I wonder what types of 'commercial zones' exist around other military
bases of other countries?
On 11/5/2015 12:32 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Vine writes: "Today, commercial sex zones thrive in tandem with many U.S.
bases around the world, from Baumholder in Germany to Fort Bragg in North
Carolina. Many look much the same, filled with liquor stores, fast-food
outlets, tattoo parlors, bars and clubs, and prostitution in one form or
another."
Many US military bases have a thriving sex industry around them. (photo: AP)
'My Body Was Not Mine, But the US Military's'
By David Vine, Politico
05 November 15
At night in the Songtan camptown outside Osan Air Base in South Korea, I
wandered through streets that were getting louder and more crowded now that
the sun had set. As the night progressed, hip-hop boomed out of bars along
the main pedestrian mall and from second-floor clubs with neon-lit names
like Club Woody’s, Pleasure World, Whisky a-Go-Go and the Hook Up Club. Many
of the bars have stages with stripper poles for women to dance to the flash
of stage lights and blasting music. In other bars, groups of mostly Filipina
women in tight skirts and dresses talked to one another, leaning over the
table as they shot pool. Some were chatting with a handful of GIs, young and
old. Groups of younger GIs walked together through the
red-light-district-meets-pedestrian-mall scene, peering into bars and
considering their options. Bright signs for cheap hotels beckoned. Near a
small food cart, a sign read, “man only massage prince hotel.”
For anyone in the U.S. military, it would have been a familiar sight. As
long as armies have been fighting each other, and long before women were
widely seen on the battlefield, female labor has been essential to the
everyday operation of most militaries. But women haven’t just washed the
laundry, cooked the food and nursed injured troops back to health. Women’s
sex work has long been used to help keep male troops happy—or at least happy
enough to keep working for the military. Today, commercial sex zones thrive
in tandem with many U.S. bases around the world, from Baumholder in Germany
to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Many look much the same, filled with liquor
stores, fast-food outlets, tattoo parlors, bars and clubs, and prostitution
in one form or another.
The problems associated with the sex trade are particularly pronounced in
South Korea, where “camptowns” that surround U.S. bases have become deeply
entrenched in the country’s economy, politics and culture. Dating to the
1945 U.S. occupation of Korea, when GIs casually bought sex with as little
as a cigarette, these camptowns have been at the center of an exploitative
and profoundly disturbing sex industry—one that both displays and reinforces
the military’s attitudes about men, women, power and dominance. In recent
years, exposés and other investigations have shown just how openly
prostitution has operated around American bases, leading the U.S. government
to ban solicitation in the military and the South Korean government to crack
down on the industry. But prostitution has far from disappeared. It has only
grown more secretive and creative in its subterfuge. If you want to know
more about what’s at the root of the military’s struggles with sexual abuse,
look no further than Songtan.
As World War II came to a close, U.S. military leaders in Korea, just like
their counterparts in Germany, worried about the interactions between
American troops and local women. “Americans act as though Koreans were a
conquered nation rather than a liberated people,” wrote the office of the
commanding general. The policy became “hands off Korean women”—but this did
not include women in brothels, dance halls and those working the streets.
Instead, with venereal disease and other communicable infections widespread,
the U.S. military government created a VD Control Section that instituted
regular inspections and treatment for “entertaining girls.” This category
included licensed prostitutes, dancers, “bar girls” and waitresses. Between
May 1947 and July 1948, medical personnel examined almost 15,000 women.
U.S. military authorities occupying Korea after the war took over some of
the “comfort stations” that had been central to the Japanese war machine
since the 19th century. During its conquest of territory across East Asia,
the Japanese military forced hundreds of thousands of women from Korea,
China, Okinawa and rural Japan, and other parts of Asia into sexual slavery,
providing soldiers with “royal gifts” from the emperor. With the assistance
of Korean officials, U.S. authorities continued the system absent formal
slavery, but under conditions of exceedingly limited choice for the women
involved.
The arrangements were further formalized after the 1950 outbreak of the
Korean War. “The municipal authorities have already issued the approval for
establishing UN comfort stations in return for the Allied Forces’ toil,”
wrote the Pusan Daily. “In a few days, five stations will be set up in the
downtown areas of new and old Masan. The authorities are asking citizens to
give much cooperation in coming days.”
