Korean military brides in New York

Amy LEE and Joseph Tse-Hei LEE (Translated by Amy LEE)

Abstract:

This article tells the stories of five Korean military brides in the predominantly middle-class neighborhood of Newburgh, New York, focusing on their association with the American military bases in South Korea to their daily struggles in cross-cultural marriages in the United States. It examines the particular contexts in which personal and sexual relations developed between American soldiers and Korean women in the “camptowns” or “GI towns” (kijich’on). It also looks at the ways in which some Korean women employed fraternization as a survival strategy in a war-torn society, and in which they struggled to come to terms with the American mainstream society after their migration to the United States.  These life histories provide us with a unique lens through which to explore the unequal power relations between the United States and South Korea within the dialectical framework of militarism, gender and migration.

Author’s biography

Amy Lee graduated from Pace University in New York with a B.A. in history in 2004 and was a Fulbright Scholar in South Korea in 2004–2005.

Contact address: 37-31 73rd Street, Apt. No. 3U, Jackson Heights, New York, NY 11372, USA

Joseph Tse-Hei Lee is associate professor of history at Pace University in New York and author of The Bible and the Gun: Christianity in South China, 1860–1900 (New York and London: Routledge, 2003).

Contact address: Department of History, Pace University, 1 Pace Plaza, New York, NY 10038, USA