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11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful and Well Written, October 5, 2003
This review is from: Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America (Hardcover)
As the author points out, there is very little work on international military wives, and Korean military wives in particular. By such a logic, this book is a welcome project indeed. Essentially, Yuh Ji-Yeon sets out to make sense of why Korean women set out to marry American [military] men along with the consequences of such decisions. What becomes apparent throughout this book is the gendered set of relations in both US-Korean and soldier-wife relations. While many Korean women may seek American husands (especially those tricked and coerced into camptown USA) in order to escape Korean societal restrictions and shape better lives for themselves, many American men seek Asian wives in order to fulfill the ultimate Orientalist fantasy of Asian women as meek, erotic, and subservient. Through numerous interviews, Yuh finds out that many of the hopes that Korean military wives bring with them to America become easily dashed as they experience racism and cultural colonization. These Korean wives (many of whom are societal outcasts) thus become marginalized, their identities stolen from them as they are neither accepted for their cultural value by either their own indigenous community and the new American community. While such wives try hard to acculturate themselves to the demands of American life, suffering and pain continues to follow them, and in some cases poverty despite the alllure and so-called attainability of the great American dream. Perhaps even more important, Yuh makes clear that not all Korean wives are former camptown girls. Such simplistic stereotypes carried by the American public is damaging in creating pejorative connotations of the "Korean wife." Furthermore, even those wives who are former camptown girls should not be condescended. Being a prostitute is not exactly a free choice in Korea. Moreover, why should camptown girls be discriminated and labeled whore when the American soldiers who frequent red-light districts are sometimes actively encouraged by their commanders and more often than not treated with minor slaps on the hand for engaging in prostitution. Sadly, US military policy discriminates against the supply rather than dealing with the demand in prostitution. So much for the high morals of the US military. In this context, many Korean wives act out a latent form of resistance. Their husbands and in-laws may forbid them to speak Korean, to eat Korean food, to teach their children Korean culture, but in the privacy of their homes when husbands and children are out, these women cultivate friendships with other Korean wives, watch Korean movies, and make attempts to demand the respect that they undoubtedly deserve. In short, while Korean wives may be denied meaningful relationships with their husbands and children due to lack of support in learning the English language and subsequently sharing the Korean language, these women are basically trying to survive and separate themselves from their sad and sometimes lurid pasts. "Beyond the Shadow of Camptown" is a book that anyone in the military, and especially any soldier thinking of taking an Asian wife or mail order bride should read. Conversely, this book should also be read by foreign women around US military bases worldwide, who are thinking that a green card is an entry into a better life. This book shows the complexities of immigration, and of negotiating two different contexts. Truly, this book is very powerful and more importantly supported by interviews and other forms of empirical evidence that even those in self-denial can't rebut. Last but not least, we must consider the stories of each Korean wife that has come to the US. Their stories deserve to be heard and remembered.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
an interesting treatment of another aspect of conflict, April 9, 2005
This review is from: Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America (Hardcover)
Beginning with the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, followed by its replacement by the United States in 1945, the military governments established a series of bases, and from around these bases grew camptowns, a section of businesses that offered everything from souvenirs to alcohol to prostitution. For her own extended metaphor, Yuh refers to the shadow, or influence, that is cast by these camptowns not only across the Korean landscape but also within the Korean people, most specifically the women who worked, often as indentured servants, within these camptowns and went on to marry soldiers. Yuh makes explicit her change in referring to these women as military brides over war brides. This does not obfuscate, however, the historical value of war brides as being equivalent to war booty and hence configured more as property, even as the remnants of this idea manifest in certain social attitudes (i.e., domestic subservience) that many of the American servicemen may have had toward their Korean wives. The use of personal case studies set against the backdrop of US military policy in Korea and social attitudes both in the United States as well as Korea shows that these women lived in a perpetual state of dual existence, in many ways no longer being recognized as completely Korean and unable to be regarded as completely American. This concept of identity is made more complex as Yuh traces out some elements of the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula, particularly those aspects of the occupation that forced Korean children to adopt Japanese names and learn Japanese language (spoken and written) and history, thus distancing them from their own Korean heritage, a displacement that would be further complicated by those who married American soldiers. Since the research on Korean military brides is finite, Yuh's study presents some intriguing insights on a segment of the population that is constantly negotiating the preservation of its ethnic heritage and identity while it adjusts its assimilation into American society. This is particularly important at a time when community and ethnic identity in America finds itself increasingly transformed by world events, such as recent developments with nuclear proliferation in North Korea.
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4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A moving and eye-opening account, May 16, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America (Hardcover)
This book fills a need by covering Korean women who married American military men and their experiences in life, the prejudices they've encountered from other Koreans and white Americans, and how they stake out a place of meaning for themselves through church activities with other Korean military wives. The author describes the women's family and educational background as well as how they met their husbands. Although a few were sex workers in Korea, the majority were not. It seems that it's not common for Korean military wives to have Korean girlfriends whose husbands are Korean as well. I found that surprising because I grew up in a Korean community of Jehovah's Witnesses where my mother, a Korean woman married to a Korean man, had (and still has) many girlfriends who were Korean military wives. I would have appreciated a religious history of these women, whether they were always Christian or became such after meeting their husbands.
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