GENEALOGIES OF KOREAN ADOPTION: AMERICAN EMPIRE, MILITARIZATION, AND YELLOW DESIRE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY SOOJIN PATE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Roderick A. Ferguson, Advisor Jigna Desai, Co-Advisor MAY 2010 Copyright © 2010 by SooJin Pate ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The morning of my graduation, my two-year old daughter asked me, “You graduate to become a doctor?” “Yep,” I replied. She paused to think. Then she said, “I become a doctor, too, someday.” I have no doubt that she will. And she’ll probably do it in half the time it took me. If she does decide to get her Ph.D., I hope that she has the same circle of support I had to help her reach her goal. I want to acknowledge and thank those who inspired, supported, and nourished me along the way so that I could reach this pivotal milestone. First, I want to thank the members of my two dissertation writing groups: Harrod Suarez and Sonjia Hyon, who dedicated their time and energy to make our writing group productive and active despite our long distance from each other; and Alex Mendoza and Kandace Creel Falcon from the Kitchen Table Collective, a writing group for women of color. They read draft after draft of my chapters and were there every time I needed to think through an idea or test out an argument. The extremely insightful and critical feedback I received from these four colleagues undoubtedly made my dissertation stronger. During my tenure at the University of Minnesota, I couldn’t have asked for more dedicated and nurturing faculty members. I especially want to thank Jigna Desai, Erika Lee, and Josephine Lee for being excellent role models in showing me how to negotiate the demands of family life with the rigors of academic pursuit. These three scholar/teacher/mothers have demonstrated to me that motherhood can actually make one a better teacher and scholar. I am so grateful to have had such wonderful examples in my i midst. In addition, I want to thank Elaine Tyler May, John Wright, Cathy Choy, Njeri Githirie, Malinda Lindquist, and Riv-Ellen Prell for their support and assistance throughout the years. I especially want to thank Kevin Murphy who, as the Director of Graduate Studies, has been a constant advocate and supporter of my work. His dedication to helping and encouraging graduate students to finish and complete their degree is truly admirable. I feel blessed to have such a wonderful dissertation committee. I especially want to thank Roderick Ferguson and Jigna Desai for being an exceptional team of advisors. They both pushed me and challenged me at just the right times and in just the right ways. I owe to their thoughtful engagement and brilliant guidance the freshness of my project, the rigorousness of my critiques, and the significance of my intellectual contributions. I also want to thank Erika Lee, Josephine Lee, and Keith Mayes for their thoughtful questions and sharp insights, as well as their excitement regarding my work. Their suggested revisions helped me to clarify my arguments and major interventions. Several fellowships funded the research and writing of this dissertation. The Leonard Memorial Film Study Fellowship and the Thesis Research Grant that I received from the Graduate School, as well as the Scholarly Research Grant from the Department of American Studies enabled research travel. The year-long Leonard Memorial Film Study Fellowship was particularly valuable as it provided me with not only the resources to conduct research at various archives but also the time to examine and analyze the materials I collected. Towards the later stages of my project, a Summer Dissertation Writing grant from the Department of American Studies and the Doctoral Dissertation ii Fellowship from the Graduate School facilitated the completion my dissertation, as they provided me with invaluable time to write and revise. I am grateful to the various selection committees who chose to fund my project. I want to thank David Klassen and Linnea Anderson for their assistance and guidance in helping me navigate the Social Welfare History Archives at Anderson Library at the University of Minnesota. In addition, I want to thank International Social Service: United States of America Branch, Inc. (ISS-USA) for allowing me to use their records for my research. I also want to thank the staff at the National Archives in College Park, particularly those working in the Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Records division and the Textual Archives Services Division, for their assistance in helping me locate materials. And I am grateful to all the various organizations and artists who generously granted me permission to reproduce their work. I especially want to thank Yong Soon