Taking a broad definition of war to include revolution, espionage and postwar militarized societies, this course examines some of the main regional wars in East Asia over the last century and scrutinizes the biographies of some of the extraordinary women – spies, collaborators and 'comfort women' - who played a part in them. The course begins by examining women's troubled relationship with the state, and goes on to question assumptions about patriotism, collaboration and the mobilization of female subjects in wartime. In this course we explore the painful complicity of women in war and occupation societies, as we examine the life of famous Korean aviatrix and collaborator Park Kyong-won, and the 'unbearable heroism' of women in the Vietnam War. We shall examine the roles war, foreign occupation and military service have played in women's political enfranchisement in Japan and in Vietnam. We will also study the gendered politics of state violence in North and South Korea in the 1980s. Using a host of translated primary material, guest lectures, interviews and autobiographies from Vietnam, China, Japan, and South and North Korea, as well as selected film and documentary, this course surveys East Asia's most turbulent years through the lives of women.