After the signing of the 1953 Korea-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty (still the
legal foundation for U.S. troops’ access to U.S. and Korean bases),
camptowns boomed. In the 1950s alone, 18 new camptowns were created. As the
political scientist and camptown expert Katherine Moon explains, they were
“virtually colonized space where Korean sovereignty was suspended and
replaced by the U.S. military authorities.” The livelihoods of Koreans in
the camptowns were almost completely dependent on GIs’ buying power, and sex
work was a core part of the camptown economy. The camptowns became “deeply
stigmatized twilight zones” known for sex, crime and violence. By 1958,
there were an estimated 300,000 sex workers in a country with an entire
population of just 22 million. More than half worked in camptowns. In the
middle of downtown Seoul, where the Army occupied the 640-acre Yongsan
Garrison originally built by Japanese colonizers, the Itaewon neighborhood
filled with bars and brothels. GIs named it “Hooker Hill.”
“Cohabitating marriage,” resembling European-style colonial concubinage,
also became popular. “Many men have their steadies,” commented one military
chaplain. “Some of them own their girls, complete with hooch [small house]
and furniture. Before leaving Korea, they sell the package to a man who is
just coming in.”
After a military junta seized power in South Korea in a 1961 coup, Korean
officials created legally recognized “special districts” for businesses
catering to U.S. troops and off-limits to Koreans. American military police
could arrest sex workers without health inspection cards, and U.S. doctors
treated women with sexually transmitted diseases at detention centers given
names such as “the monkey house.” In 1965, 85 percent of GIs surveyed
reported having “been with” or “been out with” a prostitute.
Camptowns and prostitution thus became critical parts of a South Korean
economy struggling to emerge from the devastation of war. South Korean
government documents show male officials strategizing to encourage GIs to
spend their money on women in Korea rather than Japan during leave time.
Officials offered classes in basic English and etiquette to encourage women
to sell themselves more effectively and earn more money. “They urged us to
sell as much as possible to the GI’s, praising us as ‘dollar-earning
patriots,’” recounts former sex worker Aeran Kim. “Our government was one
big pimp for the U.S. military.”
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Many US military bases have a thriving sex industry around them. (photo: AP)
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/sex-industry-military-bases-2
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itary-bases-213311 - ixzz3qSasglcn
'My Body Was Not Mine, But the US Military's'
By David Vine, Politico
05 November 15
t night in the Songtan camptown outside Osan Air Base in South Korea, I
wandered through streets that were getting louder and more crowded now that
the sun had set. As the night progressed, hip-hop boomed out of bars along
the main pedestrian mall and from second-floor clubs with neon-lit names
like Club Woody’s, Pleasure World, Whisky a-Go-Go and the Hook Up Club. Many
of the bars have stages with stripper poles for women to dance to the flash
of stage lights and blasting music. In other bars, groups of mostly Filipina
women in tight skirts and dresses talked to one another, leaning over the
table as they shot pool. Some were chatting with a handful of GIs, young and
old. Groups of younger GIs walked together through the
red-light-district-meets-pedestrian-mall scene, peering into bars and
considering their options. Bright signs for cheap hotels beckoned. Near a
small food cart, a sign read, “man only massage prince hotel.”
For anyone in the U.S. military, it would have been a familiar sight. As
long as armies have been fighting each other, and long before women were
widely seen on the battlefield, female labor has been essential to the
everyday operation of most militaries. But women haven’t just washed the
laundry, cooked the food and nursed injured troops back to health. Women’s
sex work has long been used to help keep male troops happy—or at least happy
enough to keep working for the military. Today, commercial sex zones thrive
in tandem with many U.S. bases around the world, from Baumholder in Germany
to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Many look much the same, filled with liquor
stores, fast-food outlets, tattoo parlors, bars and clubs, and prostitution
in one form or another.
