Sex work dominated Korean camptown economies built around U.S. military bases

Evidence

After the signing of the 1953 Korea-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty (still the legal foundation for U.S. troops’ access to U.S. and Korean bases), camptowns boomed. In the 1950s alone, eighteen new camptowns were created. As the political scientist and camptown expert Katherine Moon explains, they were “virtually colonized space where Korean sovereignty was suspended and replaced by the U.S. military authorities.” The livelihoods of Koreans in the camptowns were almost completely dependent on GIs’ buying power, and sex work was a core part of the camptown economy. The camptowns became “deeply stigmatized twilight zones” known for sex, crime, and violence. By 1958, there were an estimated three hundred thousand sex workers in a country whose entire population was just 22 million. More than half worked in camptowns. In the middle of downtown Seoul, where the Army occupied the 640-acre Yongsan Garrison originally built by Japanese colonizers, the Itaewon neighborhood filled with bars and brothels. GIs named it “Hooker Hill.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 483

Categorization

• SEED: The figure of 300,000 sex workers in a country of 22 million — more than half in camptowns — could anchor a piece on how basing agreements structurally reshape host economies around a single industry.