Trigger Warning:
Camptown Prostitution In S. Korean History.

Video Above — “How Korea’s Sex Trade Was Built For U.S. Soldiers”. September 5th, 2024.

Please note that one of the first books in English to bring this topic to attention is:
Sex Among Allies Paperback – April 15, 1997 — By Katharine Moon

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A September 5th, 2024 AJ video confronts the harsh realities of historical and ongoing camp town prostitution surrounding U.S. military bases in South Korea. The term “UN Waitress” appears in some English Adoptive Child Study Summary documents of KSS Adoptees — particularly, though not exclusively, those of Hapa (mixed-race) Adoptees from 1964 (the founding year of KSS) through the 1970s. KSS continued its overseas adoption operations until 2012.

“UN Waitress” was often used as a euphemism for “camp town prostitute,” referring to women who worked in areas surrounding U.S. military installations. These camp towns have a complex and painful history that many Korean Adoptees have only recently begun to confront.

Some camp town prostitutes entered into “common-law marriages” with U.S. or other foreign soldiers during and after the Korean War —living together as partners without formal legal recognition. Even when such couples sought legal marriage and immigration to the U.S., they were often blocked by high-ranking U.S. military officials.

The military regime of Park Chung Hee actively promoted prostitution as a form of patriotic duty in the postwar era. According to both the AJ video and the book referenced below, prostitution involving South Korean women constituted a significant portion of the national economy during and after the Korean War.

A key work on this subject, long predating the video, is the acclaimed book:

Sex Among Allies Paperback – April 15, 1997 — By Katharine Moon

Themes of military prostitution and mixed race / “first wave” Korean Adoptees have also been explored by S. Korean Adoptee filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem:

https://www.mufilms.org/about/