ABSTRACT
In nationalist narratives across the globe, the boundary of the nation is frequently imagined to be equivalent to the actual female bodies of the said nation. During the last century, the dream of money to be made in the company of American soldiers and the potential to get married to one of them and leave South Korea. Significant parts of the anti-US base movement that was to emerge with full force after the Yun murder came to be staffed with actors from the minjung faction. In such a way, stories of sexual exploitation and violation of Korean sex workers in the entertainment areas near US bases were typically used as all-too-neat allegories for the suffering of the Korean nation as a whole. The appropriation of the Yun murder proved significant in popularising the image of US soldiers as violent brutes and possible sex offenders on the loose in the remote adult entertainment spaces near their military bases.
