Abstract

This article examines the post-liberation abolition of the licensed prostitution system (Kōshōsei 公娼制) in South Korea. Drawing on archival materials and discourse analysis, it explores how US military authorities (1945–1948) and Korean political actors in the American zone mobilized the language of moral reform, liberation, and freedom to restructure the governance of women’s sexuality in the emerging South Korean. While the abolition of the Kōshōsei was publicly framed as a necessary step toward decolonization and gender equality, the institutional and rhetorical frameworks often reproduced older patriarchal forms and state control. In particular, the emergence of the category eoptaebu 業態婦 marked a shift in which prostitution was no longer seen as a structural issue but was reconfigured as a matter of individual choice and morality. This liberal reframing displaced the violence of institutionalized prostitution onto the presumed voluntariness of sex workers themselvs. This article argues that the binary of voluntary versus coerced sex work, rooted in this postcolonial liberal discourse, has constrained abolitionist activism and impeded more structural approaches to justice. This study offers a deeper understanding of the persistent logics of gendered exclusion and offers a critical lens for reimagining anti-prostitution politics beyond carceral and moral frameworks.