Publications

This section offers a curated selection of materials that shed light on the broader forces that shaped the lives of Korean adoptees from Dongducheon. 
 
Whether you’re an adoptee, researcher, journalist, or someone with a personal connection to this history, these resources are here to support learning, connection, and truth-seeking.
Jung Joon Lee

Korean Quarterly. Author Joon Jung Lee in this interesting analysis of photographic images in modern history examines how post-war-era photos reflect, contradict, and influence the political landscape and social psyche of Korean culture. Shooting for Change also describes how, in the social media age, images created with cellphone and internet technology became powerful tools for state criticism and social protest.

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Vicky Kwon

FIELD, A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism. Siren eun young jung’s Dongducheon Project and Dalo Hyunjoo Kim’s Ppaeppeol Project. Art projects that shed light on yanggongju and gijichon. Literally meaning “Western princess,” yangjongju is a pejorative term referring to Korean sex workers for the US military. Literally meaning “military village,” gijichon delineates villages formed around US military camps in South Korea (hereafter Korea unless specified) during and after the Korean War.

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Tim Shorrock

The New Republic, December 2019 Confronting the ugly legacy of military prostitution in South Korea. Locals call it the Monkey House. The decaying, three-story cement fortress sits among weeds in the wooded, hilly outskirts of Dongducheon, a Korean city of 96,000 that encircles Camp Casey, the closest U.S. military base to North Korea and home to key elements of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry Division.

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Korean Times

Published Aug 12, 2024 Civic groups on Monday urged the northern Gyeonggi city of Dongducheon to immediately halt a plan to demolish a former government-established facility to manage sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The now-defunct Dongducheon STD management center, about 40 kilometers north of Seoul, was set up after the end of the 1950-53 Korean War to manage STDs among sex workers serving U.S. soldiers. It was closed in 1996.

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