Korean military brides in New York

This article tells the stories of five Korean military brides in the predominantly middle-class neighborhood of Newburgh, New York, focusing on their association with the American military bases in South Korea and their daily struggles in cross-cultural marriages in the United States. It examines the particular contexts in which personal and sexual relations developed between American soldiers and Korean women in the 'camp-towns' or 'GI towns' (kijich'on). It also looks at the ways in which some Korean women employed fraternization as a survival strategy in a war-torn society, and in which they struggled to come to terms with the American mainstream society after their migration to the United States. These life histories provide us with a unique lens through which to explore the unequal power relations between the United States and South Korea within the dialectical framework of militarism, gender and migration.