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An Ethnographic Study on Korean Women in U.S. Military Camptowns: Work and Identity

Miduk Kim 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article aims to interpret the material realities of Korean women(mostly 40s-70s) in U.S. camptowns. Based on the field research in 2006 and 2007, this article explores the women's own perceptive on their lives and identity question. This article started from two findings during the fieldwork research. First, women’s narratives were centered on work, adjustment and current situations rather than liaisons with foreign soldiers and sex trade itself. Second, most informants neither identified themselves as sex workers, nor did they deny that they are not sex workers even when they clearly spoke about knowledge of the sex trade. I have suggested main reasons for their reticence through various forms of dis/identification from social class, sex trade as a form of work throughout their entire lives: Sex trade is work in that it is on the continuum of other informal and temporary jobs. It includes legal marriage to GIs their dis/identification is not grounded on sex trade itself but, rather class and the form of work they exert various forms of identities ranging from identification, dissimulation to disidentification from social positions. Thus the narratives of their past and the experiences of the sex trade is adjustment rather than total denial or shame(by not speaking about the experience of sex trade). This includes subtle, qualitative transformation such as ‘abundance from hard labor’ from the subsistence perspective and ‘pure vitality from poverty.’ It implies that suffering such as poverty involve not only violence but also embed the possibility of recuperation and patience that make them move forward for better life.

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