Min, Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine, Jenifer Stepp at Stars and Stripes, Bill Brewington at Paramount News, and Brian Campbell at Holt International Children’s Services. I also want to thank Jane Jeong Trenka, Katie Hae Ryun Leo, and Katie Vang for their support. I want to acknowledge some of my friends and family who have not only sustained me throughout these years but have also brought great meaning to my life and work. I want to thank Krystal Banfield, Nalo Johnson, and Caren Umbarger for asking me about my work and cheer-leading me on to finish. I especially want to thank my sister Abby, May Fu, and Sun Mee Chomet. To Abby: Thank you for your generosity, persistence, and thoughtfulness. I so appreciate all the support you’ve given me iii throughout the years. To May: Thank you for your steadfast love, your laughter, and your uncompromising spirit. You inspire me to be a better teacher, scholar, and friend. I am so honored and grateful to have you in my life. To Sun Mee: I thank you for your fierce dedication to our friendship, for being unwavering in moments of crisis, and for the numerous lunch dates that not only fed my stomach but also fed my soul. Finally, I want to thank my partner Alexs and my daughter Sxela. To Alexs: your unceasing and unconditional support has been my sustenance throughout this journey. Your love has given me the courage and confidence to complete this project. Thank you for all those late night discussions, for the numerous brainstorming sessions we had during walks around Lake Calhoun, and for cooking me dinner so I could keep on working through the night. I could not have asked for a more patient and kind intellectual partner. You’re creative brilliance and artistic courage continue to awe and inspire me. Thank you for choosing to be with me and for helping me carve out time and space during the final stages so that I could finish my work. To Sxela: your very presence in my life has inspired me in ways unimaginable. I thank you for making me a better teacher, scholar, writer, and mother. You motivated me to finish what I started. iv Dedicated to my daughter Sxela and to Korean adoptees around the world v ABSTRACT This dissertation traces genealogies of Korean adoption that disrupt the dominant narrative of Korean adoption as a) a humanitarian rescue project and b) a reproduction of white heteronormative kinship in order to track the subject formation of the Korean orphan and adoptee. It does so by situating the emergence of Korean adoption neither in the Korean War (1950-1953) nor in the postwar recovery efforts of the U.S. but within the context of U.S. military occupation of the southern portion of Korea that began in 1945—five years prior to the Korean War and ten years before the “official” beginning of Korean adoption. In so doing, I argue that the figures of the Korean orphan and adoptee have defined neocolonial relations between the U.S. and Korea, as well as fostered white heteronormative constructions of the American family and nation. In Chapter One, I link the development of U.S. neocolonialism in South Korea to the neocolonial practice of Korean adoption by demonstrating how U.S. militarism and its policies of militarized humanitarianism became the precursors to this form of child welfare. I suggest that the Korean orphan ushered the arrival of what I call “American humanitarianism empire,” which enabled the U.S. to promote the myth of American exceptionalism while, at the same time, participate in imperial activities in the newly decolonized Korea. In Chapter Two, I argue that the discursive practice of, what I call, “yellow desire” facilitated the inclusion of Korean orphans into the U.S. domestic and national family. Informed by the 1950s Cold War Orientalist policies of racial integration, yellow desire runs on the logic that differences can be absorbed through assimilation. I contend that yellow desire is what compelled average white Americans to vi adopt Korean children during the era of Asian exclusion. In Chapter Three, I examine the process in which orphans became adoptees. As an institution of discipline and normalization, the orphanage as a “processing station” prepared the child to be incorporated into the white American home. It became the site where Korea’s social outcasts were shaped into useful subjects for the state: economically profitable for Korea and politically beneficial for the U.S. In this way, Korean adoption can be regarded as a civilizing project of modernity that ensures its success as a racially integrative project. Finally, in Chapter Four, I argue that the figure of the Korean adoptee—upon entrance into her new American family—documents the excesses, limits, and contradictions of Korean adoption as a project of empire and as a project of white normativity.