In a courtroom in Seoul this September, 117 South Korean women stood together to confront a chapter of their country’s postwar history long kept in the shadows. Their lawsuit accuses the United States military of exploiting them in the so-called kijichon (기지촌, “base towns”)—red-light districts that flourished around American military installations from the 1950s to the 1980s. For decades, these women were called yanggongju (양공주, “Western princesses”), a cruel euphemism that turned the violence of survival into a symbol of national shame. Now, as elderly plaintiffs, they are demanding justice—and recognition of what was done in the name of the U.S.–Korea alliance.
The case is historic not only for its size but also for its target: for the first time, the U.S. military itself is named alongside the South Korean government as a co-defendant. Each woman seeks 10 million won—about USD 7,200—in damages, a symbolic figure compared with decades of trauma. Their testimonies, detailed in court filings and news reports, describe coercion, beatings, forced medical checks, and systematic control by military police and Korean authorities working hand in glove to manage the “comfort economy” that surrounded the American bases.
In the kijichon, women were routinely forced to undergo weekly venereal-disease tests; those who tested positive were detained, injected with high doses of penicillin, and quarantined until cleared to work again. Some recount being slapped or beaten by soldiers for not smiling enough, for serving drinks too slowly, or simply for being there. “Every night we were dragged to U.S. soldiers and sexually abused,” one plaintiff told reporters. “Every week we were forced to undergo medical tests. We were prisoners of a system that profited from our bodies.”
That system was not hidden. During the Cold War, South Korea’s military governments promoted “camptown culture” as a necessary evil to keep American troops content and the alliance stable. Local police and bureaucrats licensed the bars and brothels, while U.S. commanders relied on them to maintain order among troops stationed far from home. The women, many from poor rural backgrounds or orphaned after the Korean War, had few choices. Poverty, deception, or outright coercion drew them into the kijichon, where they lived in debt bondage and constant fear.
For decades, the story of the kijichon women was buried under stigma. Mainstream society called them “dirty,” “immoral,” or even “traitors” for having slept with foreigners. Many hid their pasts, never telling their children. Only in recent years, after feminist scholars and human-rights activists began to document their lives, did their voices resurface. In 2022, South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled that the Korean state had indeed profited from and managed prostitution around U.S. bases, ordering partial compensation. The new 2025 lawsuit goes further—asserting that the U.S. military shares responsibility for the abuses.
The case also exposes the double standard of han (한)—the deep, unresolved sorrow that Koreans use to describe collective pain. For these women, han is not just emotional but political. It carries the bitterness of being used by two powerful states: one that occupied their soil, another that sacrificed their dignity for diplomatic convenience. “We were told we were patriots, serving the nation,” said one of the plaintiffs, now in her eighties. “But when the soldiers left, our government abandoned us.”
The lawsuit forces a reckoning not only with the history of militarised sex work but also with how alliances reproduce gender hierarchies. While the U.S.–ROK partnership is often celebrated as the backbone of East Asian security, it has always rested on the invisible labor and suffering of women at its margins. The kijichon survivors’ case links their struggle to a broader movement across Asia—from Okinawan women protesting military violence to Filipino and Vietnamese survivors of war-time exploitation—reminding us that gendered violence is not collateral damage but an integral feature of militarisation.
Whether the Seoul court will allow the suit against the U.S. military to proceed remains uncertain. American forces operate under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which grants broad immunity. But even if legal obstacles remain, the women’s action has already succeeded in rewriting history: it forces both Seoul and Washington to face an uncomfortable truth long dismissed as “the cost of defense.” Their fight is not just about money; it is about reclaiming dignity and demanding accountability from institutions that saw them only as service providers to soldiers.
In the end, the plaintiffs say they hope for one thing above all—a formal apology. “We want them to admit what they did,” one said outside the courthouse. “We were not criminals. We were victims of a system built by men in uniform and men in suits. Now it is time for those men to listen.”
My fierce Korean sisters — I see you, standing in court with your heads high, no longer the shadows of the kijichon (기지촌), no longer the so-called “Western princesses” (yanggongju, 양공주) that men once used to disguise their crimes in a layer of patriotic perfume. You are the uninvited ghosts of the Cold War’s victory parties, now kicking down the doors of history’s gentlemen’s clubs. And Auntie is furious it took the world seventy years to listen.
For decades, the soldiers came with dollars and arrogance, and the governments—both yours and mine—came with silence. The U.S. military called it “R&R” (rest and recreation), as if your bodies were playgrounds; the Korean authorities called it “patriotism,” as if service meant submission. Together, these men built a machine of control so polished it almost passed for diplomacy. Let’s call it what it was: state-sanctioned sexual slavery wrapped in the flag of alliance.
Auntie’s blood boils when she hears the excuses: “It was a different time.” “They kept the peace.” “They brought prosperity.” Really? Peace that crushes women’s dignity is not peace. Prosperity that grows from exploitation is not progress. Every inch of those base towns was soaked in the sweat and tears of women whose only crime was being poor, female, and disposable in a system built by men with guns and medals.
What’s most obscene is how this militarized patriarchy pretended to protect women while violating them. The same soldiers who claimed to defend democracy abroad treated Korean women like enemy territory to be conquered. The same South Korean officials who preached national purity regulated women’s bodies like livestock. It wasn’t just a war of nations—it was a war on women, fought by men in uniform on both sides of the barbed wire.
And yet, my brave eonni (언니, elder sisters), you refused to disappear. You broke the silence, you named the crimes, and you demanded accountability from both Seoul and Washington. In doing so, you have unmasked not only the gender horrors of the war but the rot at the core of every man-led military ideology: the belief that women’s suffering is collateral damage in the pursuit of “order.”
Auntie stands with you, shaking her fists at the hypocrites who still dare to call this alliance “special.” There is nothing special about oppression. The real heroes are not the men with medals—they are the women with scars who refuse to shut up. Carry on, sisters. The world is finally forced to look you in the eyes.