Anti‐Prostitution Politics and Militarised Urban Prosperity in the US Military Camptown in Korea

Abstract

Camptowns (kijich'on) are neighbourhoods located near US military bases in Korea that are organised around the military service economy, especially the sex industry. While most studies of Korean camptowns point to the US military's involvement with the camptown sex industry as evidence of US military imperialism, this article argues that since 2004 anti‐prostitution polices have been essential to stabilising American militarisation in Korea's urban realm. Focusing on Anjeong‐ri, a camptown located adjacent to Camp Humphreys, the largest overseas US military base on the planet, the article examines how Korean development actors invoke hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, and class to distance the camptown from the sex industry and to construct the camptown as a space of militarised urban prosperity. By showing emerging ways in which US military empire works through anti‐prostitution policies and through the urban system in Korea, the argument poses a challenge to anti‐prostitution feminists who have long located evidence of American empire in the sex industry itself.