7 ms·

A Brutal Sex Trade Built for American Soldiers

92 points by karaokeyoga 3y ago

karaokeyoga 3y ago
https://archive.md/N0fdm https://archive.md/N0fdm
davidktr 3y ago
[flagged]
- spicyusername 3y ago
  "Soonish" at the time scales of current demographic trends is still hundreds, if not thousands, of years for even the most rapidly aging country. And cease to exist is a bit dramatic, certainly populations will decline given the current replacement rates in many westernized countries, but they aren't going to disappear. They will decline to some lower steady state, but nowhere near zero.
- pavlov 3y ago
  South Korea: population of 51.7 million, annual population growth rate -0.2%. Vanishing from the world map isn't quite imminent. They could simply let in 100,000 immigrants to fix the growth rate. I know it's not as simple as that in a society like Korea's, but 100k is perfectly manageable for such a large country. Take primarily young people with some useful level of education. They'll work, learn the language, marry, and start new families that become primarily Korean.
  - istinetz 3y ago
    This -0.2% figure you're citing is hiding rapidly aging population. TFR is 0.8. They'd have to let in about half a million immigrants, every year.
    - throwawaywu 3y ago
      Unless the immigrants adopt Korean culture, then even then, Korea won't exist.
      - zo1 3y ago
        So we should rather be saying that America and Canada and Sweden won't exist?
        908B64B197 3y ago
        > Canada and Sweden Both of these countries now have ethnical enclaves, thanks to multiculturalism. So I'd say yes.
  - axus 3y ago
    Think like a state. No surplus population means that soldiers aren't disposable. No disposable soldiers might lead to vanishing from the world map. According to Google, Russia's rate is -0.4%, this might be the last war they can afford. China didn't end their one-child policy out of a great love for children.
  - FrankyZunim 3y ago
    Where is South Korea supposed to find 100,000 South Koreans to immigrate?
    - ben_w 3y ago
      As I read the suggestion, they don't have to be Korean (not needing to already be the nationality before arriving is generally true for most immigrants). But if they did, and for whatever reason none of those who has emigrated from Korea wanted to go back to the old country, there's a whole extra Korea just on the northern border, and they used to be the same country…
    - pavlov 3y ago
      Like other immigrants around the world, they gradually become Koreans when they work, learn the language, marry, have children, and spend the rest of their lives there. (Of course South Korea's case is very particular because they actually have an enormous reserve of eager potential immigrants who already speak the language, living just across their land border, an hour away from Seoul. The problem is that the other side of the border won't let anyone go.)
      - FrankyZunim 3y ago
        [flagged]
        pavlov 3y ago
        That's a problem of attitude, not genetics. A person born in Korea can become American, British, Swedish, Singaporean, Brazilian, etc. There's no fundamental reason why it wouldn't work the other way if Koreans wanted their society to be open to newcomers. With shrinking population they may want to have that national conversation eventually. Anyway, when you bring in young single people, the primary cultural diffusion is through their eventual children. They will be Korean in a way that the immigrant parent might never personally feel.
        3y ago
  - sjducb 3y ago
    Population decline happens much faster than you intuitively expect. Each generation is slightly smaller than the one before it. Current fertility rate in Korea is 0.78/woman Gen1 = 100 Gen2 = 78 Gen3 = 60 Gen3 = 46
    - istinetz 3y ago
      You need 2 people for a couple. So it would be Gen 1 - 100, Gen 2 - 39, Gen 3 - 16, Gen 4 - 6
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  Speaking off the cuff, I'm not sure that nations can be strictly, or even mostly, defined by their ethnicity. I would need to do some numbers to say anything more formally, but I constantly come back to Israel, Rome, Turkey, even China, where the "nation" had such imminent prestige that myriad ethnicities took on its "nationhood" upon entering/invading/outbreeding even while having zero common parentage with the founders. Did the meta-nations lose something in the process? Sure. Did they endure? I'd say yes. Your nation doesn't necessarily stop because its people are suddenly able to sprout fantastic moustachios. But boy, is that a sore topic. It might actually be the sorest. Great piece, btw.
  - Ancapistani 3y ago
    Japan is the example that immediately comes to mind for me of an ethnically-homogenous nation. My understanding is that someone who isn't ethnically Japanese can never truly "fully assimilate".
    - MilStdJunkie 3y ago
      Yeah. As an industrialized country, you either subsidize childbirth, optimize immigration/naturalization/colonializations, or die. There's no third path that I can think of . . aside from deindustrialization. I guess Japan's working on artificial wombs and lots of robots? That might do the trick, I guess, but man . . what a brutal experiment that would be.
