Japan’s defeat in World War II came Korea’s official liberation from Japanese imperialism. But emerging Cold War realities divided the nation in half at the 38th Parallel, with Soviet troops entering the north and U.S. troops entering the south. In his first proclamation to the Korean people, General McArthur announced that the troops were occupying forces and that the U.S. military would be taking over both the functions and the property of the departing Japanese government. Soon thereafter, the U.S. military government was formalized. The southern part of Korea was now little more than a colony of the United States.M As if to symbolize this, Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, once the headquarters for the Japanese Imperial Army, became the headquarters for the U.S. military. Other Japanese military installations, such as posts in the port city ofusan, also became U.S. military installations.
The Camptowns: A Brief History
The U.S. entry into Korea and the establishment of camptowns were virtually simultaneous. U.S. forces landed in the southern part of Korea on September 8, 1945, in the west coast port city of Inchon. By the end of 30 CAMPTOWN, U.S.A. that year, a nearby town called Bupyong had become the first camptown. Soldiers stationed at Inchon sought liquor and girls for recreation.
Poverty-stricken women, some of them prostitutes who had catered to the Japanese, others part of the rural and urban poor, gathered to fill the soldiers' desires in the hope of making a living. Soon simple frame houses sprang up in a neighborhood called Shinchon. These clubs and brothels housed about a thousand women. Few, if any, spoke English, and they were compensated for their services not with money, but with U.S. military supply items such as rations, cigarettes, and jackets.“ These prostitutes were dubbed yang galbo (Western whore). As militarized prostitution, U.S. style, expanded throughout Korea, other terms were added: yang gongju (Western princess) and yang sacksi [Western bride). The use of "princess" and "bride" to describe these women can be seen as a rhetorical gesture that acknowledges the material comfort and glamor symbolized by the United States while ridiculing the women's efforts to achieve it by selling their bodies to American soldiers.
During the Korean War (1950-53), the number of camp towns expanded. The Camptown centered around the Shinchon neighborhood in Bupyong doubled in size, as an estimated two thousand women gathered in the area's clubs. Makeshift camptowns sprang up wherever bases were located, only to be torn down as troops retreated or advanced. Since troop access to civilian villages was strictly controlled during the war, women carrying blankets made deals outside the villages and did their business in the mountains. This was the beginning ofthe so-called blan-
ket squad, groups of women who followed the troops from place to place. After the war, blanket squads followed soldiers to annual training maneuvers held deep in the Korean countryside. These squads still exist today, organized by pimps with the aid of US. military personnel who provide detailed information on the dates and locations of annual training maneuvers. Largely composed of camptown women, the squads follow troops into remote rural areas where the soldiers conduct war games. There, each woman services thirty to forty men a night.
The development of camptowns transformed and often destroyed once peaceful rural farming villages throughout South Korea. The 1990 novel Silver Stallion describes this process, linking it to the social demarcation between virtuous and unvirtuous women. Set during the Korean War, the novel begins with the appearance of U.S. troops in a small farming village, apparently checking the area for enemy soldiers. They set up base not far from the village. One night, a widow living alone with her two children is raped by U.S. soldiers. She is shunned by the vilagers, who are simultaneously stunned at her misfortune and ashamed at her loss of female virtue. They are also terrified that a similar fate will befall them as well, and they set up night patrols to watch for marauding soldiers. On several occasions, soldiers ransack houses looking for women.“ Soon, however, prostitutes begin to gather near the base and a small camptown is established. Although distressed at the proximity of such filth, the town heaves a collective sigh of relief, for at least the village women will be safe from the sexual violence of the foreign troops.”
The novel's separation between "virtuous" women and ”dirty" women mirrors that of Korean society, where women who work in the camptowns are social pariahs but are also seen as a necessary evil since their existence safeguards the chastity ofthe “virtuous" women. Camptowns and yang gongju became a permanent fixture in Korean society after the Korean War, and the camptown woman became the archetypal fallen woman." Because the war ended not with a peace treaty but with a truce, the U.S. military has continued to maintain troops in South Korea. As a result, the number of camptowns increased with the number of military installations, as did the number ofyanggongju.
