The State's Sexuality uncovers how the lives and work of women engaged in prostitution, long considered the most abased members of society, have been strategically intertwined with the lofty purpose of building South Korea's postcolonial nation-state. Through a complicated, contradictory patchwork of laws and regulations, which Park Jeong-Mi conceptualizes as a "toleration-regulation regime," the South Korean state did not merely exclude sex workers from ordinary citizenship; it also mobilized them for national security, national development, and the making of a gendered citizenry. In the process, the newly independent state was constructed, augmented, and consolidated. Sex workers often protested such draconian policies and sometimes utilized state apparatuses to get recognition as citizens. Based on expansive, meticulous archival research and sophisticated interpretation of historical records and women's voices, Park rewrites the dynamic history of South Korea from 1945 to the present through the lens of prostitution.
Park Jeong-Mi is Associate Professor of Sociology at Chungbuk National University, South Korea.
"Turning an eye-opening lens onto state-sponsored prostitution from the twentieth century into contemporary times, The State’s Sexuality is a must-read to understand the role of sex in modern state-building in Korea and beyond."—Suzy Kim, author of Among Women across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War
"Park Jeong-Mi meticulously and humanely exposes the institutionalized deployment of Korean women as 'stateless patriots' who sexually serviced US military personnel to earn US dollars for the building of a nation and as statecraft of postcolonial, war-torn Korea, heavily dependent on US military and economic aid—the invisible base of the South Korean 'economic miracle.'"—Margo Okazawa-Rey, Professor Emerita, San Francisco State University
290 pp.6 x 9Illus: 18 b/w illustrations, 2 tables
9780520396463$34.95|£30.00Paper
Aug 2024