American Imperialism, White Supremacy, and Korean Sex Villages
Yesterday, March 16th, 2021, a racist white man in Georgia shot and killed Asian women in massage parlors in Atlanta. It is a travesty and it is a product of white supremacy and American imperialism. Many people were shocked that this happened, but sadly, I was not. Many of my Asian American and Pacific Islander friends were also not shocked.
In 2015, I had the opportunity to travel to South Korea with a group of college students from South Carolina and Mississippi. The trip was focused on the Korean War, the separation of the North and the South, and what reunification and peace might look like on the Korean Peninsula. That in itself is a far more nuanced and complicated discussion that is not easily answered, and I left more confused than not.
What I learned and what has stuck with me is the American Military’s role in the continued raping and trafficking of Asian and Pacific Islander women in Korea. On the outskirts of Seoul is the city Dongducheon, where Camp Casey, a US Military base is located.
On July 4th, 2015, I was able to visit a village outside of Camp Casey on the outskirts of Dongducheon. This Village was a sex camp full of clubs that catered to the the US Military. Yes. A village with the promises of good touching, massages, and other services. Being July 4th, many US Soldiers were off, drunk, and celebrating, and they were expecting the village to be overly busy that night.
Our visit consisted of walking around the village and seeing the many sex camps. Where we ended our trip that day was a place called the Durebang or My Sister’s Place (English translation). The Durebang was an old abortion clinic where trafficked women were once forced into abortions by US and Japanese soldiers, turned into a safe place for women to find refuge and respite outside of the sex camps.
Durebang was established in March 1986 with the goal of assisting marginalized and oppressed women in camptowns to regain self-worth and lead healthful lives. Durebang has worked with women of various backgrounds who face different challenges within the camptowns and with US soldiers. Durebang continues to work toward finding solutions to problems that result from prostitution, the harmful effects of militarism, and especially the current situation of both Korean and migrant women being forced or deceived into working in the camptown sex industry. (durebang.com)
We were able to hear stories of Asian and Pacific Islander women who had been trafficked to the camp with promises of wealth, luxury, and prestige. What they met when they arrived were Military members who needed their sexual needs, perversions, and fantasies met. There were stories of pregnancies, forced abortions, and even women who were killed at the hands of US Military members. The men were never held accountable and the women never received justice. Numerous women whose names we do not know, but whose stories were written with blood and tears all around the Durebang and the sex camp.
The Durebang, once a place of forced pain and suffering, became a place of justice, healing, and safety. The stories changed my life and many of the lives of our students.
The soldiers in Korea on that July 4th acted as if the territory was theirs. They took up all the space on the trains. They were loud, obnoxious, drunk, rude, crude, and left a bitter taste in the mouths of many of our college students who were forced into seeing American Imperialism and the Military Industrial Complex for the first time in a foreign country. I was forced to see this myself.
After the events of yesterday, and the murder of these Asian women, I am reminded that Imperialism, White Supremacy, and Rape is a tale as old as time in the United States. Yet, what we forget, fail to see, and even ignore, is that it is still happening all around us. All around the United States, there are Asian and Pacific Islander women who are trafficked into sex slavery every day. Sex work in the US is a complicated issue in and of itself, yet when there are numerous men and women trafficked into the US just for their bodies to be commodified into sexual objects, we can not turn a blind eye. We have to face the suffering and listen to the stories and stare into the abyss of the depravity that we have created by our complicity, our silence, and our inability to dismantle the structures of white supremacy and American Imperialism.
The man who killed the women in Atlanta is a product of our country’s sin and the transgression of white supremacy. I saw many people saying it wasn’t motivated by race, but by his sexual addiction, and I call Bullshit. Racism and Rape go hand in hand. Rape, sex, and abuse as a means of control over people of color is another tool from the white supremacist hand book. When we think of race, racism, and inequity, we automatically go to the “Black/White” binary. Yes, we have a history in this country with race that seems to be Black and White on the surface; and we often forget about the “invisible minority” . Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders have been greeted with racism and xenophobia in our country since the beginning. The US raided Hawaii and dismantled and coopted much if not all of the culture for the almighty dollar. During WWII and post WWII, we had internment camps in the US for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. We have colonized Guam, we colonized the Philippines and fought a war to try to stop them from claiming autonomy. The US did grant the Philippines independence in 1946, but only after the Treaty of Manila stated that the US would continue to hold a large military presence in the country. We still have military bases in Korea when many, if not most, Koreans want the US to butt out and leave. Hatred against the AAPI community is raging rampant in the United States because the white supremacist, known as Donald Trump, stoked the racist “china-virus” theory while he was president.
Yesterday was a tragedy. As a white, cis-gendered, man, I have no idea what many of my brothers and sisters in the Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander community are feeling. Honestly, I am not surprised by what happened. What the women at the Durebang shared with us made me face some hard truths I’d never considered or even been forced to confront. I know I must, and we must (particularly white folks who benefit from racism and systems of white supremacy) must face and listen to the voices of our kindred in the AAPI and Asian community. We must not turn away from the pain. We have to see and we have to look deep into the pain and suffering to be able to dismantle the structures of white supremacy. Our kindred deserve better than our silence. White Silence is Death. White Outrage with no concrete action is also death. We must listen deeply and we must act. Our complacency and our inaction is not an option.
Below is a list of non profits that are doing good work and confronting injustices against AAPI folx and communities. Please donate to one or all if you can!
- Asian Mental Health Collective, https://www.asianmhc.org
- Asian American’s Advancing Justice,
https://www.advancingjustice-aajc.org - A FEDERATION OF LGBTQ ASIAN AMERICAN, SOUTH ASIAN, SOUTHEAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER ORGANIZATIONS.
https://www.nqapia.org/wpp/home - Asian/Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project (DVRP)
https://dvrp.org - Red Canary Song centers basebuilding with migrant workers through a labor rights framework and mutual aid. We believe that full decriminalization is necessary for labor organizing and anti-trafficking. #RightsNotRaids #SexWorkIsWork
https://www.redcanarysong.net - Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Network
https://www.butterflysw.org - National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum
https://www.napawf.org
