Susie Woo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479889914
- eISBN:
- 9781479845712
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479889914.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Korean women and children have become the forgotten population of a forgotten war. Framed by War traces how the Korean orphan, GI baby, adoptee, birth mother, prostitute, and bride—figures produced ...
More
Korean women and children have become the forgotten population of a forgotten war. Framed by War traces how the Korean orphan, GI baby, adoptee, birth mother, prostitute, and bride—figures produced by the US military—were made to disappear. Strained embodiments of war, they brought Americans into Korea and Koreans into America, intimate crossings that defined, and at times defied, US empire in the Pacific. The book looks to US and South Korean government documents and military correspondence; US aid organization records; Korean orphanage registers; US and South Korean newspapers and magazines; as well as photographs, interviews, films, and performances to suture a fragmented past. Integrating history with visual and cultural analysis, Framed by War reveals how what unfolded in Korea set the stage for US power in the postwar era. US destruction and humanitarianism, violence and care played out upon the bodies of Korean women and children, enabling US intervention and fortifying transnational connections with symbolic and material outcomes. In the 1950s Americans went from knowing very little about Koreans to making them family, and the Cold War scripts needed to support these internationalist efforts required the erasure of those who could not fit the family frame. These were the geographies to which Korean women and children were bound, but found ways to navigate in South Korea, the United States, and spaces in between, reconfiguring notions of race and kinship along the way.Less
Korean women and children have become the forgotten population of a forgotten war. Framed by War traces how the Korean orphan, GI baby, adoptee, birth mother, prostitute, and bride—figures produced by the US military—were made to disappear. Strained embodiments of war, they brought Americans into Korea and Koreans into America, intimate crossings that defined, and at times defied, US empire in the Pacific. The book looks to US and South Korean government documents and military correspondence; US aid organization records; Korean orphanage registers; US and South Korean newspapers and magazines; as well as photographs, interviews, films, and performances to suture a fragmented past. Integrating history with visual and cultural analysis, Framed by War reveals how what unfolded in Korea set the stage for US power in the postwar era. US destruction and humanitarianism, violence and care played out upon the bodies of Korean women and children, enabling US intervention and fortifying transnational connections with symbolic and material outcomes. In the 1950s Americans went from knowing very little about Koreans to making them family, and the Cold War scripts needed to support these internationalist efforts required the erasure of those who could not fit the family frame. These were the geographies to which Korean women and children were bound, but found ways to navigate in South Korea, the United States, and spaces in between, reconfiguring notions of race and kinship along the way.
Susie Woo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479889914
- eISBN:
- 9781479845712
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479889914.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter centers upon the US military in Korea between 1945 and 1953. While Koreans experienced war violence firsthand, American and international audiences grew increasingly aware of and ...
More
This chapter centers upon the US military in Korea between 1945 and 1953. While Koreans experienced war violence firsthand, American and international audiences grew increasingly aware of and concerned about the devastation wrought by the US military as the war raged on. It was in this context that US military officials actively paired US servicemen with Korean orphans to help narrate the unpopular war. This chapter demonstrates how the American soldier was transformed from the bringer of bombs to the rescuer of children. Using US military records, army chaplain logs, Department of Defense raw footage, newsreels, photographs from popular US magazines, as well as US and Korean newspapers, this chapter traces how violent soldiers were transformed into caring fathers. Mandated by the US military and perpetuated through media, these relationships helped to recoup the losses of war and deflect international accusations of US imperialism, while drawing Americans together with Koreans in intimate ways. The chapter closes with a look at the symbolic purposes of these actions, goals made clear by military officials who blocked Korean houseboys from living in the barracks and stopped servicemen from formally adopting Korean children, intimacies that exceeded the intentions of these rescue narratives.Less
This chapter centers upon the US military in Korea between 1945 and 1953. While Koreans experienced war violence firsthand, American and international audiences grew increasingly aware of and concerned about the devastation wrought by the US military as the war raged on. It was in this context that US military officials actively paired US servicemen with Korean orphans to help narrate the unpopular war. This chapter demonstrates how the American soldier was transformed from the bringer of bombs to the rescuer of children. Using US military records, army chaplain logs, Department of Defense raw footage, newsreels, photographs from popular US magazines, as well as US and Korean newspapers, this chapter traces how violent soldiers were transformed into caring fathers. Mandated by the US military and perpetuated through media, these relationships helped to recoup the losses of war and deflect international accusations of US imperialism, while drawing Americans together with Koreans in intimate ways. The chapter closes with a look at the symbolic purposes of these actions, goals made clear by military officials who blocked Korean houseboys from living in the barracks and stopped servicemen from formally adopting Korean children, intimacies that exceeded the intentions of these rescue narratives.
Susie Woo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479889914
- eISBN:
- 9781479845712
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479889914.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter looks at what happened to the Korean women and children who remained in South Korea. It sets the stage by describing how President Rhee’s 1953 directive to remove children with American ...
More
This chapter looks at what happened to the Korean women and children who remained in South Korea. It sets the stage by describing how President Rhee’s 1953 directive to remove children with American fathers to the United States heightened the vulnerability of those who stayed. The South Korean government worked closely with Harry Holt and in 1954 established Korea’s first welfare agency, Child Placement Service, expressly to remove mixed-race children. The chapter describes how US racial identification practices used to determine which children were “part-black” were introduced to and became institutionalized in South Korea. It also describes how Korean women were erased in this process. They were coerced to give up their mixed-race children and were offered no support from either government. For the children, solutions ranging from segregated schools to welfare reports that pathologized them as “social handicaps” relegated this population to the margins. The chapter ends with a consideration of how mixed-race children and the mothers who fought to raise them navigated the ongoing legacies of US militarization in South Korea.Less
This chapter looks at what happened to the Korean women and children who remained in South Korea. It sets the stage by describing how President Rhee’s 1953 directive to remove children with American fathers to the United States heightened the vulnerability of those who stayed. The South Korean government worked closely with Harry Holt and in 1954 established Korea’s first welfare agency, Child Placement Service, expressly to remove mixed-race children. The chapter describes how US racial identification practices used to determine which children were “part-black” were introduced to and became institutionalized in South Korea. It also describes how Korean women were erased in this process. They were coerced to give up their mixed-race children and were offered no support from either government. For the children, solutions ranging from segregated schools to welfare reports that pathologized them as “social handicaps” relegated this population to the margins. The chapter ends with a consideration of how mixed-race children and the mothers who fought to raise them navigated the ongoing legacies of US militarization in South Korea.
