Ethnosexual <i>Otherness</i> and National Building: A Postcolonial Rereading of John 4:1–42 in the Korean Context

This study offers a postcolonial, intersectional rereading of John 4:1–42 that juxtaposes the Johannine encounter of the Samaritan woman with the historical legacy of Korean “comfort women” to illuminate the ethnosexual dynamics of colonial and patriarchal power. Employing an intersectional lens that foregrounds ethnosexuality—how ethnic boundary-making and sexualized stigma mutually constitute regimes of exclusion—the essay proceeds in three steps. First, a historical and discursive analysis of the contested public memory surrounding Korean “comfort women” shows how Japanese colonialism and postcolonial Korean patriarchal nationalism sustain mechanisms of sexualized ethnonational marginalization. Second, a close rereading of the Samaritan woman's dialogue with Jesus exposes how ethnosexual identity and nation-building shape the narrative's power relations. Finally, the essay reflects on the implications of the Samaritan woman's decolonizing agency for understanding the testimony and resilience of formerly enslaved and stigmatized women. The study argues that the Samaritan woman, as an ethnosexual other , enacts a form of decolonizing agency by transforming personal stigma into persuasive public witness, thereby disrupting the communal and imperial structures that seek to silence her. A postcolonial, intersectional reading of John 4 thus uncovers the Gospel's embedded colonial tensions and invites both transformative engagement with contemporary injustices and advocacy for the marginalized in the name of solidarity.