Distribución de la planta

Long before mixed-race children became dubbed ‘multicultural’ children71 in South Korea, ‘mixed-blood’ (Kor. honhyǒl), a strongly racialised term, used to indicate mixed-race people, particularly Amerasians, born to American servicemen and Korean women during the Cold War period. Among various manifestations of the Cold War in South Korea (such as frantic anti-communism), the story of ‘how sex meets war’ – in particular the development of US camptown (Kor. kijich’on)

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Reflecting the recent increase of migrant workers and marriage migrants from other Asian countries, the majority of these children were born to a migrant from elsewhere in Asia, and one Korean parent.

135 prostitution72 – needs to be explored in order to uncover the role of nationalism in the forgings of sexed and racialised others. As Moon (1997) aptly illustrates:

The selling and buying of sex by Koreans and Americans have been a staple of U.S.- Korean relations since the Korean War (1950-53) and the permanent stationing of U.S. troops in Korea since 1955. It would not be far-fetched to say that more American men have become familiar with camptown prostitution in Korea since the 1950s than with military strategy and Korea’s GNP figures. Since the war, over one million Korean women have served as sex providers for the U.S. military. And millions of Koreans and Americans have shared a sense of special bonding, for they have together shed blood in battle and mixed blood through sex and Amerasian offspring. (Moon 1997, 1)

Cho (2000) conceptualises the South Korean developmental regime of the Cold War period as ‘the anticommunist regimented society’73_{, and accordingly South Korea’s}

security interests conditioned almost all aspects of South Korean society for nearly three decades after the Korean War. Against this political backdrop, the South Korean government endorsed and regulated this ‘system of prostitution’, as demonstrated by the Camptown Clean-Up Campaign of the 1970s (Moon 1997, 36). In 1971, the reduction of US troops in Korea (resulting from the Nixon Doctrine) increased South Korea’s anxiety for national security and effectively pressurised the South Korean government to strictly implement venereal disease examinations as

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Although ‘mixed-blood’ people in Korea cannot be deemed as one coherent group nor can this camptown narrative be the sole explanation for their presence, the popular conception of ‘the mixed- blood’ or Amerasians has been closely linked to the existence of US soldiers and camptown prostitution. Furthermore, that the Korean government controlled (not just neglected or purged) these sex workers reveals the workings of nationalism in producing internal others, which fits the aim of this chapter. It is also worth noting that migrant women with entertainment visas – mainly Filipinas and Russians – have replaced Korean women in camptowns since the mid-1990s (KCWU (Korea Church Women United) 2002, 98).

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According to Cho (2000), the construction of the South Korean developmental regime, epitomized by ‘the mobilization for growth in the maximal statist form and integration in the authoritarian form’, is mainly derived from ‘societal confrontation with communism’ (p. 410). This will be analysed later in the chapter when discussing imbrications between economic developmentalism and nationalism.

136 part of its effort to regulate the bodies of camptown prostitutes. Aiming to appease its ally and improve US-Korea relations, this government campaign ran regular medical check-ups and prostitution etiquette classes (ibid., 91). In this process, camptown prostitutes whom government even spatially segregated from the public became patriotic labourers and ‘personal ambassadors’ who mediate the US-ROK relations (ibid., 102-103). In this sense, the alliance between US imperial power and Korean patriarchal nationalism forged international relations through the subordination of women’s bodies.