The problems associated with the sex trade are particularly pronounced in
South Korea, where “camptowns” that surround U.S. bases have become deeply
entrenched in the country’s economy, politics and culture. Dating to the
1945 U.S. occupation of Korea, when GIs casually bought sex with as little
as a cigarette, these camptowns have been at the center of an exploitative
and profoundly disturbing sex industry—one that both displays and reinforces
the military’s attitudes about men, women, power and dominance. In recent
years, exposés and other investigations have shown just how openly
prostitution has operated around American bases, leading the U.S. government
to ban solicitation in the military and the South Korean government to crack
down on the industry. But prostitution has far from disappeared. It has only
grown more secretive and creative in its subterfuge. If you want to know
more about what’s at the root of the military’s struggles with sexual abuse,
look no further than Songtan.
As World War II came to a close, U.S. military leaders in Korea, just like
their counterparts in Germany, worried about the interactions between
American troops and local women. “Americans act as though Koreans were a
conquered nation rather than a liberated people,” wrote the office of the
commanding general. The policy became “hands off Korean women”—but this did
not include women in brothels, dance halls and those working the streets.
Instead, with venereal disease and other communicable infections widespread,
the U.S. military government created a VD Control Section that instituted
regular inspections and treatment for “entertaining girls.” This category
included licensed prostitutes, dancers, “bar girls” and waitresses. Between
May 1947 and July 1948, medical personnel examined almost 15,000 women.
U.S. military authorities occupying Korea after the war took over some of
the “comfort stations” that had been central to the Japanese war machine
since the 19th century. During its conquest of territory across East Asia,
the Japanese military forced hundreds of thousands of women from Korea,
China, Okinawa and rural Japan, and other parts of Asia into sexual slavery,
providing soldiers with “royal gifts” from the emperor. With the assistance
of Korean officials, U.S. authorities continued the system absent formal
slavery, but under conditions of exceedingly limited choice for the women
involved.
The arrangements were further formalized after the 1950 outbreak of the
Korean War. “The municipal authorities have already issued the approval for
establishing UN comfort stations in return for the Allied Forces’ toil,”
wrote the Pusan Daily. “In a few days, five stations will be set up in the
downtown areas of new and old Masan. The authorities are asking citizens to
give much cooperation in coming days.”
After the signing of the 1953 Korea-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty (still the
legal foundation for U.S. troops’ access to U.S. and Korean bases),
camptowns boomed. In the 1950s alone, 18 new camptowns were created. As the
political scientist and camptown expert Katherine Moon explains, they were
“virtually colonized space where Korean sovereignty was suspended and
replaced by the U.S. military authorities.” The livelihoods of Koreans in
the camptowns were almost completely dependent on GIs’ buying power, and sex
work was a core part of the camptown economy. The camptowns became “deeply
stigmatized twilight zones” known for sex, crime and violence. By 1958,
there were an estimated 300,000 sex workers in a country with an entire
population of just 22 million. More than half worked in camptowns. In the
middle of downtown Seoul, where the Army occupied the 640-acre Yongsan
Garrison originally built by Japanese colonizers, the Itaewon neighborhood
filled with bars and brothels. GIs named it “Hooker Hill.”
“Cohabitating marriage,” resembling European-style colonial concubinage,
also became popular. “Many men have their steadies,” commented one military
chaplain. “Some of them own their girls, complete with hooch [small house]
and furniture. Before leaving Korea, they sell the package to a man who is
just coming in.”
After a military junta seized power in South Korea in a 1961 coup, Korean
officials created legally recognized “special districts” for businesses
catering to U.S. troops and off-limits to Koreans. American military police
could arrest sex workers without health inspection cards, and U.S. doctors
treated women with sexually transmitted diseases at detention centers given
names such as “the monkey house.” In 1965, 85 percent of GIs surveyed
reported having “been with” or “been out with” a prostitute.
Camptowns and prostitution thus became critical parts of a South Korean
economy struggling to emerge from the devastation of war. South Korean
government documents show male officials strategizing to encourage GIs to
spend their money on women in Korea rather than Japan during leave time.
Officials offered classes in basic English and etiquette to encourage women
to sell themselves more effectively and earn more money. “They urged us to
sell as much as possible to the GI’s, praising us as ‘dollar-earning
patriots,’” recounts former sex worker Aeran Kim. “Our government was one
big pimp for the U.S. military.”
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
