Jeongmin Kim

• HIST/ASIA 1420 - Asian Civilizations to 1500
• HIST/ASIA 1430 - Asian Civilizations from 1500
• HIST 3110 - Korea and the Global Cold War 
• HIST 3990 - Global Feminisms
• HIST 4000/7772 - Occupation in post-1945 Asia
• HIST 4070/7820 - "Pachinko": A Global History of the Korean Diaspora

I am a historian of modern Korea with broad interest in global Asia and the US in the world. 

I am currently completing a monograph, Parasite Capitalism: The Transpacific Black Markets and Sexual Economies of the Korean War, 1950-53, on the expansion of US military capitalism in early Cold War Asia through sexual black market economies that formed across the US, Japan and Korea. Parts of this project have appeared in the Radical History Review (2019) and the American Historical Review (2022). 

My second project, Unseemly Military: The Undocumented Workers of US War and Occupation in Cold War Asia is a global labor history of US war and occupation written through the gendered and racialized experiences of local civilians who provided essential, but often undocumented and unrecognized, labor on US overseas bases. 

I teach courses on Korea and East Asian history, Cold War social and labor history, global feminism, and US war and occupation in post-1945 Asia.

• PhD (East Asian Studies), New York University, 2017
• MA (Culture & Gender Studies), Yonsei University, 2006
• BA (Communication), Yonsei University, 2004

Research interests

• Modern Korea and East Asia
• Gender and sexuality
• US war and occupation in Cold War Asia
• History of capitalism
• Social and labor 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

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: Militarism and Capitalism: The Work and Wages of Violence, January 2019): 11-30.

Reviews and commentaries

• 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.
• “What Can We Learn About Anti-Asian Racism and Gender Violence from the History of US Militarism and Overseas Base Workers?” positionspolitics, June 4, 2021.

• 2023-2025 - Insight Development Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
• 2023 - Judith Lee Ridge Prize, Western Association of Women Historians
• 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