Violent Imaginations: Liminal Encounters from Camp Town to the Inner City. Seoul and the United States Armed Forces in South Korea. By Elisabeth Schober Submitted to Central European University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Professor Don Kalb Professor Daniel Monterescu CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary May, 2011 Statement I hereby state that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. The thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgement is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Budapest, May 31, 2011. CEU eTD Collection 2 Table of Contents Abstract page v Acknowledgements page vi 1. Introduction: Of Violent Imaginations and Liminal Encounters page 1 I. “If you are in a certain neighborhood…” page 2 II. From Ally to Aggressor page 8 III. Violent Imaginations, Liminal Encounters and the De-Militarization of Everyday City Life page 14 IV. The City’s Entertainment Districts: Urban Spaces and Militaries page 25 V. (Anti-)Militarism At Large: Adapting Anthropological Methodologies for a Study on the U.S. Armed Forces in Seoul’s Entertainment Districts page 36 2. In the Thick of the Fire. South Korea’s Long March from Garrison State to Affluent Liberal Democracy. page 46 I. Nation(s)-in-Arms page 47 II. “A Shrimp Amongst Whales” (1895-1960) page 50 III. Militarized Modernity and Capitalism of the Barracks (1961-1987) page 67 IV. De-Militarizing the Garrison State (1980 –) page 81 3. ‘Vil(l)e’ Encounters: The Imaginative and Material Territories of Militarized Entertainment on the Fringes of Korea page 97 I. “the colonized bodies of our women…”. kiji’chon as imaginative spaces page 98 II. Our Nation’s Daughter? The Yun murder and its aftermath page 101 III. Camptowns as Material Spaces on the Periphery page 115 IV. A Tour through the Villes in Kyǂnggi-Province page 132 V. Ville Space as Endangering and Endangered page 150 CEU eTD Collection 4. Itaewǂn’s Freedom: Of Violent Nightmares and American Dreams page 153 I. Militarized Masculinities: Between Imagined Ghetto and Adult Playground page 154 II. The Spatial Arrangements page 161 III. The Early Beginnings page 165 IV. The Rise and Fall of a Neighborhood –The It’aewǂn 3 District from the 1960s till today page 167 V. Gay Hill page 181 VI. Coming Changes. The Closure of Yongsan Garrison page 186 VII. Three Nights Out in Foreign Town. page 188 VIII. Living that Freedom? page 205 5. Demilitarizing the Urban Entertainment Zone: Hongdae. page 208 I. Hongdae Sex Scandal, (Un-)disclosed. page 209 II. A Walk through the Neighborhood page 214 III. Expanding the Limits: The Emergence of Hongdae as Alternative Party Space page 217 IV. Protecting the Innocent from Corruption: The Moral Panic over Western Influences in Hongdae. page 224 V. The Chaos Class Kids page 235 VI. From Hongdae to Tae’chu-ri and Back. page 242 VI. “Hate the war, not the warriors”. The GI Punks of Hongdae and their Chaos Class Antagonists page 256 6. Conclusion: Seeds of Antagonism, Children of Dissent page 264 Bibliography page 270 CEU eTD Collection 4 Abstract The Korean peninsula is one of the most heavily militarized regions on this planet, where the armed face-off between the Northern and Southern parts of the formerly united country has now entered its 60th year. With large troops facing each other in a permanent lock-down along the Demilitarized Zone, a contingent of app. 28,500 U.S. soldiers (most of whom are young, male and single) prominently figures into the equation of (in-)security as well. This foreign military presence has increasingly raised much dissent inside South Korea ever since the brutal murder of a Korean sex-worker by a U.S. soldier in an entertainment district 30 kilometers north of Seoul in 1992. Over the last few decades, criminal acts of U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea have been amplified by an outraged Korean public as a stand-in for the putatively uneven relationship between the United States and Korea. These “violent imaginations” that have GIs at their center are to be contextualized and further complicated through the exploration of three types of entertainment districts in and near Seoul that are nowadays popular with United States Armed Forces in Korea (USFK) personnel. Adult Entertainment districts – practically the only non-military spaces in which U.S. Armed Forces personnel and South Korean civilians come into daily contact with each other – are in the Korean media often portrayed as having been “contaminated” by the presence of foreign soldiers, with female locals being particularly at risk to fall prey to the young men that are nowadays typically depicted as aggressive (sex-)offenders. During my 21 months of field research in and near Seoul, I sought to explore both the violent