Korean Quarterly

Giving Voice to the Korean American Community

Comfort Women

Their voices live on

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Voices of the Korean Comfort Women: History Rewritten from Memories ~ By Chungmoo Choi and Hyunah Yang, ed and trans.

(Routledge Publishers, London, 2023, ISBN #978-1-03-223057-3)

Review by Joanne Rhim Lee (Summer 2024)

(photo on right by Stephen Wunrow)

On August 14, 1991, 67-year-old Hak-sun Kim, a survivor of the Japanese military sexual slavery system (referred to as the comfort women) was the first to publicly share her story.  She told of being taken from her home and forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.  In the decade that followed, hundreds of other former comfort women came forward to share their testimonies, and an international campaign launched and grew in strength and numbers to demand a formal apology from Japan and obtain monetary compensation for the victims.

In 2000, the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery was held in Tokyo, at which nine women bravely shared their testimonies (KQ attended and covered the tribunal in it’s Winter 2001 issue). These nine stories were translated and edited by Chungmoo Choi and Hyunah Yang in their powerful anthology, Voices of the Korean Comfort Women: History Rewritten from Memories.

The Japanese military systematically kidnapped or coerced tens of thousands of mostly teenage girls from countries it occupied before and during World War II; they came from China, the Philippines, Burma, Indonesia, Okinawa, and other areas of the Pacific Rim. Because Korea was a longtime colony of Japan (from approximately 1910 to 1945), the largest number of these women were Korean. Many of them were either killed by the Japanese, or died by suicide during or after the war. Thousands have never come forward, due to the shame that it would bring upon themselves and their families. Thus, it is difficult to know the depths of the horror experienced by these women.

With the help of six translator who were all doctoral students in the East Asian Studies Department at the University of California-Irvine, the editors interviewed nine survivors, meticulously recording their stories over several months in 2000. Since then, all nine women have died, and the number of known former comfort women is dwindling, believed to be less than 10 today.

Editors Choi and Yang include an excellent introduction, providing key context about the history of the sexual slavery system. They include descriptions of the use of systemic rape as a weapon of war in recent history, for example, during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995, the Sudanese Civil War in 2012, and in even more recent conflicts in Nigeria, Myanmar, and Ukraine.

Though awareness of the former comfort women and their story is becoming more widely known, reading what happened to these nine women, in their own words, is shocking. Kap-sun Ch’oe wrote how just as she would try to clean herself up after a Japanese soldier raped her, another one would come in, over and over. Many of the women were denied food and experienced severe malnutrition, and others became addicted to opium to escape the pain.

This destruction of individual lives, as well as the permanent harm to families and communities, is apparent throughout these nine testimonies. After Japan was defeated in World War II, many of the women attempted to return home, but were shunned by their families. Yun-hong An was pregnant when she returned home in 1945, but she was rejected not only by her family, but by her entire community, who spread rumors about her and called her a “tramp” and a “bad girl.” She was forced to give birth to her baby in a barn.  

Several of the women expressed guilt about what happened to them, as if they were to blame for the crimes committed against them. Ok-son Han said, “The story of my hardship, you cannot write in one book, you need several books. I need many more days and nights to talk about it all, and it’s still not enough, more so because of my sin of going as a comfort woman.”

All of the women were taken as teenagers, though one, Sun-man Na (pseudonym), was taken to Japan in 1941 at age 12, along with a paternal aunt. She worked at a comfort station near Hiroshima, where she was repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers. Her story illustrates the many ways that the women tried to resist; she bit the men, tearing parts of their faces off with her teeth. One of these men twisted her arm and broke it, and she lived with a crooked arm for the rest of her life. The interviewer noted that her left arm was bent outward, and she could not raise it above her head.

Kap-sun Ch’oe was more than 80 years old during her interview. She shared that although she was lonely, she was happy that she could finally talk about her painful past. Even amidst the horror and pain of these memories, there is great strength and hope in the stories, and the reader develops appreciation for the women’s courage to share their stories publicly, and that it is a privilege to be able to read them.

