Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War

by Grace M. Cho

Since the Korean War—the forgotten war—more than a million Korean women have acted as sex workers for U.S. servicemen. More than 100,000 women married GIs and moved to the United States. Through intellectual vigor and personal recollection, Haunting the Korean Diaspora explores the repressed history of emotional and physical violence between the United States and Korea and the unexamined reverberations of sexual relationships between Korean women and American soldiers. Grace M. Cho exposes how Koreans in the United States have been profoundly affected by the forgotten war and uncovers the silences and secrets that still surround it, arguing that trauma memories have been passed unconsciously through a process psychoanalysts call “transgenerational haunting.” Tracing how such secrets have turned into “ghosts,” Cho investigates the mythic figure of the yanggongju, literally the “Western princess,” who provides sexual favors to American military personnel. She reveals how this figure haunts both the intimate realm of memory and public discourse, in which narratives of U.S. benevolence abroad and assimilation of immigrants at home go unchallenged. Memories of U.S. violence, Cho writes, threaten to undo these narratives—and so they have been rendered unspeakable.At once political and deeply personal, Cho’s wide-ranging and innovative analysis of U.S. neocolonialism and militarism under contemporary globalization brings forth a new way of understanding—and remembering—the impact of the Korean War.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Asian American, Sociology, Race, Feminism, Asia

262 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Noon De · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is full of false information.

(1)
'more than a million Korean women have acted as sex workers for U.S. servicemen.'
','By 1953, the total number of prostitutes amounted to 350,000, 60% of South Korean prostitutes worked near U.S. military camps.'

==> It is absurd and exaggerated false information.

(Fact) In 1954 , The Korean government(치안국보안과) officially said the number of prostitutes was 17,300.
https://newslibrary.naver.com/viewer/...

(Fact) Korean government(보건사회복지부) figures give 10,000 prostitutes servicing the U.N/U.S. military in the South Korea in 1960s.
about 9935 prostitutes in 1979 reducing to 700 prostitutes in 1990s

https://newslibrary.naver.com/viewer/...

https://newslibrary.naver.com/viewer/...
https://www.polinews.co.kr/news/artic...
기지촌 여성은 90년 1,667명
에서 91년 1,483명, 92년 1,129명, 93년 6월 926명으로 줄었다.

https://www.hankyung.com/news/article...

(2) 'More than 100,000 women married GIs and moved to the United States'
==> It is absurd and exaggerated false information.

According to the Korean government website , About 30,000 women are married to U.S. soldiers.


She is a cheater. This book is garbage

[Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is an interesting topic that could've been educational had it been written by a more capable author. The language of this book is long-winded and reminds me of when I had to write an essay in high school with a mandatory word count. It circumvents what it's going to say, often backtracking and repeating itself. There's jargon, which would be fine in a journal article, but this is published nonfiction for the layman and, therefore, inappropriate. This manner of writing is the sound and fury that makes people hate intellectuals.

The first one-tenth of this book could've been summarized as, "The Korean people--both on the peninsula and as immigrants in the United States--are haunted by the effects of both the Japanese and American occupations. The damaged caused by fear and subjugation was so traumatic that it can even be felt indirectly by later generations."

There's also a cheap cop-out by the author who basically says, "How does one quantify or narrate the tale of these ghosts? You can't. So I'm not going to bother try. If this seems disjointed, it's because it's impossible. Emotion is irrational, so I'm irrational."

But, couldn't you at least try? Trying to understand is the whole point. Like I said, I believe a more capable author would be able to apply the words to these difficult topics and try to find some order. Otherwise it just feels like a bad trip. This shouldn't be Pulp Fiction, folks. I mean, could you imagine submitting something like this to your professor? Yikes

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to read because it is so descriptive of the turmoil war causes in a country. That's not to say I didn't benefit from reading it and I continue to refer to it because it is an excellent presentation of life in Korea, a small country I knew very little about until I began to research while trying to learn more about my husband's deployment to the Korean DMZ in 1966-67. Ms. Cho has written an eye-opening story from the point-of-view of the daughter of a Korean woman who grew up under Japanese rule then Korean rule but never out from under the thumb of the U.S. government's idea of what the Koreans "needed" after the Korean War and what it takes to keep American G.I,s happy. A very sad commentary in many ways but nevertheless I'm glad I read it. if you're a history buff, you will find this book very interesting. If you are curious about the mindset of people in a culture different from the American culture, you will find this book very informative. If you are interested in learning how the U.S. government really handles countries it is "helping," you will find this book indispensable.

