From Military Supplies to Wartime Commodities

Bibliographic Data

ID4052977
AuthorsJeong Min Kim
Year2019
Volume2019
Issue133
Pages11-30
Publication date2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueRadical History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-6545 • E-ISSN: 1534-1453
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/01636545-7160041
OpenAlexW2909436208
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited17

This article examines the global and social processes that turned subsidized US war supplies into South Korean black market commodities during the Korean War. The widespread circulation of army supplies to the local black market has been often considered a natural result of the scarcity in the occupied country. Counter to this conventional account, I show how sexual transactions between Korean women and American GIs served as a crucial medium in the circulation process. I conceptualize army supplies as a quasi currency whose exchange value was realized on the black market through the commodification of women's bodies and sexuality. This article situates the black market in wartime Korea at the intersection of close encounters between local women and American GIs, the political economy of sexuality, and a global history of war, base, and empire

Black market · Commodification · Commodity · Currency · Economics · Economy · Empire · Human sexuality · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scarcity · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · European history and politics · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law

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