A Brutal Sex Trade Built for American Soldiers

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/02/world/asia/korea-us-comfort-women-sexual-slavery.html

The euphemism “comfort women” typically describes Korean and other Asian women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during World War II. But the sexual exploitation of another group of women continued in South Korea long after Japan’s colonial rule ended in 1945 — and it was facilitated by their own government.

There were “special comfort women units” for South Korean soldiers, and “comfort stations” for American-led U.N. troops during the Korean War. In the postwar years, many of these women worked in gijichon, or “camp towns,” built around American military bases.

Last September, 100 such women won a landmark victory when the South Korean Supreme Court ordered compensation for the sexual trauma they endured. It found the government guilty of “justifying and encouraging” prostitution in camp towns to help South Korea maintain its military alliance with the United States and earn American dollars.

(snip)

“The Americans need to know what some of their soldiers did to us,” said Park Geun-ae, who was sold to a pimp in 1975, when she was 16, and said she endured severe beatings and other abuse from G.I.s. “Our country held hands with the U.S. in an alliance and we knew that its soldiers were here to help us, but that didn’t mean that they could do whatever they wanted to us, did it?”

[Baitball Blogger]

1. Another chapter in the woke American version of history.

Which is to say, De Santis and his ilk will move to ban it from their approved list.

[OhNo-Really]

8. In Depth 2018 reporting.

U.S. Marine Corps Sexual Violence on Okinawa

When it came to rape cases, the indictment rate was only 3% between 2007 and 2016 compared to a national average in Japan of 46.9% between 2005 and 2014. The newspaper attributed the low rate to a 1953 deal between the U.S. and Japan in which Japan apparently agreed only to take jurisdiction in cases “judged to be highly significant to Japan.”

https://apjjf.org/2018/03/Mitchell.html

[Baitball Blogger]

21. This might explain why some of our conservative

Retired military sometimes act so privileged,
. They know that we looked the other way on terrible conduct overseas. And all this thank you for your service has gone to their head. They have lost their humility, It’s a big problem in Florida, where we have a large population of military retirees. When they serve on hoa boards, things can divert into good ole boy machinations very quickly.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[3auld6phart]

4. Damn cruel

I would imagine other U.N. troops and
Officers took part in this form of slavery.
Bloody shame on all.most especially on
South Korean government for allowing
this to go on for so long. Probably stilll.
Just keeping a lid on it.

[rockfordfile]

3. South Korean gov did this.

[Ferrets are Cool]

5. "THEY" will want this scrubbed from history also.

[2naSalit]

6. Still going on...

In a little different form but still ongoing. I won't go into detail but the first hand accounts I heard cleared up any questions I might have had about the subject. And from young women alive today, they will tell you it is still happening.

[Bo Zarts]

7. Bordel Militaire de Campagne - BMCs (mobile brothels)

The French Foreign Legion institutionalized prostitution in WW-1. That is well documented.

But the official use of BMCs continued, and during the Legion's disasterous garrison of Dien Bien Phu (Vietnam), or "Hell in a Very Small Place" as Bernard Fall called it, the army's BMC parked its caravans on the banks of the river that ran through the beseiged camp.

Bernard Fall and Jules Roy both wrote of the BMCs in their histories of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. But there was no mention of the fate of the women when the gamble failed, and 10,000 French soldiers were marched (or carried) off to prisons on May 7, 1954, in what became North Vietnam.

[jmowreader]

9. I served in Korea from 1984 to 1985

They didn't have these "special comfort women units" then, but the Army almost encouraged you to partake in the services of prostitutes.

On my very first day in Korea, I had flown into Kimpo Airport, which is now called "Gimpo." We got picked up on a bus driven by a Korean man who...well, drove like a Korean. (How do Koreans drive? You know those lines they paint on streets? Koreans view them as a mild suggestion.) After a thoroughly harrowing drive we arrived at the Turtle Farm on Camp Coiner and were first given a Threat Briefing. This had three parts.