  - dron57 3y ago
    China and Rome for sure. But Turkey is a terrible example of your point. Byzantium (or the Roman empire as they called themselves) was absolutely conquered and replaced by foreigners.
    - MilStdJunkie 3y ago
      Historically, the Turkish nation was ridiculously multi-ethnic though, wasn't it? You have Altai, Chuvash, Kyrgyz, actual Turcomen, who knows how many others. "I'm proud of my Turkish heritage and have been since I obtained it last week". And yeah, Rome died hard in the East. No denying that. But it's worth noting they had, century after century, so many opportunities to ally and rebirth with other peoples - Syrians, Macedonians, Bulgars, Russians, French - only to stab them right in the kidneys at the absolute worst time. Byzantium was like if you took Black Adder and made him into an entire country. Or Cersei Lannister, in the bad years.
- hoseja 3y ago
  Have you considered that perhaps there are way too many people due to the industralization explosion and some negative population growth might be a good thing.
  - snapcaster 3y ago
    First off, this is just your anti-human opinion. "overpopulation" isn't anything approaching a fact. Beyond that though, have you considered the second order effects of population reduction? What happens when the non-productive share of the population becomes 80%? How many things we enjoy in our way of life that are predicated on increasing populations?
    - hoseja 3y ago
      Is it really pro-human to want to live like factory-farmed cattle? Nobody ever seems to engage with the fact that the population shot up, what, 10+ times in the last 200 years.
      - snapcaster 3y ago
        I'll happily engage with the fact. It's great news! Humans are awesome, all my favorite entities are humans! Everything good about my life was provided by me (a human) or another human. Hope it 10x's again!
sky_rw 3y ago
Now do one about the South Korean sex trade in Silicon Valley.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  > her voice quavered recalling women who killed themselves after G.I.s who had taken them as common-law wives subsequently abandoned them and their children. That would explain a lot if the same thing was occurring there but, info?
- lenova 3y ago
  > Now do one about the South Korean sex trade in Silicon Valley. I'm totally out of the loop on this one. What's the backstory?
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    I don't think there's that much backstory to it. Likely just a reference to the large number of thinly veiled sex work that goes on in most cities that people turn a blind eye too. Is easy to comment on something that happened 80 years ago where most of the individuals are dead. Talking about sex work that goes on today in your own city hits a lot closer to home. Few people want to talk about how the prohibition on sex work in the US pushes it into the black market and contributes to sexual slavery, human trafficking, and abuse.
freebee56 3y ago
"It’s a long-buried part of South Korean history" This is factually wrong. The geopolitical driven sex trade is a big issue in common Korean discourse (e.g. newspapers, social media, politics, etc). I would say that it and the historical victimhood native are overemphasized in Korean society. They are a strong country now, no need to ruminate in the past.
- AndyMcConachie 3y ago
  It's only long-buried to Americans. I barely follow South Korean discourse, but I've talked about this with my Korean friends on multiple occassions. It's also not a mystery for Okinawans who regularly protest about American soldiers raping Okinawan women. Nor is it a mystery why Phuket and Bangkok have a giant sex industry now. That sex industry got a huge boost from American soldiers during Vietnam. There was obviously prostitution in Thailand before the Vietnam War, but I've read at least two historical accounts about Thailand during the Vietnam War and they both talked about the influence of American GIs on the sex trade there. Hell. Contemporary Italian historians talk openly about American GIs raping Italian women in WWII. There is no mystery in any of this for the locals. It's just contemporary Americans that are ignorant.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    I don't think anyone educated on the topic really denies it. Rape is a relatively common human phenomenon, especially in Wartime. The parent post made a claim about the emphasis and relevance.
    - Haga 3y ago
      [dead]
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      Re haga: I think there's an important line between expecting something and condoning it. Rape is a predictable result of War for many of the reasons you mentioned, and should be understood as such. To do otherwise would be hiding from reality. However, that doesn't make it a good thing. It is something to be mitigated to the extent possible in the context of other objectives. Referring to complaints as yapping simply minimizes another aspect of the hell that is Warfare.
jamcohen 3y ago
The same thing happened in France when American GIs were stationed there during WWII. I'd recommend "What Soldiers Do" by Mary Louise Roberts if you're interested in the details.

