Tour of Duty (Geomiui Ttang)

Korea 2012, 160 min, English subtitles

For decades, Aunt Bobby, Ms. Insoon Park and Ms. Sungja Ahn earned foreign currency for their homeland working as “Yanggongju” (roughly, bar girls) at a US military base in the north of the South Korean province of Gyeonggi. Now the forces have withdrawn, the huge camp is abandoned and only the three women remain. Tracing their memories, this documentary tells the story of these people who are stigmatized and ostracized by the society they were engaged to serve.

Kim Dong-ryeong (*1977), in her documentary film American Alley, first examined the lives of “bar girls” around US army bases in South Korea. Tour of Duty is her first collaboration with director Park Gyeong-tae. They are currently working on a joint audio-visual project about space, violence and remembrance.