An intimate portrait of the postwar lives of Korean children and
women
Korean children and women are the forgotten population of a forgotten
war. Yet during and after the Korean War, they were central to the
projection of US military, cultural, and political dominance. Framed by
War examines how the Korean orphan, GI baby, adoptee, birth mother,
prostitute, and bride emerged at the heart of empire. Strained
embodiments of war, they brought Americans into Korea and Koreans into
America in ways that defined, and at times defied, US empire in the
Pacific.
What unfolded in Korea set the stage for US postwar power in the second
half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. American
destruction and humanitarianism, violence and care played out upon the
bodies of Korean children and women. Framed by War traces the arc of
intimate relations that served as these foundations. To suture a
fragmented past, Susie Woo looks to US and South Korean government
documents and military correspondence; US aid organization records;
Korean orphanage registers; US and South Korean newspapers and
magazines; and photographs, interviews, films, and performances.
Integrating history with visual and cultural analysis, Woo chronicles
how Americans went from knowing very little about Koreans to making them
family, and how Korean children and women who did not choose war found
ways to navigate its aftermath in South Korea, the United States, and
spaces in between.
