Narrating Violence, Negotiating Memory: Analyzing Representations of Militarized Sexual Labor in Post-Colonial Korea

This thesis examines how two groups of Korean women subjected to state-enabled sexual violence—wianbu and kijich’on women—have been represented in literature from the 1950s to the 2020s. It argues that their differing levels of recognition reflect changing geopolitical conditions. Representations of wianbu evolved from marginal figures to central narrators, shaped by the decline of Japanese colonial influence and the rise of survivor activism. In contrast, depictions of kijich’on women have remained limited, often framed by stigma and economic survival, due to the ongoing U.S.–South Korea alliance and camptown systems. The study concludes that collective memory is shaped not only by historical events but by present political conditions that determine which histories of gendered violence are fully acknowledged.