American Imperial Sovereignty and Militarised Land Dispossession During the Korean War

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the Korean War (1950-53), the American-led United Nations Command requisitioned vast areas of land and property in Korea for the purpose of constructing military infrastructures. Requisitions occurred not only in the war’s combat zone, but also in parts of the country understood by the United States to be under the sovereign control of the Republic of Korea. Many of these requisitions formed the basis of a permanent US military base network in Korea. This article responds to conventional scholarship on militarization and military bases and engages critical conceptions of territory and sovereignty to examine the constellation of forces that made American militarized dispossessions possible during the Korean War. It draws on archival evidence to show that the United States and Korea never reached a bilateral agreement on land or property requisitioning during the war, but that the US military nonetheless wove its own system of requisitioning through a certain conception of Korean sovereignty even in the face of contestation from the Korean government. The US military mobilized Korean forces under its operational control through the UN Command to carry out civilian land expropriations while contending that the Korean soldiers under its control were agents of their own state acting in accordance with domestic law. It then portrayed militarized dispossessions as Korean domestic problems and domestic liabilities. Evidence from the Korean War opens broad questions about the nature of American imperial sovereignty and territory both through and beyond the spatial unit of the military base.