imaginations held about GIs, and the actual encounters that take place in entertainment districts that often drastically contradict, essentially confirm or extensively diversify preconceived notions. CEU eTD Collection 5 Acknowledgements This project has been funded by a Marie Curie Early Stage Training Fellowship (Marie Curie SocAnth) as well as by various funding provided by Central European University. I would like to thank Don Kalb and Daniel Monterescu for their devoted and generous support throughout all this time. Their competent assistance and constant encouragement helped me greatly to keep working on this project over the years. Furthermore, I am indepted to all the people who have spent time and energy to make comments on various papers, early chapter drafts and provisional sections of the manuscript, including Sophie Day, Don Nonini, Michael Herzfeld, Calin Goia, Prem Kumar Rajaram, Lisa Law, Jakob Rigi, David Berliner, James Hoare – thanks also to Dan Rabinowitz and all the participants of the write-up seminar that have greatly helped me in the last stages of writing. I have also benefited from both the formal training and informal network provided by the Marie Curie SocAnth Doctoral Training School that I was part of – a big thank you to Michael Stewart and all the other faculty, staff and students in Budapest, Cluj, Halle, London and Sibiu who were involved. I also want to thank my Budapestan co-fighters Olena Fedyuk, Neda Deneva, Anca Simionca, Mariya Ivancheva, Luisa Steur, Alexandra SzĘke, Gábor Halmai, Zoltán Dujisin for their friendship, their encouragement and in-put over the last five years. In Berlin, my gratitude goes to my friends and colleagues from Korea-Verband, in particular Han Nataly Junghwa. And of course I want to thank the countless people that have helped me during my time in Korea, many CEU eTD Collection of whom I unfortunately cannot (fully) name here. I am deeply indepted to my friend Yu Cheonghee, to Kim Elli, and Song Uen-ae, who have helped me out so many times. My deepest gratitude to the staff workers at Durebang, and in particular to Yu Young-lim, Yu Pok-nim, and Park Sumi, for their kindness, patience and warmheartedness with which they have welcomed me into their offices and 6 introduced me to the world of kiji’chon. Thanks a lot also to the people of Peace Network, Seoulidarity, and World Without War, as well as to the staff of The National Campaign for Eradication of Crimes by U.S.Troops in Korea and of Haet-sal. At Sarangbang, a drop-in shelter by the organization Magdalena House, I have also found open doors – thanks a lot in particular to Kim Chu Hǎi. Lina Hoshino from Genuine Security, I have greatly enjoyed our collaboration. Thanks also to my dear friends Karo, Jefe, Hyungyin, Rob, Niko, Crazy Flower, Jeehwan, Jayden, the park kids, the It’aewǂn crowd, and the women I met in kiji’chon, I miss you all and wish you the best. Lastly, I want to dedicate this work to my endearing husband, Yi Wonho. CEU eTD Collection 7 1. Introduction: Of Violent Imaginations and Liminal Encounters These are young men and women who are shipped to countries they know little about and have little interest in, who are disconnected from their culture and their families and arrive overseas with a misguided sense of superiority because of their role as a protecting force. Yet they find themselves ghettoized in GI camptowns, on the bottom rung of society economically, denied entrance to clubs, bypassed by taxis, protested against, regarded on the street with wariness or utterly ignored – second-class citizens in their own country, they are sent overseas to be treated like second-class citizens in other people’s countries. (Feinerman 2005:213) Some of the most powerful – and mobilizing – arguments [against U.S. bases overseas] have focused on the high rates of crimes against girls and women committed by U.S. soldiers. Feminist antibase activists make the point that these acts represent war crimes based in patriarchy and/or militarism, whereas other more nationalist activists tend to interpret this type of violence against women as crimes against national honor and sovereignty understood as masculine. (Lutz 2009:16f) CEU eTD Collection 8 I. “If you are in a certain neighborhood...” On a Saturday in mid-January 2007, 23-year-old Private Geronimo Ramirez, together with another soldier friend of his, made the two-hour long ride from his U.S. military base located in the remote town of Tongduch'ǂn all the way to central Seoul. First having lunch at the Dragon Hill Lodge, an Armed Forces recreation center located inside of the U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan in Seoul, they found that all rooms at the military hotel were booked, and decided for a sleeping arrangement outside of U.S.