The Korean Diaspora

HAUNTING the Korean Diaspora HAUNTING the Korean Diaspora Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War Grace M. Cho UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS Minneapolis • London The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance provided for the publication of this book from the Office of the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at College of Staten Island–City University of New York. A portion of chapter 4 was published as “Prostituted and Vulnerable Bodies,” in Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives, ed. Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore (Cary, N.C.: Roxbury Publishing, 2007), 210–14; reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Portions of chapters 4 and 5 have been previously published as “Diaspora of Camp - town: The Forgotten War’s Monstrous Family,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 34, nos. 1–2 (2006): 309–31. A shorter version of chapter 6 was published as “Voices from the Teum: Synesthetic Trauma and the Ghosts of Korean Diaspora,” in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, ed. Patricia Clough with Jean Halley (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007), 151–69. Portions of chapter 6 were published by Sage Publications as Grace M. Cho and Hosu Kim, “Dreaming in Tongues,” Qualitative Inquiry 11, no. 3 (2005): 445–57, and as Grace M. Cho, “Murmurs in the Storytelling Machine,” Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies 4, no. 4 (2004): 426–32. Portions of chapter 6 have been performed in “6.25 History beneath the Skin,” a performance art piece in Still Present Pasts: Korean Americans and the “Forgotten War.” In chapter 2, the poem “Cheju Do” by Yong Yuk appears courtesy of the author. Unless otherwise credited, photographs are from U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Copyright 2008 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo - copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cho, Grace M. Haunting the Korean diaspora : shame, secrecy, and the forgotten war / Grace M. Cho. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8166-5274-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-5275-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Korean Americans—Psychology. 2. Korean American women—Psychology. 3. Immigrants—United States—Psychology. 4. Prostitutes—Korea (South)— History—20th century. 5. War brides—United States—History—20th century. 6. Psychic trauma—Korea (South). 7. Shame—United States. 8. Secrecy— United States. 9. Korean War, 1950–1953—Psychological aspects. 10. Korean War, 1950–1953—Women. I. Title. E184.K6C473 2008 951.904'2082—dc22 2008018143 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For my mother 1941–2008 This page intentionally left blank Contents A Note on Transliteration ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction The Fabric of Erasure 1 1. Fleshing Out the Ghost 27 2. A Genealogy of Trauma 50 3. Tracing the Disappearance of the Yanggongju 89 4. The Fantasy of Honorary Whiteness 129 5. Diasporic Vision: Methods of Seeing Trauma 162 Postscript In Memoriam 198 Notes 203 Index 237 This page intentionally left blank A Note on Transliteration All Korean words are spelled according to the Revised Romani - za tion system, with the exception of words directly quoted from previously published texts and proper names whose orthography is publicly known. Although the Revised Romanization system was adopted as the official system of South Korea in 2000, its use has not yet become widespread in the United States. Therefore, many of the works cited in this text use the older McCune - Reischauer system (or variations of it). In a few instances, words are spelled in nonstandard Korean to reflect either a regional dialect or North Korean spelling variations, but these words are transliterated according to the Revised Romanization system. As is consistent with standard practice, I retain the spellings of Korean names as they appear in English - language publications. I follow the Korean naming convention of surname followed by given name whenever the person referenced is Korean, and the Western convention of given name followed by surname in reference to Korean Ameri- cans. ix This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments As befits a writing project about unconscious entanglements, it is both a challenge and a pleasure to try to name all the minds and bodies that have made this book possible. Before this book’s be- coming, Patricia Clough created an affective -pedagogical space in which thought could unfold, and her commitment to this project has been unfaltering ever since. I am blessed to have found a home in her space. Thank you. Jeffrey Bussolini, Mitchell Duneier, Hester Eisenstein, Michelle Fine, Jean Halley, Grace Hong, David Kazanjian, Daniel Kim, Rose Kim, Carla Marcantonio, Lisa Jean Moore, Ananya Muk- herjea, Ron Nerio, Jackie Orr, Rosalind Petchesky, Salvador Vidal- Ortiz, Jonathan Wynn, Sunghee Yook, and “the book group”— the contributing authors of The Affective Turn—have all read pieces of this work at various stages, listened to me talk through them, or watched me perform them. They have challenged me to think in different directions while also encouraging my intellectual choices. Special thanks go to Rafael de la Dehesa and Hosu Kim for providing all manner of support, while also reading drafts of these chapters, at every step of the way. In particular, I am grateful to Rafael for his limitless generosity of time and spirit and for absorb- ing much of the excess energy that was produced while writing this book so that I could maintain enough coherence to finish it. xi xii – Acknowledgments I thank Hosu for being my intellectual partner of many years, for providing the translation of Korean source materials into En- glish, and for giving me the courage to look for my Korean tongue. Both of them have taught me the meaning of shared experience. I also give thanks to Allen Shelton and Nayan Shah for their invi- tations to speak and perform pieces of this work, from which I was able to open myself to new networks of thought, and to bell hooks for introducing me to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. April Burns, Gillian Chi, and Emiliano Valerio, as members of my New York family, have made long - term investments of their emotional re- sources in my work and life. I am grateful to be part of this com- munity in which risk taking is enabled by love and compassion. I am indebted to the collectives that inevitably informed “my” project. Thanks to all the artists and coordinators of Still Present Pasts: Korean Americans and the “Forgotten War” for recognizing my creative potential and for sharing theirs with me. I give thanks to Ramsay Liem and Deann Borshay Liem for responding to my count less queries as I crafted this book; to Yul - san Liem, Injoo Whang, and Ji Young Yoo for granting me permission to repro- duce their visual artworks; and to the oral history participants on whom the project was based for having the courage to bring private grief into public discourse. I am grateful to the Korea Education and Exposure Program for offering me a wealth of information and inspiration that shaped my process of revision and to the Park Slope Foundation Program for providing refuge and reminding me of the importance of gratitude. Without my blood family, I would have had no motivation to write. My deepest gratitude goes to my mother for leading the way, to her sister for being my living link to the peninsula, and to my father for taking responsibility. In ways that I have yet to fully comprehend, my mother and her kin created this book with me. To those who would have preferred that I keep quiet, my wish is that you will read with compassionate eyes. Finally, I acknowledge the various sources of institutional support I have received. I am grateful to the Professional Staff Con- gress of the City University of New York awards program for funding parts of this research and to Amal Othman, my research assistant at the College of Staten Island, for fact checking portions Acknowledgments – xiii of the text. At the University of Minnesota Press, Jason Weide- mann was extremely generous in his editorial feedback; perhaps more important, he has demonstrated an unwavering enthusiasm about my project. Adam Brunner gave me the most prompt, pa- tient, and reassuring help I could have hoped for. In the final stages, Marilyn Martin and Nancy Sauro did a meticulous job of copyediting. To all the staff behind the scenes at the Press, thank you. I could not have made a better choice. This page intentionally left blank Introduction The Fabric of Erasure What haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others...the burial of an unspeakable fact...like a ventriloquist, like a stranger within. —NICOLAS ABRAHAM AND MARIA TOROK, The Shell and the Kernel My life seemed a lot like the lives of other kids around me, but there always seemed to be this tension and anxiety, which was sort of going through my family like an unhappy wind; there were silences which became part of the fabric of our daily lives. —KEVIN RYU, Still Present Pasts An Uncertain Beginning I want to tell you a story, not of anything in particular that happened in my family, but of how silence came to define my daily fabric.1 I’m uncertain as to when or where this story begins, but one version of it begins in a small rural town in the United States.

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