Yet these women’s status as a ‘necessary evil’ (M. Lee 2008, 66) was disturbing not only for the South Korean government but for South Korean people at large. Lee pinpoints:

[T]he kijich’on women feature as the objects of discourse in two simultaneous and overlapping narratives: one as violated national virgins and the other as agents of sexual and national betrayal. (M. Lee 2008, 67)

Their existence itself was a continuous reminder of the unequal power relations between US and Korea and, of Korea as an emasculated, contaminated nation. Furthermore, these women transgressed both the notion of chastity in Confucian ethics and the idea of the racial purity of nation, which made them ‘doubly impure’ (Moon 1997, 3). Thus, to ‘maintain Korean national pride’, these women were often condemned as yanggalbo (Western whore) or yanggongju (Western princess) and differentiated from normal Korean women who were identified as ‘chaste daughters and faithful wives’ (N-Y Lee 2007, 454). This gendered nationalism constructed strong aversion for the mixed-blood, their children. Racial hybridity was deemed

137 repulsive not just because of physical differences, but because this biological trait was ‘culturally imagined’ and delegitimised ‘within the national community’ in relation to these children’s mothers (Nam 2008, 127).

The mixed-blood children were not recognised as legitimate Korean citizens and sent to their fathers’ country by the Korean government. From the mid-1950s till the early 1980s74, the majority of mixed-blood children were sent to the US for adoption. This clearly shows that the mixed-blood was institutionally excluded from acquiring Korean citizenship. Furthermore, this expulsion from the start seems to explain why the mixed-blood is perceived as a mixed-blood ‘child’75 rather than a mixed-blood ‘person’ (D-S Kim et al. 2003, 17-18). Another mechanism of exclusion that should be noted is the family registry (Kor. hojŏk), in which all family members are registered under a male family head. This was the legal base of identification for Korean citizens, until the patriarchal system of hojuje was abolished in 2008. Though, since 1980, the mixed blood have been able to register under his/her mother’s name, the fact that he/she was not part of this entire Korean patrilineal genealogy, lacking a traditional male head, differentiated them from the normality of Koreanness. Thus, prior to 1980, mixed-blood children who were not sent to the US, were often registered under their male relatives such as grandfather or uncle (ibid, 19-20). Against this backdrop, the remaining mixed-blood have been precluded from belonging to the Korean ‘polity’, which is evidenced in the fact that mixed-blood

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From 1954 onwards, the Korean government sent mixed-blood children to the US based on an agreement between the two countries. However, it became difficult for mixed-blood children to be adopted to the US because of the change in the US immigration Act of 1962. But again, in 1982, as the US government passed a bill which gave Asian-American children (born in an area where the US army was stationed) a right to immigration, many of them immigrated to the States. (D-S Kim et al. 2003, 25-8)

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The word, ‘mixed-blood child’ has been far more used than ‘mixed-blood person’ in Korea and sounds more natural, which reflects the fact that the mixed-blood has been associated with a child.

138 men were exempted from mandatory military service due to their visual differences since 1972.76 Although the Korean government stated that this exemption was to protect mixed-blood people from foreseeable racial harassment in the army, it took the easy (cost-effective) route by merely segregating and further marginalising them. Since completing military service has been the foremost duty for Korean men and a symbol of their being Korean citizens, this discriminatory exemption deprived them of the chance of being recognised as full citizens. Perceived as a threat to the notion of homogenous nation, and racialised in this way, the mixed-blood also experienced everyday harassment, which is closely related to their low level of education and economic instability.

This section investigated the making and exclusion of internal others in post- liberation Korea focusing on the nationalist mechanism of producing ideological and racial others. It is important to note that the signifier of ideological others,

ppalgaengi (reds), has been widely employed to suppress all sorts of political dissent against the state in the name of national security. In constructing its identity as an anti-communist state, the ROK deployed the ‘tactic of racial annihilation of the reds’ (S-N Kim 2001, 268). Whilst the state’s obsession with reds exploited nationalism to eradicate ideological others, nationalism was also used to create sexed and racialised others and regulate the mode of their national belonging as it does so today in constructing ‘multicultural women and children’.77

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This exemption for ‘visibly distinguishable’ mixed-blood men was abolished in 2011 by the revision of the Military Service Act.

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How ‘multicultural’ women and children (words to mainly indicate migrant women who marry Korean men and their children) were similarly constructed as internal others will be addressed in Chapter four and six where I will explore contemporary multicultural policies and discourses.

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