In addition to Bupyong, some of the earliest and largest camptowns include Itacwon, areas of Pusan called Hialeah and Texas, Tongduchon, and Songtan. The camptowns in Pusan were among the most stable, as U.S. soldiers were stationed there throughout the war. [This was possible because Pusan, a port city located at the southeastern tip of Korea, left UN control only briefly during the war.) The U.S. military used Pusan as a landing port, and the camptowns of Hialeah (next to Camp Hialeah) and Texas soon appeared. Hialeah remains a camptown today, while Texas (located next to the Pusan train station) has become a camptown serving not only the us. military but also sailors and other itinerant travelers assing through the port.m
The 1960's were the heyday of the camptowns, when more than thirty thousand women earned their living entertaining some sixty-two thousand U.S. soldiers stationed in virtually every corner of South Korea. The Paju area northwest of Seoul, militarily important due to its proximity to the DMZ39 that serves as the truce line between North and South Korea,
33 CAMPTOWN, U.S.A. contained the highest concentration of US. troops until 1971. Nicknamed the "GI's Kingdom," the area was home to the [st Marine Division and the 24th, 7th, and 2nd Infantry Divisions. The largest camptown during this period was Tongduchon, nicknamed Little Chicago and located just east of Pain and north of Seoul. When Camp Casey was established as the main infantry base at the end of the Korean War, Tongduchon was transformed from a remote farming village into a chaotic world of drugs, sex, crime, and black market deals in PX goods. During its height in the mid-1960's, some seven thousand women in Tongduchon worked as prostitutes serving the US. military.“
Because U.S. bases were one of the few, if not the only, sources of income in the poverty-stricken years of the 19405 through the 197os, the camptowns attracted not only poor women, including war widows and orphans seeking to make a living, but also entrepreneurs and criminals. In collusion with GIs, Korean civilians smuggled military supplies and PX goods out of the bases, selling them for a handsome profit on the black market. Pimps and madams established clubs catering to the soliers, hiring women at starvation wages to work as hostesses-cum-prostitutes. Villagers opened laundries, restaurants, stores, and other businesses serving the more mundane needs of the soldiers and the camptown women. The Dong-A Ilbo, one of South Korea's major newspapers,reported on the development of these camptowns, using as a model Uijongbu, a camptown just north of Seoul but south of the larger Tongduchon. Before the war, Uijongbu had about ten thousand residents and one silk mill as its sole industry. But with the war, hundreds of unemployed people, UN forces, and criminals literally invaded the town, bringing with them various underworld activities. About two thousand women worked as yang gon‘gju, and the small town was suddenly filled with cabarets, bars, tailor and dress shops, and other stores. By the 196os, an estimated 60 percent. of the sixty-five thousand Koreans in Uijongbu were engaged in some form of business catering to the U.S. military.“l
With the construction of U.S. military bases came not only the transformation but also the literal destruction of Korean villages. In July 1951, Songtan, about an hour south of Seoul by bus, was invaded by the bulldozers of the 417th Squadron of the U.S. Air Force. The squadron built an airfield, causing five thousand people (one thousand families) to lose their homes. These families had farmed the same plots of land in Songtan for generations, making their living from the annual rice harvest and the charcoal they made from the wood they chopped in surrounding forests. As they left their ancestral lands. each family held a piece of paper from the US military promising monetary compensation in neatly typed Korean and English. The promised compensation. which was much less than the market value of the land, never materialized despite years of legal battles."2 Over the years, more residents were displaced as Osan Air Force Base expanded to become the largest base in Korea and the second largest Air Force base in Asia. (Since the 1992 closing of Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, Osan is now the largest.) Journalist Oh Yun Ho describes the transformation of Songtan:
Oblivious to the local residents' resentment. the airfield was completed at top speed within six months. The. surrounding area became the land of the stars and stripes. Thatched-roof houses gave way to all kinds of stores with English signs. aluminum cans replaced gourds, and a village full of shy maidens with their long braided hair instantly became a village full of yang gongju.“ With the construction of the airfield, Songtan became home to a major hub of U.S. military activity in Asia and a thriving camptown. When the United States began to reduce its land forces in 1971, army camptowns such as Tongduehon suffered. but Songtan grew as the United States continued to emphasize airpower. An air squadron is stationed there, and soldiers from other units regularly fly in from Okinawa for weekend training sessions.“ Songtan today is one of the largest camptowns, with about one thousand five hundred prostitutes. The projected move to
Osan of the Eighth Army and USFK headquarters (currently located at Yongsan in Seoul) is sure to make Songtan Korea's camptown capital. American Town is a camptown developed with the collusion of both the South Korean and American governments. Built by a South Korean general and a landowner in 1969 during the height of the Park Chung l-lee regime, American Town turned farmland in North Cholla Province into a sanctioned tied-light district for us. soldiers. Distinctly marked off from the nearby civilian town of Kunsan and the surrounding country-
side by chain-link fences, American Town at first was wholly owned by 34 CAMPTOWN, U.S.A. the two developers, but later became a corporation with shareholders.
