Liberation or purification? Prostitution, women’s movement and nation building in South Korea under US military occupation, 1945–1948

Abstract

This article investigates postcolonial South Korea’s prostitution policy as a focal point of sexual politics in the undertaking of nation building under US military occupation (1945–1948). It clarifies that the discourse on prostitution served as a forum for competing visions of a new nation: socialism versus nationalism, and women’s liberation versus national purification. It analyzes the paradoxical process by which the women’s campaign to abolish one colonial legacy of prostitution (‘Authorization-Regulation’) eventually resulted in retaining another legacy (‘Toleration-Regulation’) in a new guise. It conceptualizes the postcolonial prostitution policy that combined regulation and prohibition as a ‘Toleration-Regulation Regime,’ arguing that it was a compromise between the US military government and South Korean elites. Finally, this article demonstrates that building the nation was also a process of making female subalterns, prostitutes.