Sex Among Allies

This study examines and illuminates how the lives of Korean prostitutes in the 1970s served as the invisible underpinnings to US-Korean military policies at the highest level.
For the past 50 years, the easy availability of prostitutes to American servicemen in South Korea has been a matter of policy between the U.S. military and the Korean government. Focusing on the early 1970s, when the Nixon Doctrine threatened a sharp reduction of U.S. military presence in Asia, this book carefully traces the way in which Korean prostitutes were controlled by the United States and the Republic of Korea as part of joint security arrangements.
In a carefully researched study of U.S. military prostitution in Korea, Moon validates Cynthia Enloe's claim that the personal is international. These moving stories tell how the lives of Korean prostitutes in the 1970s served as nearly invisible instruments of U.S.-Korean military policies at the highest level. Moon's innovative case study demonstrates how a Cold War alliance was maintained at the price of these women's personal insecurity and challenges us to reconsider the human costs of international security policies.--J. Ann Tickner