U.S. military-oriented prostitution in Korea is not simply a matter of women walking the streets and picking up U.S. soldiers for a few bucks. It is a system that is sponsored and regulated by two governments, Korean and American (through the U.S. military).The U.S. military and the Korean government have referred to such women as "bar girls," "hostesses," "special entertainers," "businesswomen," and "comfort women." Koreans have also called these women the highly derogatory names, yanggalbo (Western *****) and yanggongju (Western princess)
The vast majority of these women have experienced in common the pain of contempt and stigma from the mainstream Korean society. These women have been and are treated as trash, "the lowest of the low," in a Korean society characterized by classist (family/educational status-oriented) distinctions and discrimination. The fact that they have mingled flesh and blood with foreigners (yangnom) 4 in a society that has been racially and culturally homogeneous for thousands of years makes them pariahs, a disgrace to themselves and their people, Korean by birth but no longer Korean in body and spirit. Neo-Confucian moralism regarding women's chastity and strong racialist conscience among Koreans have branded these women as doubly "impure." The women themselves bear the stigma of their marginalization both physically and psychologically. They tend not to venture out of camptowns and into the larger society and view themselves as "abnormal," while repeatedly referring to the non-camptown world as "normal." Once they experience kijich'on life, they are irreversibly tainted: it is nearly impossible for them to reintegrate themselves into "normal" Korean society. Kim Yang Hyang, in the documentary The Women Outside, recalls how her family members rejected her when she returned to her village after working for a time in the kijich'on. One of her cousins told her, "Don't come around our place."
"Too different" was a polite way of saying what many Korean activists and academics today, even those who advocate on behalf of the former Korean "comfort women" to the Japanese military in World War II, still believe--kijich'on prostitutes work in the bars and clubs because they voluntarily want to lead a life of prostitution, because they are lacking in moral character. This kind of academic and activist negligence of kijich'on prostitutes is a function of the Korean society's bias against these women--that they are an "untouchable" class, that they have already departed so far from the norms and values of mainstream society to deserve consideration of the political, economic, and cultural sources of their unenviable existence.
American Town is like many of the other numerous camptowns near or adjoined to major U.S. military camps in South Korea. Like no other places in Korea, Americans and Koreans together make up the residents of the kijich'on.
What distinguishes American Town from the other camptowns is its physical isolation--it is completely walled off, with a guard posted at the gate--and its"incorporated" status. American Town is not simply a place; it is a corporation, with a president and board of directors who manage all the businesses and people living and working in it. The corporation headquarters occupies a small building within the walled compound. Originally, the Town was constructed in the early-to-mid 1970s through funds from both the local government and Seoul........