“The Women Outside” and “Camp Arirang” Films: Anti-Asian Misogyny and War
Week-long streaming of two documentaries and a panel on the U.S. military in Korea, the impact on women, Anti-Asian misogyny, and violence.
Join Third World Newsreel as we view two historical films about the U.S. in Korea — The Women Outside: Korean Women and the US Military and Camp Arirang — and hear from a panel of scholars and activists on Thursday, July 29, 2021, 7 PM ET.
2021 is the 71st anniversary of the Korean War (1950-present), a war that has yet to end as no peace treaty has ever been signed. 28,500 U.S. troops remain in South Korea, on 15 bases along with additional installations. The U.S. military has been in place since the 1950–1953 period, initially to “protect against possible invasion from the North” but now, with a broader mandate to protect US interests in Asia against all, including China. What has been the cost — to the Koreans, to the communities who have been evicted as bases enlarge, to the women who work in the camptowns surrounding the bases — and the related impact on Anti-Asian racism, misogyny, and violence?
Korea is our focus in this program, but the U.S. military has bases in other parts of Asia and the Pacific like The Philippines, Guam, and Okinawa. This military presence is accompanied by a long history of crimes and violence against local communities — and those crimes are mostly protected against prosecution. Another film, Call Her Ganda (2018, PJ Raval), followed the Filipino community’s recent struggle for justice for Jennifer Laude, who was murdered by a U.S. serviceman, shows evidence that the situation is ongoing.
Third World Newsreel invites the public to join Minju Bae, scholar/activist, Emily Yoon, poet, Joyce Kim from Durebang, a women’s organizing and support group in the Korean camptowns, Salonee Bhaman of the Asian American Feminist Collective, and others for a talk about the films, the situation in Korea and Asia and the connections to Anti-Asian misogyny and violence that has resurfaced strongly in this country. At the beginning of the program, we will also show a trailer from a new film about conditions in the Korean military base camptowns.
With your RSVP, you will receive links to the two films, The Women Outside and Camp Arirang available to view between July 26t— 30; and a link to the talk on Thursday, July 29, 2021, 7 PM ET on Zoom.
RSVP: https://the-women-outside-and-camp-arirang-screening-talk.eventbrite.com/?aff=medium
About the films:
The Women Outside: Korean Women and the U.S. Military (60 min,1995, JT Takagi and Hye-Jung Park)
Documenting the lives of women who work in the South Korean military brothels and clubs where over 27,000 women “service” the American soldiers stationed in the most militarized region of the world, the film follows their journeys from the outskirts of Seoul to the inner cities of America.
Camp Arirang (29 min,1995, Diana S. Lee & Grace Yoon-Kung Lee)
A gritty look at the camp towns surrounding U.S. military bases in South Korea, following Yon Ja Kim, a charismatic 50-year-old former sex worker through American Town, a government-subsidized entertainment district for U.S. airforce personnel. Now a missionary devoted to aiding sex workers and running a daycare center for fatherless children, Ms. Kim takes the audience on a journey into her own past.
This program is being presented by Third World Newsreel, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, the Korea Policy Institute, and is co-presented by the Documentary Forum at CCNY.