92 points by karaokeyoga 3y ago

karaokeyoga 3y ago

https://archive.md/N0fdm https://archive.md/N0fdm

davidktr 3y ago

[flagged]

spicyusername 3y ago
"Soonish" at the time scales of current demographic trends is still hundreds, if not thousands, of years for even the most rapidly aging country. And cease to exist is a bit dramatic, certainly populations will decline given the current replacement rates in many westernized countries, but they aren't going to disappear. They will decline to some lower steady state, but nowhere near zero.
pavlov 3y ago
South Korea: population of 51.7 million, annual population growth rate -0.2%. Vanishing from the world map isn't quite imminent. They could simply let in 100,000 immigrants to fix the growth rate. I know it's not as simple as that in a society like Korea's, but 100k is perfectly manageable for such a large country. Take primarily young people with some useful level of education. They'll work, learn the language, marry, and start new families that become primarily Korean.
- istinetz 3y ago
  This -0.2% figure you're citing is hiding rapidly aging population. TFR is 0.8. They'd have to let in about half a million immigrants, every year.
  - throwawaywu 3y ago
    Unless the immigrants adopt Korean culture, then even then, Korea won't exist.
    - zo1 3y ago
      So we should rather be saying that America and Canada and Sweden won't exist?
      - 908B64B197 3y ago
        > Canada and Sweden Both of these countries now have ethnical enclaves, thanks to multiculturalism. So I'd say yes.
- axus 3y ago
  Think like a state. No surplus population means that soldiers aren't disposable. No disposable soldiers might lead to vanishing from the world map. According to Google, Russia's rate is -0.4%, this might be the last war they can afford. China didn't end their one-child policy out of a great love for children.
- FrankyZunim 3y ago
  Where is South Korea supposed to find 100,000 South Koreans to immigrate?
  - ben_w 3y ago
    As I read the suggestion, they don't have to be Korean (not needing to already be the nationality before arriving is generally true for most immigrants). But if they did, and for whatever reason none of those who has emigrated from Korea wanted to go back to the old country, there's a whole extra Korea just on the northern border, and they used to be the same country…
  - pavlov 3y ago
    Like other immigrants around the world, they gradually become Koreans when they work, learn the language, marry, have children, and spend the rest of their lives there. (Of course South Korea's case is very particular because they actually have an enormous reserve of eager potential immigrants who already speak the language, living just across their land border, an hour away from Seoul. The problem is that the other side of the border won't let anyone go.)
    - FrankyZunim 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - pavlov 3y ago
        That's a problem of attitude, not genetics. A person born in Korea can become American, British, Swedish, Singaporean, Brazilian, etc. There's no fundamental reason why it wouldn't work the other way if Koreans wanted their society to be open to newcomers. With shrinking population they may want to have that national conversation eventually. Anyway, when you bring in young single people, the primary cultural diffusion is through their eventual children. They will be Korean in a way that the immigrant parent might never personally feel.
        3y ago
- sjducb 3y ago
  Population decline happens much faster than you intuitively expect. Each generation is slightly smaller than the one before it. Current fertility rate in Korea is 0.78/woman Gen1 = 100 Gen2 = 78 Gen3 = 60 Gen3 = 46
  - istinetz 3y ago
    You need 2 people for a couple. So it would be Gen 1 - 100, Gen 2 - 39, Gen 3 - 16, Gen 4 - 6
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Speaking off the cuff, I'm not sure that nations can be strictly, or even mostly, defined by their ethnicity. I would need to do some numbers to say anything more formally, but I constantly come back to Israel, Rome, Turkey, even China, where the "nation" had such imminent prestige that myriad ethnicities took on its "nationhood" upon entering/invading/outbreeding even while having zero common parentage with the founders. Did the meta-nations lose something in the process? Sure. Did they endure? I'd say yes. Your nation doesn't necessarily stop because its people are suddenly able to sprout fantastic moustachios. But boy, is that a sore topic. It might actually be the sorest. Great piece, btw.
- Ancapistani 3y ago
  Japan is the example that immediately comes to mind for me of an ethnically-homogenous nation. My understanding is that someone who isn't ethnically Japanese can never truly "fully assimilate".
  - MilStdJunkie 3y ago
    Yeah. As an industrialized country, you either subsidize childbirth, optimize immigration/naturalization/colonializations, or die. There's no third path that I can think of . . aside from deindustrialization. I guess Japan's working on artificial wombs and lots of robots? That might do the trick, I guess, but man . . what a brutal experiment that would be.
- dron57 3y ago
  China and Rome for sure. But Turkey is a terrible example of your point. Byzantium (or the Roman empire as they called themselves) was absolutely conquered and replaced by foreigners.
  - MilStdJunkie 3y ago
    Historically, the Turkish nation was ridiculously multi-ethnic though, wasn't it? You have Altai, Chuvash, Kyrgyz, actual Turcomen, who knows how many others. "I'm proud of my Turkish heritage and have been since I obtained it last week". And yeah, Rome died hard in the East. No denying that. But it's worth noting they had, century after century, so many opportunities to ally and rebirth with other peoples - Syrians, Macedonians, Bulgars, Russians, French - only to stab them right in the kidneys at the absolute worst time. Byzantium was like if you took Black Adder and made him into an entire country. Or Cersei Lannister, in the bad years.
hoseja 3y ago
Have you considered that perhaps there are way too many people due to the industralization explosion and some negative population growth might be a good thing.
- snapcaster 3y ago
  First off, this is just your anti-human opinion. "overpopulation" isn't anything approaching a fact. Beyond that though, have you considered the second order effects of population reduction? What happens when the non-productive share of the population becomes 80%? How many things we enjoy in our way of life that are predicated on increasing populations?
  - hoseja 3y ago
    Is it really pro-human to want to live like factory-farmed cattle? Nobody ever seems to engage with the fact that the population shot up, what, 10+ times in the last 200 years.
    - snapcaster 3y ago
      I'll happily engage with the fact. It's great news! Humans are awesome, all my favorite entities are humans! Everything good about my life was provided by me (a human) or another human. Hope it 10x's again!