[Erin Cho · Rating 1 out of 5]

An important topic, but full of lies. I am Grace's sister-in-law.

[Juexist julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très bon livre entre essai sociologique et mémoire personnel. J’ai appris énormément de choses sur la guerre de Corée et la continuité de l’esclavage sexuel imposé par la colonisation japonaise et la prostitution coréenne pour l’armée américaine. Certains passages plus « littéraires » sur la fonction du « fantôme » dans le trauma ont toutefois étaient moins claires pour moi.

[Rebecca Crunden]

A poignant, compassionate, haunting sociological study on the lingering effects of trauma that long outlast war itself and go on to impact later generations.

⤑ research tag: in an effort to organise my shelves, I’m going to be labelling the books I’m using for study purposes as I tend to dip in and out of these. For further reading on the Korean War, check out this (incomplete list) of other reviews I’ve posted to Goodreads: The Korean War: A History, Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America, Let The Good Times Roll: Prostitution And The U.S. Military In Asia, Women Marines in the Korean War Era, The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War, Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations, Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War, “A Defense Weapon Known to Be of Value”: Servicewomen of the Korean War Era, Name, Rank, and Serial Number: Exploiting Korean War POWs at Home and Abroad, The Korean War at Sixty: New Approaches to the Study of the Korean War, We Will Not Be Strangers: Korean War Letters between a M.A.S.H Surgeon and His Wife and When Hell Froze Over: The Memoir of a Korean War Combat Physician Who Spent 1010 Days in a Communist Prison Camp.

[Kermit Shields · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is extremely well detailed about the life of the Korean women who have suffered the physical and emotional abuse as abducted sex abusers by Japanese soldiers and as sex workers by American soldiers during the last 75 years.

[Outi Condit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entering the gaps and silences left by the trauma of the Korean war, as well as US imperialism and on-going military presence by following the figure of the yanggongju ("Western princess", as both military sex worker and GI bride). Beautifully written, haunting study.

[Bella M. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has so many lies. No surprise given that the author has been lying her entire life

[giovi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not sure I can put into words how much this book affected me. Cho has done a seriously brilliant job and I am deeply touched by this book. So many of this book's passages I was struck by and have jotted down, but I will share just a few here as well.

"My hope is that even in their ambiguity, ghosts will be relentlessly demanding of a society that relegates some bodies to non-existence, whether motivated by shame, greed, or the delusion that I can protect my self/family/ nation from injury by being complicit with another's."

"In bearing witness to the unspeakable in my own family history, I have learned to see that beneath every act of destruction, beneath every horrible and violent situation, there is still a breath of life worth nurturing."

"In the years following the massacre, residents in and around Nogeun-ri reported occurrences that might have been strange had they not been so frequent. Farmers dug up human bones. Villagers saw the flickering of "ghost flames." And the spirits were
most restless in the summer. In Korean folklore, honbul, or ghostflames, often appear at the site of a massacre or unjust killing. There are theories about honbul that go beyond the supernatural.
Some explain honbul as a visual hallucination caused by mental disorder or malnutrition. Others say that they are sparked when warm rain and wind agitate the bones buried in mass graves, causing phosphorus to ignite. The survivors of the massacre were haunted by honbul that were stirred up each summer near Nogeun-ri. The ghost flames are perhaps a material expression of han (often translated as "unresolved grief and rage") — han of the dead for having been murdered and of survivors for having been witnesses to their families' slaughter."

[Stuart Ahn Sones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cho’s chilling experiment with the residual memory, silence and trauma of the Forgotten War left me reeling in its wake. Taking an affective and psychoanalytical lens, Cho fuses creative and autoethnographic vignettes with sociological research to provide the field a new way of seeing the unseen. In doing so, she exorcises the ghosts of the shameful and unspeakable, revealing how the psychic aftershocks of past violence (both emotional and physical) bleed into the social present experienced by the Korean diaspora today. As the grandson of one of the Korean American families brought together by the war that Cho describes, I took a lot away from this book as it made me realize certain truths about my own family as we mourned the passing of halmeoni this month. The shared history and familial experience today must be something attributable to that which resides in the diasporic unconscious as Cho calls it. It was such a personal read that hit the soul. The book is a must read for children of the Korean diaspora grappling with family history and for social scientists seeking to rupture the rationalist and empiricist hegemony of modern social sciences through experiments with the figure of sociological ghosts as well as creative and affective ways of knowing.

