This article examines the making of two distinct groups of women*'prostituted women' and migrant wives*into citizen-subjects in South Korea at the turn of the twenty-first century. Though the lives of these women barely intersect, they become visible in the public sphere as victims of sexual violence and therefore in urgent need of state protection. Defined as such, prostitutes and migrant wives come under the gaze of the state and civil society through anti-prostitution policy and multiculturalism policy respectively. I suggest that, through the language of protection, the South Korean state and civil society seek to redefine moral order and national borders through the regulation of a woman's body and sexuality. For prostituted women, leaving prostitution restores them to the embrace of the nation as good Korean daughters. For immigrant wives, reproduction is their gendered path to citizenship as good Korean mothers. Through an analysis of the gender ideals reproduced in these policies, and their repercussions on the lives of women, I tease out the gendering of citizenship and nationhood and its tensions with the universalist ideals of gender equality and human rights in the modernising project in South Korea.
This article extends Sally Merry's idea of "vernacularization" of human rights by examining its paradoxical effects. Specifically, it traces how international norms about trafficking in persons and women's human rights become vernacularized into anti-prostitution policies in South Korea, and how such universal ideas facilitate the re-articulation of authentic national culture and Korean womanhood. As nationhood is gendered with reference to women's sexuality, the analysis shows how the struggle to localize women's human rights in anti-prostitution reforms may challenge the state and propel reforms but also corroborate state nation-building. As such, it contributes to developing culturally and historically specific knowledge about the idea of human rights in relation to gender and the nation.
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