US Aid Campaigns and the Korean Children’s Choir
US Aid Campaigns and the Korean Children’s Choir
This chapter focuses upon US aid efforts spearheaded by nongovernmental agencies in wartime and postwar Korea. It examines the work of the Christian Children’s Fund, the American-Korean Foundation (AKF), and World Vision, among others. The chapter pays special attention to the AKF-sponsored Korean Children’s Choir, which toured fifty American cities in 1954 to raise over $10 million for postwar recovery. While images of war waifs in US media helped Americans imagine Korea in the context of rescue and the choir furthered these scripts, the choristers also helped to reframe Korean children as anti-communists with radical democratizing potential. The singing choristers promoted healing and understanding between Korea and the United States on the heels of the war, and, perhaps inadvertently, helped American audiences who witnessed the performances imagine what it might be like to have Korean children in the United States permanently.
Keywords: war waif, anti-communism, nongovernmental aid agencies, photography, Christian Children’s Fund, American-Korean Foundation, World Vision, Orientalism, Korean Children’s Choir, Korean Orphan Choir
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