* I’ve read the family’s discomfort with Cho’s portrayal of their family in this book and the ethical questions it raises for social science standards. This review is only based on my own reading as a student, understanding that the individuals represented in the book are fictional composites of real people who experienced real events. This means that they are personalities compiled together to sketch the sociological realities of the diaspora, giving space for exaggeration and inaccurate facts about real individuals.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really compelling attempt to put Gordon into practice. I like the blend of more academic and more personal writing and the use of affect theory and affective writing to capture the ghosts of the Korean War/her family.

[kay! ☾ · Rating 4 out of 5]

had to read this for my final project in asian religion.

i wished it was longer because this topic is so fascinating

[Kylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don’t know what to say about this book in writing because it’s affecting more than just my thoughts just know that it was trauma i needed to face and understand and i’ll be haunted by it forever

[지훈 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a pretty heavy book, both in writing style and emotion. It reads very academically, which means it may not be accessible to everyone, and there were some passages that were difficult to get through because of the volume of terminology Cho uses or refers to.

However, I also think in this context, the book is incredibly well-done, relatively easy to read, and covers the generational and internal traumas we often don't hear of. I think Cho argues her points very well throughout (although there are some places where I think her logic can be a bit dubious), and provides strong historical context. Some people probably will take issue with her conclusions and framing but I think she does a good job of defending her position.

This book also just made me sad; being Korean American, not knowing much at all about the Korean War, and always struggling with my own sense of Han and familial history, I think I really connected with the books mission and specific focus on Korean women. It really embodies Lee Min Jin's opener for Pachinko that "it's a woman's lot to suffer."

[Sooho Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do silences speak? Do they suffocate? And what lurks in silences that terrifies us? Scarred by her mother’s silences, Grace M. Cho sought to find the impetus of her mother’s — and, in the process, her people’s — horrifying past. What she found stunned her: there’s a ghost, not in the closet, but seared on bodies.

Yanggongju is one of many derogatory terms for sex workers in U.S. military bases. But she is phantasmic and elusive: the most reliable documents or sources are traumatic memories, which are inherently fragmentary. So, Cho devotes many early chapters to put flesh on this ghostly figure. Who are they? Forgotten women forced or lured into military bases for soldier’s sexual gratification. Some women were “lucky” enough to get married and immigrate to the States; others were burned, killed, and forgotten.

This is the ugly side of an ugly war — the Korean War. This is the ugly side of a complicated relationship — between South Korea and the U.S. This is the ugly side of humanity.

This was a difficult book to read for two reasons: (1) the content is hard to swallow, and (2) the form or structure has, I think, choppy or clunky flow. I cautiously recommend this book. She seems, at times, unapologetically anti-U.S. or anti-U.S. military, which comes down to personal rhetoric and nuance. So, read with a grain of salt.

cf. www.sooholee.com

[Phạm N. · Rating 5 out of 5]

very haunting!

[Harmony Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly haunting academic account of the myriad of abuse inflicted upon Korean women and children from militarization and U.S. imperialism beginning in 1945. We follow the accounts of second-generation Korean Americans who piece together the stories of how prostitution was incentivized as a way of pursuing the “American Dream." It is a story of how Korean sex workers were the backbone of South Korea's societal development and how U.S. immigration increased, offered through sponsorships. It is a story of sexual and physical abuse, told by the ghosts of those who lost their lives and those forced into silence during the process of assimilating into America.

These stories are shared by those suffering in the aftermath of trans-generational trauma, emphasized through their mothers' silence.

“The two faces of America—murderous and benevolent—loom large in the memories of Korean War survivors, although some recall one face more readily than the other”.

[spoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

i haven't finished the book necessarily, but it has changed my life. this is the most trauma-informed historical narrative that i have ever read. i hold it close to me, close to my heart, close to my own family's history. thank you grace m cho for writing this not only from the heart, but with a grounded magic that has moved me into myself so weeping and important.

[Avery · Rating 2 out of 5]

An extremely generous 2 stars for what would barely pass as a decent masters thesis. For Cho does not succeed in proving her thesis and while a fascinating topic, I think this would have had more success under different (read: better) authorship.

[Iris (Yi Youn) Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cho traces the evolution of the Korean woman from Japan's sexual slave/comfort woman —> camptown worker —> American citizen/GI bride. It helped me understand how our bodies have been politicized and exploited by the South Korean govt / US military during the past century or so.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that unveils the nefarious intentions of Cold War America and its proxies.