A Look at Asian American Studies - Emery McKee - Ryan Caragher - Emma Rohrer - Gabe Velazquez

WAR, WOMEN, & THE WEST

American involvement in World War II and the Korean War were the causes for an influx in Korean migration to the U.S. after

1950. At the end of World War II, the creation of the 38th Parallel by the Soviet Union and the United States divided Korea

into the North and South as we know it today. When the North invaded the South in 1950, it pushed Korea’s civil war into an

international conflict. 23,468 U.S. soldiers were spread around South Korea in an effort to save the South Koreans from a

communist threat, and this argument was used to support the war back in the U.S. After three years of conflict, the war came

to a pause as a result of the Korean Armistice agreement which halted hostile aggression between the North and the South.

Now that U.S. soldiers could return home, many returned back with their Korean spouses. Of the 14,00 Koreans who entered

the U.S. between 1951 and 1964, nearly 84% were the spouses of these American soldiers. As explained by Baik,

“camptowns”, or red light districts, sprung around the American military encampments. As a result, plenty of U.S. soldiers

married Korean women who were involved with these camptowns and brought them back home with them. Generally, there

was an acceptance for these spouses and other immigrants alike. However, the methods used to approve of these new

immigrants were tactical. Only those who were willing to disconnect themselves from their roots were deemed an ideal

immigrant.This is because they did not threaten the anticommunist, heteronormative, and white social order of the U.S. So,

the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in order to take in Koreans and any other immigrant groups who could

help develop and support the U.S. This allowed for the U.S to take in talented individuals from other countries while

upholding the anti-communist and “American” family structures that the country was founded in. Ultimately, this would

cause many Korean immigrants to have their image excluded from the general image of Korean migrants depicted by the

United States of America. If you didn’t fit into this ideal immigrant category, then you didn’t really belong. However, even if

you did, the migration caused by American involvement in Korean conflict was completely ignored.