sky_rw 3y ago

Now do one about the South Korean sex trade in Silicon Valley.

yieldcrv 3y ago
> her voice quavered recalling women who killed themselves after G.I.s who had taken them as common-law wives subsequently abandoned them and their children. That would explain a lot if the same thing was occurring there but, info?
lenova 3y ago
> Now do one about the South Korean sex trade in Silicon Valley. I'm totally out of the loop on this one. What's the backstory?
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I don't think there's that much backstory to it. Likely just a reference to the large number of thinly veiled sex work that goes on in most cities that people turn a blind eye too. Is easy to comment on something that happened 80 years ago where most of the individuals are dead. Talking about sex work that goes on today in your own city hits a lot closer to home. Few people want to talk about how the prohibition on sex work in the US pushes it into the black market and contributes to sexual slavery, human trafficking, and abuse.

freebee56 3y ago

"It’s a long-buried part of South Korean history" This is factually wrong. The geopolitical driven sex trade is a big issue in common Korean discourse (e.g. newspapers, social media, politics, etc). I would say that it and the historical victimhood native are overemphasized in Korean society. They are a strong country now, no need to ruminate in the past.

AndyMcConachie 3y ago
It's only long-buried to Americans. I barely follow South Korean discourse, but I've talked about this with my Korean friends on multiple occassions. It's also not a mystery for Okinawans who regularly protest about American soldiers raping Okinawan women. Nor is it a mystery why Phuket and Bangkok have a giant sex industry now. That sex industry got a huge boost from American soldiers during Vietnam. There was obviously prostitution in Thailand before the Vietnam War, but I've read at least two historical accounts about Thailand during the Vietnam War and they both talked about the influence of American GIs on the sex trade there. Hell. Contemporary Italian historians talk openly about American GIs raping Italian women in WWII. There is no mystery in any of this for the locals. It's just contemporary Americans that are ignorant.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I don't think anyone educated on the topic really denies it. Rape is a relatively common human phenomenon, especially in Wartime. The parent post made a claim about the emphasis and relevance.
  - Haga 3y ago
    [dead]
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Re haga: I think there's an important line between expecting something and condoning it. Rape is a predictable result of War for many of the reasons you mentioned, and should be understood as such. To do otherwise would be hiding from reality. However, that doesn't make it a good thing. It is something to be mitigated to the extent possible in the context of other objectives. Referring to complaints as yapping simply minimizes another aspect of the hell that is Warfare.

jamcohen 3y ago

The same thing happened in France when American GIs were stationed there during WWII. I'd recommend "What Soldiers Do" by Mary Louise Roberts if you're interested in the details.