Mixed Race Children of US Military Servicemembers Faced Hard Lives In South Korea

Below is a really good read in today’s Korea Herald that I recommend reading in full.  It is about the history of mixed raced children in South Korea fathered by US military servicemembers.  These mixed race kids definitely had a hard life growing up in South Korea.  Of particular interest is the role that Korean brokers played in trafficking women into the sex industry.  It makes me wonder if these were the same brokers who trafficked women to Japanese soldiers during the Japanese colonial period?:

Jang Yeon-hee is searching for her American soldier father, who left Korea while her mother was pregnant with her in the 1960s. (Claire Lee/The Korea Herald)

Jang is one of some 40,000 mixed-race Koreans born in South Korea from 1955-1969, many of whom were born to American soldiers who were temporarily stationed here. Many of the Korean women who gave birth to such mixed-race children were those who were trafficked by Korean brokers to work as prostitutes for the U.S. military.

Many fathers simply went back to the U.S. and never returned. Mothers relinquished their children, as many of them had no financial means to raise them, while suffering from severe social stigmatization for being sex workers. Most of the children were adopted into American families. For those who remained in Korea, like Jang, life was filled with a sense of alienation, racist attacks and longing for her birth parent.  (………)

To this day, Kang doesn’t know if her father died that day or simply decided to leave her mother for good. After her father went missing, Kang’s mother had a number of live-in relationships with American soldiers, who supported her financially.

Her mother soon started working as a dancer for the U.S. military, moving from one base to another. Kang lived in almost every Korean city that had active U.S. military bases, including Dongducheon, Osan, Paju, Pyeongtaek and Uijeongbu. During these years, Kang witnessed many teenage daughters of sex workers being trafficked or forced to work as prostitutes by their mothers’ pimps and brokers.

“Those brokers should still be tracked down now and jailed. … It’s not too late,” she said.  [Korea Herald]

You can read the rest at the link.

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setnaffa
setnaffa
7 years ago

Red Phoenix is just a novel, just fiction, right?

MTB Rider
7 years ago

I have Red Phoenix open right now, just began reading it after many years sitting in my library.

Anyways, I was a fan of the comic Land of the Morning Clam, and the author seems to have left Korea for similar reasons. He got tired of his 6 year old mixed race daughter being hassled and picked on due to Korean Culture. His final strip was him calling the airport for three tickets back to Florida.

I’m glad my kids are Military Brats. My son only went one year to a private school, after that he went to the Casey K-8 School after it was opened. His friend Soo-Ho took a lot of crap as well, even though he was pure Korean, but had lived in England for several years. Pure Blooded, but apparently not pure enough.

ChickenHead
ChickenHead
7 years ago

The lives of abandoned children everywhere are unfortunate.

MTB… as for mixed race chindren with parents…

I have several white (and one black) friend as well as a number of acquaintances with mixed race kids in Korean schools.

My observation is:

If the father is a short-hair high-cheekbone can-do motherfukker and the mother is a confident shyt-together kind of girl, the half-breed kids have no problems at all. They flow seemlessly between Korean and Western culture and language. Their English ability is an envied trait.

If the father is a loser and the mother is a former whhore of some sort, the half-breed kids have all sorts of problems.

There really is no surprise here. These kids would get their azzes beat in any school, any culture, any country… as they are as goofy as their fathers and as skanky as their mothers.

Of course, the majority of western fathers are LBH (losers back home) and the majority of Korean girls who marry them have their own issues… so… well… what can anyone expect?

…and because you all want to know… the black guy is an ultra-charismatic ex-army shyt-together guy with a tiger wife who doesn’t allow smartphones or TV in his house… so his kids read books and play musical instruments and speak 3 languages and have no issues… and likely can beat the azz of anyone who gives them any shyt.

Orphans don’t have such guidance…

…buy my observation is that attitude and behavior is more important than appearance or race.

…just like in the States… no matter how hard people want to blame their own failings (intentional or not) on racism rather than their own actions and attitudes.

setnaffa
setnaffa
7 years ago

Wait. What? You mean it was my fault I turned out this way? That would have been a micro-aggression in certain colleges…

https://twitter.com/campusreform/status/725077081328115712

No, that’s not me. That would make at least two of me and I’m not skinny…

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