Black Market Intimacies: Introducing a Transpacific History of Sex, Money, and War

 Black Market Intimacies: Introducing a Transpacific History of Sex, Money, and War

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Jeongmin Kim’s Black Market Intimacies: The Transpacific Sexual Economy of the Korean War (Stanford University Press, 2026) reframes how we understand the Korean War not only as a military conflict but as a deeply gendered and commercial moment in East Asian history. At its core, the book reveals how illicit exchanges of money and commodities—often tied to sexual encounters between Korean and Japanese women and U.S. soldiers—provided the material foundations of regional economies in Korea and Japan during and after the war. Rather than treating these transactions as marginal “side effects” of war, Kim shows that they were central to the formation of what she calls “U.S. military base capitalism” in post–World War II East Asia.

Kim, an assistant professor of history at the University of Manitoba, challenges the conventional view that black‑market and sexual economies exist outside formal economic and legal structures. Instead, she traces how markets for transactional sex and military‑related goods were tightly interwoven with official military supply chains, currency systems, and occupation policies. Drawing on multilingual archives—Korean, Japanese, English, and U.S. military records—she pieces together a transnational web of everyday transactions: Korean women bringing Camel blankets and whiskey to Seoul markets, Okinawan women trading U.S. military payment certificates, and countless other women who moved between sexual labor and intermediary roles in the circulation of war supplies and currency.

By doing so, Kim moves beyond Cold War archives’ tendency to reduce sexual economies to categories of “prostitution” and “violence.” Her work recovers the lived experiences of women whose labor—both sexual and commercial—was essential to sustaining U.S. military presence and local livelihoods. In this way, Black Market Intimacies offers an “intimate and global” history of the Korean War, one that forces readers to rethink the supposed opposition between “sexual intimacy” and “market economy” under conditions of war and occupation.

The book also speaks to a broader field of scholarship on war economies, gender, and military capitalism. In Europe, several related works explore similar themes of gendered labor, black markets, and military occupation, though usually in different contexts. For example:

• Occupied Women: Gender, Collaboration, and Resistance in the Nazi‑Occupied Territories(ed. Claire Eldridge and Claire Langhamer) examines how women’s bodies and labor were politicized under Nazi occupation.

• The Wages of War: Sex, Money, and the American Occupation of Germany by Maria Höhn looks at the sexual economy around U.S. bases in postwar Germany.

• Love, War, and Circumstance: Women and the Second World War in Europe by Sarah Ansari and Elizabeth Buettner traces how women’s work, intimacy, and survival strategies shaped wartime and postwar economies.

• Military Brothels in the Occupied Soviet Union by Laura J. Hilton and others investigates state‑regulated sexual economies in Eastern Europe during and after WWII.

These European‑focused studies share Kim’s concern with how war and occupation reshape gendered labor markets and intimate relations, even if they do not replicate her transpacific, Korean‑War‑specific frame. Together, they suggest that Black Market Intimacies is part of a growing global conversation about the intimate economies of militarism, one that connects East Asia to wider patterns of war, sex, and capitalism in the twentieth century.

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Davos, Demand, and Desire – Prostitution and the World Economic Forum

 Davos, Demand, and Desire – Prostitution and the World Economic Forum

Every January, the Swiss Alpine town of Davos hosts the World Economic Forum (WEF), a gathering of political leaders, corporate chiefs, and global elites who come to discuss climate change, inequality, and the “future of capitalism.” Yet alongside the official agenda, another economy blooms: the sex‑work market, whose demand surges dramatically whenever the Davos summit opens. From an economic‑history perspective, this pattern is not a scandalous anomaly but a recurring feature of how concentrated wealth, power, and temporary privilege generate short‑run spikes in demand for personal services—including prostitution.

The Davos demand spike

Reports from Swiss and international media show that, during the WEF week, requests for erotic services in Davos can rise by up to 40 times the usual level. One adult‑service platform recorded 79 bookings on the first day of the 2026 forum, compared with an average of about two per day outside the conference. Much of this demand comes from high‑net‑worth attendees—CEOs, politicians, and wealthy individuals—many of whom are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars over a few days on escorts and parties.

Economically, this looks like a classic temporary demand shock: a fixed, small town suddenly flooded with extremely wealthy visitors, each with high disposable income and limited time. In a country where prostitution is legal and regulated, sex workers—professional escorts, students, teachers, and travellers—move into Davos to capture this short‑term rent.

Supply response and labour mobility

The supply side of this market is highly mobile. Sex‑work agencies report a sharp influx of women from across Europe and beyond, including students and professionals who treat the WEF week as a high‑income seasonal job. Some workers wear business attire to blend in with delegates, while others are hired not only for sex but also for companionship, speech‑rehearsal “audiences,” or role‑play scenarios.

From an economic‑history standpoint, this mirrors older patterns of seasonal or event‑driven sex‑work markets around fairs, military camps, and imperial capitals: when elites concentrate in one place, a parallel service economy follows. The difference today is that Davos is explicitly framed as a summit of global responsibility, even as it generates a shadow economy of desire and discretion.

Power, inequality, and the “dirty secrets” of Davos

Commentators have long noted that the same leaders who speak about gender equality and social inclusion at the WEF often patronise sex workers in the hotels and bars of Davos. Critics argue that this exposes a deep hypocrisy: the forum’s official agenda focuses on cooperation and sustainability, while its informal social circuit reinforces hierarchies of money, status, and bodily access.

For an economic‑history reading, Davos prostitution is a visible symptom of inequality and privilege. The demand spike is not random; it reflects the concentration of global decision‑making power in a handful of individuals who can afford to treat sex work as a luxury good. At the same time, the supply side reveals how economic precarity—student debt, low wages, and insecure jobs—pushes some women into high‑risk, high‑reward labour during the WEF week.

What this tells us about global capitalism

In broader economic‑history terms, the Davos‑prostitution nexus illustrates how global summits and financial centres generate shadow markets around them. Just as ports, stock exchanges, and imperial capitals once attracted brothels and gambling dens, today’s hubs of policy and finance attract short‑term, high‑margin services that are rarely mentioned in official communiqués.

The Davos case also highlights the limits of a purely moralistic view of prostitution. Instead of treating the phenomenon as mere vice, an economic‑history lens sees it as an adaptive labour response to extreme inequality, temporary agglomeration of wealth, and the blurred line between business networking and personal indulgence.

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