This study aims to reveal the existence of care elements within Korea's sex industry and to reposition base village/hostess literature within the literary studies' genealogy of ‘care’ by arguing that Korean militarism and industrialization activel...
This study aims to reveal the existence of care elements within Korea's sex industry and to reposition base village/hostess literature within the literary studies' genealogy of ‘care’ by arguing that Korean militarism and industrialization actively utilized and exploited these elements as social capital. From the perspective of existing research, the space of the ‘base village’ has always been regarded as an ‘exceptional’ and ‘special’ place, and the ways in which sex work is depicted have also been fixed in several ways. However, existing perspectives have limitations in fully accounting for all the ways women are exploited within the sex industry. This is because what has always been demanded from and exploited in women within the sex industry has consistently exceeded their bodies and sexuality. Therefore, this paper seeks to identify this unread surplus as ‘care’. Furthermore, it examines how the experience of care within the sex industry prevents women selling sex from escaping structures of exploitation and violence, thereby seeking to expand the spectrum of both care discourse and sex industry discourse.
The structure of this paper is as follows. Chapter 2, Section 1 analyzes the patterns of care inscribed in Son Jang-soon's 『The Korean』 and Park Wan-seo's 『Bare Tree』. It demonstrates that care is not confined to the household but is a form of reproductive labor performed to enhance societal productivity, revealing how diverse forms of social care are increasingly feminized. It demonstrates that women's labor in Korean society has always demanded sexuality, and consequently, the labor assigned to women has occurred in a space where the boundaries between sexualized labor and the sex industry have collapsed. Chapter 2, Section 2 examines reportage and personal accounts related to the sex industry from the 1970s and 1980s. By scrutinizing the ambiguous boundary between sexualized labor and the sex industry, it discusses how women's labor has been fundamentally regarded as distinct from men's labor and how it has been closely intertwined with the sex industry. This reveals how, within a patriarchy where the benefits of care function as a privilege reserved for men, women were required to provide sexualized care as a traditional duty. It examines the ways care is appropriated within the process of fulfilling these care demands.
Chapter 3 examines the structural dynamics whereby care demands under the sex industry's influence lead to exploitation. Section 1 of Chapter 3 explores the meaning of purchasing women's bodies and sexuality in Korean society by examining testimonies from sex sellers and buyers. Purchasing sex is not merely about seeking physical pleasure; it is closely linked to forming exclusive bonds within a homo social context. This stems from the intensifying competitive atmosphere within capitalist society. Within this capitalist culture, men seek to form quick and effective intimacy by purchasing women's bodies, rather than building trust-based intimacy. Chapter 3, Section 2 specifically examines the utility expected from purchasing sex within militarism. Prostitution in base villages, primarily targeting US military men, was mobilized as a resource enabling militaristic defense. It is analyzed as a highly economical diplomatic resource, using the bodies of Korean women to persuade the US Eighth Army not to withdraw its forces from the Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, it analyzes how the base village space, contrary to conventional notions, was not an isolated ‘island’ but a space embodying the continuity of violence across generations and nations. Furthermore, it examines the moments when ‘care’ emerged, enabling the logic of militaristic defense. This primarily took the form of ‘contractual cohabitation’. The community of care and economic exchange fostered within the base village space became a means to address the care deficit among men. Chapter 3, Section 3 reveals that the state exploited care to organize the sex industry and consolidate capitalism. It analyzes how each phase of capitalist and industrial growth was planned to mobilize women's bodies and minds to create effective productive subjects, predominantly male. It observes how the exploitation of women's care within the sex industry gave birth to the urban subject, a process in which the reciprocity of care was severed.
Chapter 4 analyzes the one-on-one relationships within the sex industry setting in greater detail. By examining the intimate relationships between characters in the texts, it explores the multifaceted aspects of care relationships that draw individuals into the sex industry. Section 1 of Chapter 4 argues that, through scenes of care emerging among female sex buyers, the only accessible care available to women at their most vulnerable moments was that provided by pimps within the sex industry. It examines how these women were placed in the periphery of care, vulnerable both within and outside the home. Section 2 of Chapter 4 analyzes the illusion of mutual care shared between women selling sex and men buying sex. Within this relationship, they share the illusion that they can care for and be cared for by each other. Crucially, however, this illusion shatters at the very moment care is most needed. It reveals that this illusion itself becomes a shackle, preventing women from escaping the structures of exploitation and violence inherent in the sex industry.
The significance of this study can be summarized as follows. First, by analyzing how physical and emotional ‘care’ is demanded of women selling sex within the structure of Korea's sex industry, it demonstrated the close organic connection between the sex industry and care.
Second, by examining base village/hostess literature under the lens of ‘care,’ it positioned this literature within literary history analyzed through a care perspective.
Third, through analyzing literary works from the 1960s to 1990s, it contributed to renewing existing narrative interpretations by introducing a reading that recognizes care as demanded within the sex industry. By proposing a reading approach that focuses on the context of intimate, private relationships before reducing novels depicting the sex industry to macro-level or structural contexts, it suggested that the partial, one-to-one care relationships appearing in novels could be a reading approach that disrupts and subverts the overarching theme permeating the entire novel.