UCLA

The Korean War (1950-53) marked a turning point for racial diversity in the US armed forces. Not only was it the first conflict the US army was racially integrated, but it was also the first time the US created and incorporated a standing group of foreign soldiers into its ranks—the Korean Augmentation Troops to the US Army (KATUSA). Since 1950, these South Korean soldiers in American uniform have gained common acclaim from the US and Republic of Korea (ROK) militaries for contributing to the Cold War containment agenda and strengthening Korean national security. Today, KATUSA soldiers are touted as a touchstone of this military alliance, “blood brothers” who account for ten percent of US troops in Korea and symbolize the unwavering strength and integrity of US-ROK alliance.

By contrast, “Between Empire and Nation” questions the nation-centric and imperialist narratives that celebrate “racial integration” and “fraternal alliance” in the KATUSA program. Instead, it focuses on the raced and gendered politics of difference integral to US-ROK military policies, interrogating why and how KATUSA navigated the racial, gender, and national hierarchies between Korean and American soldiers. Highlighting the key military policies of KATUSA desegregation, tutelage, repatriation, and military ambassadorship, I argue that these nation-building and decolonizing programs were, in practice, neocolonial modes of governance that racialized and emasculated Koreans for their exploitation and expropriation under the US military empire.

This study examines the history of KATUSA and their ambiguous position between US military empire and South Korean nation to reconsider US-ROK relations and modern Korean history post-1945. Bringing to light the intricate ways that the creation and contestation of a system of Korean soldiering under the US military structured the hierarchical logic of US imperialism in the name of Cold War decolonization and nation-building, it reconsiders US military’s nation-building and decolonizing programs in South Korea as a mode of recolonizing governance, produced by imbalance of political power and layered histories of race and gender. This perspective allows us alternative ways to understand South Korea’s modern history by positing colonialism as intrinsic to the course of formation of the modern nation-state. Creating a dialogue between the disciplines of ethnic studies, gender studies, histories of American empire and Korean studies to elucidate a fuller picture of the US-ROK alliance, this interdisciplinary historical interrogation of KATUSA reveals that the intersection of race and gender served as the fulcrum of the hierarchical Cold War relationship between the US and ROK.