The first part was to tell us about the North Koreans.
The second part was a VD briefing.
And then they sent all the women in the room to the snack bar and told us the prices for the various sexual services you could purchase outside of every US compound in the country. They even gave us directions to the red light district in Seoul. And of course, just as soon as the briefing ended four or five of our number went right there. Don't look at me, man; in the entire time I was there I didn't buy sex even once.

I could tell you some harrowing stories about my time as a company VD NCO, but perhaps this isn't the right time for that.

(What is a turtle farm? I CAN tell you about that. The Replacement Detachment in Seoul is, or at least WAS - the current turtle farm is in Pyongtaek - one office building and a barracks that we lived in while waiting to go to our units. The office building has two doors. One is marked "inprocessing" and the other "outprocessing." Each of the outlying units had its own building that you would go to if you were not going to be serving in Seoul, and some of them were...interesting; the one that belonged to 2nd Infantry Division had a sign next to the door that read "it is not our job to get you out of your assignment to the 2nd D; it is our job to process you into the 2nd D." Okay. So the main building, the one everyone had to go to and where we all learned how much it was going to cost you to buy sex, had two doors. One is marked Inprocessing and it's where you go when you first arrive. The other is marked Outprocessing and it's where you go on your way to Fort Hood. The two doors are less than 100 feet apart and it takes you a full year to go from one door to the other. The only thing on earth that moves that slowly is a turtle.)

[malaise]

10. Duh! The US had military bases in the Caribbean during WW2

The Mighty Sparrow wrote this classic after the base was closed in Trinidad

[Just A Box Of Rain]

11. As a personal side note, I had the great pleasure to see The Mighty Sparrow in concert

at Royce Hall UCLA, back in 2002. He lived up to his stature as a calypso legend.

Also on the bill were the Trinidadian calypso greats Calypso Rose and David Rudder.

Quite an event.

[malaise]

12. That must have been fabulous - seen him live a few times

He lives in New York but hasn’t ‘t been well. Calypso Rose also lives in New York. The great Rudder announced last weekend that he has early stage Parkinson’s. That hit me hard.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

13. I'm sorry to learn of David Rudder's early Parkinson's. I was unaware.

That was the only opportunity I had to see any of these great artists, but that concert was a real treat.

[malaise]

14. Three great performers

Must have been lovely

Here’s a link re David Rudder- the region is in shock
http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/david-rudder-announces-parkinsons-diagnosis-6.2.1688337.d05d0ed623

[Just A Box Of Rain]

15. A very fond memory.

Thanks for the link to the article on David Rudder. I'm losing a good friend to advancing Parkinson's at the moment. Such an invidious illness.

I wish him the best.

[malaise]

16. Lost a close family friend a few years ago

It’s horrible for everyone but mostly for the person with it.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

17. My friend was one of the most vibrant and active people I've ever known.

Her large garden around her home was her passion. But she'd begun falling. I--being big, strong, and highly willing to help--would go over in the middle of the night to get her up off the floor, as her elderly husband was unable to do so.

The last time she fell she fractured her hip. Not bad enough to need a hip replacement, but bad enough that the family decided it was time to give up their gracious home and move into assisted living.

The only mixed "blessing" has been that she's been experiencing creeping dementia along with the Parkinson's, so losing her home/garden has been far less painful for her than it would have been otherwise.

A strange sort of "gift" to be sure. Life can be complicated.

[malaise]

18. Same with our family friend

It was hard to watch given his vibrant life. He also had dementia - was in his late 80s.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

19. I'm sorry. It is very hard to watch. I wish we both didn't know that.

Hopefully David Rudder's illness progresses slowly.

[egduj]

20. When i was in the military, this was one of the selling points...

to get the young men to volunteer for pacific-region overseas tours. Osan Air Field and Clark Air Field (Philippines) particularly.