“Re-membering” South Korea’s Militarized Landscapes in Pax Americana: Post-Cold War US Military Camps, Camptowns, and Former Camptown Women

Abstract

The continued US military presence for nearly eighty years in South Korea has produced militarized landscapes of postcoloniality in South Korea. Here, militarized landscapes denote both official American military camps and their vernacular camptowns (kijich'on) as well as social-cultural expressions affected by this spatial militarization, such as the former camptown women’s experiences. As the contours of these militarized borderlands are shifting today with the consolidating of the American military footprint in South Korea, this study seeks to connect these contemporary manifestations with their historical developments. In so doing, it hopes to contribute to what Homi Bhabha conceptualizes as “re-membering”－ “a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present.” While camps are becoming even more insulated Americanized spaces and the once marginalized camptowns are caught in a liminal stride toward internationalism, this study examines how these borderlands, which had not only embodied Korea’s coloniality but also catalyzed changes in the greater bilateral relations, are “re-membered.” It then discusses how former kijich'on women and civic organizations that constitute the “Camptown Women’s Human Rights Coalition” are at the forefront of this postcolonial “re-membering.” Through the subjectivity-formation and trans-border activism of those once rendered voiceless victims sacrificed by the state, the former camptown women themselves have demonstrated how they are the main agents of their own historical integration. Their re-membering, moreover, contributes to bringing to the national center the marginalized history of Korea’s militarized landscapes in Pax Americana, which in turn forces us to re-member our shared postcolonial trauma.