Jeongmin Kim

• HIST/ASIA 1430 - Asian Civilizations from 1500
• HIST 2110 - Commodities and Imperialism in Asia
• HIST 2900 - Korea since 1850
• HIST 3990 - Global Feminisms
• HIST 4000/7772 - Transpacific Labour History
• HIST 4000/7772 - History of Black Markets

Jeongmin Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History. Her research and teaching focuses on the histories of modern Korea and East Asia, the US in the world, gender and sexuality, and militarism and capitalism. She is the author of Black Market Intimacies: The Transpacific Sexual Economy of the Korean War (Stanford University Press, 2026). She has published two articles related to this project in the Radical History Review and American Historical Review.

She is currently working on two book-length projects. Unseemly Military: The Undocumented Workers of US Wars and Occupations in Cold War Asia is a study of the gendered and racialized experiences of local civilians who provided essential labor on US overseas bases. The preliminary research for this project has been supported by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant and the Dave Abrams and Gene Banning Pan Am Research Grant. The other project, “Money’s Military Life” chronicles the use of military scrip by the Japanese and US army forces in Asia Pacific. Through a comparative historical lens, it traces how the limited monetary value of the notes has created and reinforced differing social and labour values of colonial and occupied subjects.

For a full CV, please contact me at jeongmin.kim@umanitoba.ca.

• PhD,  New York University, 2017
• MA, Yonsei University, 2006
• BA, Yonsei University, 2004

Research interests

• Modern Korea and East Asia
• Gender and sexuality
• US wars and occupations
• Capitalism and militarism
• Social and labour history

Research affiliations/groups

• Coordinator, European Labour History Network (ELHN)/Military Labour History Working Group

• Coordinator, Food Matters Research Cluster, UM Institute for the Humanities

Monograph

• Jeongmin Kim, Black Market Intimacies: The Transpacific Sexual Economy of the Korean War (Stanford University Press, 2026). 

Peer-reviewed articles

• “Base Money: U.S. Military Payment Certificates and the Transpacific Sexual Economies of the Korean War, 1950-53,” American Historical Review 127, no. 2 (June 2022): 691–725.
• “From Military Supplies to Wartime Commodities: The Black Market for Sex and Goods during the Korean War, 1950-53,” Radical History Review 133 (January 2019): Militarism and Capitalism: The Work and Wages of Violence, 11-30.

Book chapters

• “Holidays on Duty”: Pan Am’s Military Cooperation Program and Visual Labour of Female Flight Attendants during the Vietnam War,” in (edited volume) Labour History from the Early Modern Period to the Twentieth Century: Imagery and Visuality (under contract with Palgrave Macmillan).

Reviews and commentaries

• Review of Park Jeong-Mi, The State’s Sexuality (University of California Press, 2024), Public Affairs (Dec 2025).  
• H Diplo Article Review of Judd Kinzley, "Wartime Dollars and the Crowning of China's Hog Bristle King: The Dubious Legacies of American Aid, 1938-1949," American Historical Review 127, no. 1 (2022), February 2023.
• “When A Base Leaves: Seeing Military Withdrawal from Local Labor Perspectives,” Commentary Board, Critical Asian Studies, March 1, 2021.

• 2023-2025 - Insight Development Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
• 2023 - Judith Lee Ridge Prize, best article published in the field of history, Western Association of Women Historians (for "Base Money")
• 2017-2019 - Global Perspectives on Society Teaching Fellowship, New York University Shanghai
• 2017 - Journal of Gender & History Graduate Prize, best graduate paper presented at the 17th Triennial Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities, Hofstra University, NY