Elisabeth Schober Current Project Elisabeth Schober Curriculum Vitae Current Project U.S. Soldiers Off-Duty in South Korea While the Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) has progressively moved towards becoming a vibrant liberal democracy since the early 1990s, even today the influence of the military on the country’s fate and its people is immense. The 60-year-old conflict with the North – a country that Bruce Cumings in his book North Korea (2004) described as “the most astounding garrison state in the world” – up to this very day validates the militarization of citizens’ daily lives in the South through such formative institutions as the universal draft. But while mandatory military service in the R.O.K. is still an issue that only a handful of lonesome activists dares to critique, matters are very different with the U.S. military presence on Korean soil (app. 30,000 of them are currently stationed in the R.O.K.). With the onset of democratization, with rapid economic growth, with the incipience of a multi-faceted nationalist movement as well as more or less steadily improving relationships with the North, the formerly sacrosanct U.S. soldiers in the country have now become personae non gratae in the eyes of many people. In literature as well as in film, in the media as well as in popular opinion – the front against the GI presence on the peninsula is a broad one, bringing together nationalist, leftist, feminist, religious and other activists. Vigorous protests have been flaring up recurrently; the most recent such incident was the prolonged demonstrations surrounding the destruction of a village called Daechuri that in 2006 had to make space for the enlargement of U.S. military base Camp Casey. Anti-U.S. military sentiments, to be sure, were also figuring into the month-long mass protests against the import of U.S. beef that took place during spring and summer 2008 in the center of Seoul. Ever since the onset of widespread contention over the GI presence in Korea, it has been one issue in particular that captivated people’s minds: the issue of U.S. military personnel’s off duty-behavior – and in particular their sexual encounters with Korean women.

With previous research having put most emphasis on sex work, this study is innovative in the sense that non-monetary arrangements will play a more crucial role. Therefore, the aim of this project is to 1) contextualize the Korean debates surrounding the presence of U.S. soldiers and their (sexual) encounters with civilians in Korea. In particular, I seek to show how and why activists, the media and academics seem to overlap in their analysis insofar as they mainly focus on prostitution, sexual violence and unequal relationships. And 2) I want to look more closely into the very encounters and relationships that people do shape, and investigate more closely the often fleeting and highly strategic encounters and arrangements that are made in two entertainment districts of Seoul, Korea. What exactly motivates Koreans as well as GIs to get into these arrangements, and how are these relationships then affected and perhaps further shaped by the public spotlight that is on the issue? Research at two locations – Hongdae and Itaewon, two entertainment districts in Seoul with their own distinct histories and trajectories that enable, shape and channel the very encounters taking place in them – will be done with the aim of investigating deeply into the complex nexus between (de-)militarized urban space, (casual) sexual encounters and politics at large, as it presents itself in the case of South Korea’s capital and some of its neighborhoods.