During the 1970's business was so good that the clubs opened even during the day and a fleet of buses ferried soldiers between Kunsan Air Force Base and the town. Today (2001), two buses operate daily between the camptown and the base. The town includes dormitory housing for the women, about twenty clubs, a dozen stores, and a government-run health clinic where the women receive mandatory testing for sexually transmitted diseases.”
These camptowns perform crucial social functions for both South Korea and the United States. Both governments seem to consider campowns a necessary evil. For South Korea, the camptowns hold the promise of containing unhealthy American influences, protecting "virtuous” women from the threat of rape, and especially during the early years of economic development earning foreign exchange.“ It is also a way for a subjected government to cater to the dominant country. For the U.S. military. camptowns provide a release for the troops and help to maintain troop morale. They also help to keep unruly soldiers away from “normal” civilians and thus reduce tension with the Korean public at large. While the us. military officially decries prostitution as an unhealthy influence on its soldiers. it also lets the soldiers know that frequenting prostitutes in Korea is acceptable behavior.
As one military chaplain says, In Korea. the guys are inundated with prostitutes. And the us. forces and the American government are saying “Hem. hem be tolerant."
Where we could make a difference is. where we could take the rules. the strictures like in Germany or in other nations where they are stricter. where this kind of thing doesn't go on, and apply it to Korea. we could fix this problem in 20 minutes. . . . But in Korea. we just say. “Aw. it’s the culture" and wink at what goes on."
Both the South Korean and US. governments, however. do more than simply “wink at what goes on." For the South Korean government. these camptowns and the regulation of camptown women have been crucial to maintaining smooth relations with the us. government. Katherine Moon points out that making sure that camptown women played their proper role as entertainers and sexual playmates who would foster goodwill toward Korea among American soldiers was an essential aspect of the South Korean government's strategies for national security. The United States, for its part. takes it for granted that its soldiers ”need" paid sexual companions for high morale and demands that camptown women be kept free of venereal disease so that soldiers do not become infected. Thus. as Moon demonstrates, the South Korean government and the 0.8. military have engaged in a decades-long collaboration to regulate camptown women and their behavior. In the process. they have subtly. sometimes overtly. promoted the sexual exploitation of Korean women. The women redoubly victimized: betrayed by their own government and virtually sold as a kind of war booty to the United States, and exploited by a foreign government interested only in the women‘s usefulness as sexual diversions for the ostensible purpose of maintaining troop morale.
The U.S. military has also long regarded prostitution as a moral and health issue. however, sometimes worrying that it damaged U.S. reputations in the eyes of the local civilians. But despite official handwringing over the moral state of "our boys," the United States has never seriously attempted to eliminate prostitution around its military bases in South Korea. This is in contrast to its efforts to eliminate prostitution around its European bases. as the chaplain quoted above notes. Although soldiers re officially forbidden any involvement in prostitution. unofficially they are given a wink and a nod. A 1965 report conducted by the Eighth U.S. Army frankly admitted that "fraternization (in the form of prostitution] is near the core of troop-community relations here." It also found that most soldiers believe that such “fraternization” endears Korea to the soldiers. making them more willing to fight, and that “most officers be-
lieve that fraternization is generally a constructive force." in the end, the United States adopted a "boys will be boys" policy toward camptown prostitution in South Korea. Before the 197os, the 0.5. military engaged in sporadic efforts to regulate clubs and club women, primarily to control the spread of venereal disease. 0.8. medical officers intermittently checked camptown women for sexually transmitted diseases. military authorities unilaterally declared as off-limits clubs that were deemed problematic because infected women worked there. and military police went on patrol through the towns. Bases also instituted VD contact identification systems, pressuring soldiers to identify those they had patronized. Club women identified by soldiers were summarily taken to military medical centers where they were tested and medicated. But such regulation contradicted the official position that the military had nothing whatsoever to do with prostitution. US. officials therefore continually pressured the Korean government to regulate the camptowns and the prostitutes.
