This pathbreaking study presents a feminist analysis of the politics of membership in the South Korean nation over the past four decades. Seungsook Moon examines the ambitious effort by which South Korea transformed itself into a modern industrial and militarized nation. She demonstrates that the pursuit of modernity in South Korea involved the construction of the anticommunist national identity and a massive effort to mold the populace into useful, docile members of the state. This process, which she terms “militarized modernity,” treated men and women differently. Men were mobilized for mandatory military service and then, as conscripts, utilized as workers and researchers in the industrializing economy. Women were consigned to lesser factory jobs, and their roles as members of the modern nation were defined largely in terms of biological reproduction and household management. Moon situates militarized modernity in the historical context of colonialism and nationalism in the twentieth century. She follows the course of militarized modernity in South Korea from its development in the early 1960s through its peak in the 1970s and its decline after rule by military dictatorship ceased in 1987. She highlights the crucial role of the Cold War in South Korea’s militarization and the continuities in the disciplinary tactics used by the Japanese colonial rulers and the postcolonial military regimes. Moon reveals how, in the years since 1987, various social movements—particularly the women’s and labor movements—began the still-ongoing process of revitalizing South Korean civil society and forging citizenship as a new form of membership in the democratizing nation.

"The contributors to this volume offer an explicitly intersectional and transnational perspective on contemporary South Korean gender and class relations and structures"--

A collection of essays exploring the world-wide U.S. military base system and its interplay with social relations of gender and sexuality in the U.S. and foreign host nations.

Dangerous Women addresses the themes of Korean nationalism and gender construction, as well as various issues related to the colonialization and decolonialization of the Korean nation. The contributors explore the troubled category of "woman," placing it in the specific context of a marginalized and colonized nation. But Korean women are not merely configured here as metaphors for an emasculated and infantilized "homeland;" they are also shown to be products of a problematic gender construction that originates in Korea, and extends even today to Korean communities beyond Asia. Representations of Korean women still attempt to confine them to the status of either mother or prostitute: Dangerous Women rectifies that construction, offering a feminist intervention that might recuperate womanhood.

"After the transition from military rule to procedural democracy through popular movements, South Korea actively embraced globalization in 1990s under its Civilian Government (munmin jæongbu: 1993-1997). By rapidly adopting a neoliberal strategy of deregulation and privatization, the government promoted its localized project of Segyehwa (globalization) as the source of more prosperity and recognition for the country. This euphoria was followed by two major economic crises; the Asian Financial Crisis (1997-1998) and the Global Financial Crisis (2008- 2009) that exposed South Korea to the "shock doctrine" of neoliberal restructuring, dictated by the global trinity of economic institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and further subjected it to neoliberal governmentality. It was in this that "citizens' organizations" (simindanch'e) emerged and spread in South Korea as the vehicle for democratic social change. Why and how does civic activism that is consciously oriented toward democratization resist and accept neoliberalism? How and to what extent does neoliberalism enable such activism and simultaneously undermine it? Between Democracy and Neoliberalism examines the relationship between the two modern concepts from the vantage point of civic activism in South Korea. In order to demonstrate a contradictory relationship between the two, Seungsook Moon follows the trajectories of activism interacting with globalization in South Korea, which has profoundly transformed it since the 1990s. Comparatively speaking, civic activism pursued by "progressive" citizens' organizations can be seen as a Korean version of social movement, critically responding to neoliberal globalization and yearning for an alternative world order. However, such resistant activism is more complex than one-dimensional opposition and protest to neoliberalism. In the face of persistent and resilient neoliberalism even after the global financial crisis, this book explores how civic activism can shed light on the theoretical discussion of the complex and evolving relationship between democracy and neoliberalism through the South Korean case"--

Since the Korean War, gijichon—U.S. military camp towns—have been fixtures in South Korea. The most popular entertainment venues in gijichon are clubs, attracting military clientele with duty-free alcohol, music, shows, and women entertainers. In the 1990s, South Korea's rapid economic advancement, combined with the stigma and low pay attached to this work, led to a shortage of Korean women willing to serve American soldiers. Club owners brought in cheap labor, predominantly from the Philippines and ex-Soviet states, to fill the vacancies left by Korean women. The increasing presence of foreign workers has precipitated new conversations about modernity, nationalism, ethnicity, and human rights in South Korea. International NGOs, feminists, and media reports have identified women migrant entertainers as "victims of sex trafficking," insisting that their plight is one of forced prostitution. Are women who travel to work in such clubs victims of trafficking, sex slaves, or simply migrant women? How do these women understand their own experiences? Is antitrafficking activism helpful in protecting them? In On the Move for Love, Sealing Cheng attempts to answer these questions by following the lives of migrant Filipina entertainers working in various gijichon clubs. Focusing on their aspirations for love and a better future, Cheng's ethnography illuminates the complex relationships these women form with their employers, customer-boyfriends, and families. She offers an insightful critique of antitrafficking discourses, pointing to the inadequacy of recognizing women only as victims and ignoring their agency and aspirations. Cheng analyzes the women's experience in South Korea in relation to their subsequent journeys to other countries, providing a diachronic look at the way migrant issues of work, sex, and love fit within the larger context of transnationalism, identity, and global hierarchies of inequality.