Labour of love: Filipina entertainer's narratives of romance and relationships with GIs in US Military camp towns in Korea

There is now a burgeoning literature on the interrelated subjects of sex tourism, militarized prostitution and trafficked “entertainers” in Asia. Despite the central importance that many women who are the subjects of this literature place on relationships, romance and sometimes even love in narrating their employment experiences and discussing their lives very little of such detail figures in this literature. This article explores the experiences of romance and relationships for trafficked Filipina “entertainers” and the meanings these women attach to such experiences through a discussion of narratives of women living and working in two US military club areas in South Korea. Although relationships that circumvent or contradict client-worker norms are given scant attention in the literature on both sex tourism and militarized prostitution, research with these women in Korea reveals that they are often preoccupied with the tensions between work and relationships, the way relationships are both expressed and constrained by their status as trafficked entertainers, and negotiations over their financial and emotional security.