earticle

영어

During the 1950s, many of the Koreans who immigrated to the United States were so called ‘war brides’ married to US soldiers. However, there is little room for these women not only in the record of immigrant history, but in the any part of Korean society. The main reason these women have been muted is that the most of them had worked as sex workers in U.S. military base in Korea, so called ‘Yanggongju’. Korean dictatorships and patriarchy considered these women traitors to the nation and outcasts at the boundary of that nation. In Korea, a growing number of popular texts that incorporate representations of Yanggongju have been produced and circulated since Korean War. These text have used the Yanggongju’s image in its pejorative connotation. As well, in American culture, Korean military wives are represented negative oriental women; they are often seen as seductive and sinister. However, despite these negative representations, they have struggled to seek their authentic identities while overcoming their difficulties coming from their marginality among white-centered society. This essay emphasizes the need to investigate the ways in which the positions of Korean military wives are represented as mere victims or traitors in Korea, as sinister whores in America. And instead of essentializing the experiences of Korean military wives as poor and vainglorious women, I try to find out the agency, subjectivity, and resistance of Korean military wives.