Consciousness Torn Asunder? Racial Elevation of “South” Koreans, US Camptown Prostitution, and K-Pop Girl Groups in the 1950s–60s

Abstract

This article is grounded in the racial elevation of a “South” Korean people (not Korean without “South” prefix) implicated in US imperialism and the intersectional implications of this ascent. Contributing a new application of Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness” to the racial capitalism literature, I historically analyze a case in which the elevation of a distinct racial group status entailed (1) the subimperial adherence of the imperially subjected and (2) a postcolonial homoerotic triangle in which racialized men adhered to a hegemonic empire-state and co-constituted a structure of expropriation of racialized-sexualized women. During the 1950s–1960s, the two industries of camptown prostitution and early K-pop girl groups were inextricable. Those industries boomed around US military bases, the war zones where South Korean soldiers proved the “South” Korean race’s corporeal values. Due to its subimperial project of enrollment in US hegemony, the South Korean government actively maintained these industries. South Korean soldiers negotiated their racialized status by partaking in the postcolonial homoerotic triangle with US soldiers, consuming racialized-sexualized Korean women’s bodies. Against this backdrop of the intense sexualization of Korean women’s bodies, a couple of the early K-pop girl groups acquired fame in the mainland US.