Elisabeth Schober
Curriculum Vitae
Current Project
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U.S. Soldiers Off-Duty in South Korea
While the Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) has progressively moved
towards becoming a vibrant liberal democracy since the early
1990s, even today the influence of the military on the country’s
fate and its people is immense. The 60-year-old conflict with
the North – a country that Bruce Cumings in his book
North Korea (2004) described as “the most astounding
garrison state in the world” – up to this very
day validates the militarization of citizens’ daily
lives in the South through such formative institutions as
the universal draft. But while mandatory military service
in the R.O.K. is still an issue that only a handful of lonesome
activists dares to critique, matters are very different with
the U.S. military presence on Korean soil (app. 30,000 of
them are currently stationed in the R.O.K.). With the onset
of democratization, with rapid economic growth, with the incipience
of a multi-faceted nationalist movement as well as more or
less steadily improving relationships with the North, the
formerly sacrosanct U.S. soldiers in the country have now
become personae non gratae in the eyes of many people. In
literature as well as in film, in the media as well as in
popular opinion – the front against the GI presence
on the peninsula is a broad one, bringing together nationalist,
leftist, feminist, religious and other activists. Vigorous
protests have been flaring up recurrently; the most recent
such incident was the prolonged demonstrations surrounding
the destruction of a village called Daechuri that in 2006
had to make space for the enlargement of U.S. military base
Camp Casey. Anti-U.S. military sentiments, to be sure, were
also figuring into the month-long mass protests against the
import of U.S. beef that took place during spring and summer
2008 in the center of Seoul. Ever since the onset of widespread
contention over the GI presence in Korea, it has been one
issue in particular that captivated people’s minds:
the issue of U.S. military personnel’s off duty-behavior
– and in particular their sexual encounters with Korean
women.
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