Commissioned by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) for the exhibition Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America, Chung’s project USM GLOBAL: tracing the U.S. military global footprint tracks the location and number of U.S. military facilities in about 125 countries and colonies, including unconfirmed and recently closed facilities. This interactive map and the related embroidered work were created largely based on the 2021 data from anthropologist David Vine’s Lists of U.S. Military Bases Abroad, 1776-2021, which tracks the number and location of the U.S. military bases and installations worldwide from 1776. According to Vine, there are currently about 750 U.S. military base sites outside of the 50 states and Washington DC, in around 80 countries and colonies worldwide. Chung crosschecked the list with other sources such as the 2018 Base Structure Report published by the U.S. Department of Defense, and a number of articles investigating U.S. military facilities worldwide. Other articles charting the U.S. military facilities & activities in Sub-Saharan Africa and some of the ongoing conflicts in the continent gave form to her cartographic drawing, Africa in Focus: Refugees, IDPs, LIC Policy, Drone & Air Strikes, and Combat Engagement.

As Chung’s research expanded more in-depth, she has created an online archive called Studying USM GLOBAL. The archive stores Chung’s comprehensive list of tracking and mapping sources, as well as other related research materials. Materials on U.S. military activities in Africa and notable ongoing conflicts are filed under In Focus: AFRICA; those on complex issues in relation to U.S. military bases and the environment in Okinawa, Japan, including Chung’s fieldwork in the archipelago are under In Focus: ASIA PACIFIC; and research data from Chung’s ongoing tracking of the war and humanitarian crisis in Syria since 2012, with additional materials on Iraq and Afghanistan, are under In Focus: SOUTHWEST (the Middle East) & CENTRAL ASIA. Most importantly, interwoven in these findings are projects that track the human cost of war, the most sober component of this online archive that we should all pay attention to.