Portraits of ordinary elders who survived extraordinary times

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Grandmothers, Our Grandmothers: Remembering the “Comfort Women” of World War II ~ By Seong-won Han

(Tuttle Publishing, North Clarendon/VT, 2023, ISBN #978-0-8048-5663-8)

Review by Joanne Rhim Lee (Summer 2024)

About 20 years ago, artist and historian Seong-won Han’s work on a documentary on war and women led him to the stories of Korean women who survived military sexual slavery by the Japanese, the so-called “comfort women.”  These women were abducted and taken to what the Japanese called “comfort stations” to be repeatedly raped by members of the Japanese Imperial Army. The comfort stations were located throughout their conquered territories in Asia during World War II.

In 2019, he interviewed about a dozen of these women, who were in their 80s and 90s; he also drew portraits of them. Han compiled these drawings, interviews, and accompanying text into the slim but powerful volume Grandmothers, Our Grandmothers:  Remembering the “Comfort Women” of World War II.

Though Han’s book may look like a graphic novel, as much of it is formatted in cartoon-like panels, he treats his interview subjects with great reverence, introducing each halmoni (the Korean term for grandmother) at the beginning of each section with a color portrait and short biography. Some of the women are depicted in simple line drawings and a stark black background, and others are depicted in more detailed paintings with gorgeous backgrounds.

Rather than focusing on the years of terror and violence through which these women suffered, Han’s goal was to focus on their strength and resilience, and the new lives that they created after the war ended. He wanted to write about the women as regular halmonis, mothers, neighbors, and friends, whom readers may have encountered without knowing anything about their past lives.

Despite Han’s desire to focus on the positive, there is no denying the horrendous suffering that these women endured, and he includes their painful but important histories in his narration. For example, one of the interviewees, Gab-soon Choi, was only 15 years old when she was taken by the Japanese Imperial Army to a Japanese base camp in Manchuria, where she suffered unbelievable atrocities. After the war, she walked south to her home, traveling for more than four years, begging for food along the way. She lived the rest of her life alone, until her death in 2015 at the age of 96. Han’s drawing of Choi is breathtakingly beautiful, as she sits looking up at the stars, waiting for the apology from the Japanese government that never came.

Another interviewee, Gun-ja Kim, was born in Pyeongchang in 1926, and at age 17 she was already engaged to be married when she was kidnapped and transported to a Japanese comfort station in China. She attempted to escape many times, but was beaten each time, becoming deaf in one ear. After the war ended, she returned home to her fiancé, but due to the shame, he committed suicide. Her baby daughter also died at only five-months old. She lived with these multiple sources of pain until she died in 2017 at the age of 91. Still, she spent her life advocating for others, and donated her life savings of 100 million won ($760,000) to a Korean foundation to help students pay their tuition. Han uses wide brushstrokes and only four colors to paint Kim, whose eyes twinkle with joy in her portrait.  

Most of Han’s drawings are in a simple comic book style, but he includes about 10 more realistic paintings of the grandmothers at the end of the book. Perhaps they had a say in how he depicted them, as their personalities seem to emerge here, either playfully in a field of flowers, regally in a full length flowing hanbok, or a close up showing gray hair and the deep creases of both hardship and strength. The subject matter is difficult, but the end result is not to be missed.

Exploring the comfort women’s history

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One Left: A novel ~ By Soom Kim (translated by Ju-chan and Bruce Fulton)

(University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2020, ISBN #978-0-29574766-8)

Review by Bill Drucker (Spring 2023)

As the old woman folds her blanket, she hears on the television that the last one has passed.  An onni – sister, a comfort woman.  “No,” the old woman mutters.  “There is still me.”  She cleans her room and walks out to the veranda.  She sees a dead magpie next to her shoes, a gift from her cat, Nabi. 

So begins a fictional story that describes a very real group of war survivors.  One Left is a beautifully-written novel, dedicated to the Korean women who were forcibly drafted into and survived military sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army in the World War II era. The story has emotional honesty and gravitas, and can be a hard read at time.  After just a few chapters, the reader may have to pause.  The narrative tugs at our hearts. 

The quiet, low-key story begins with the description of an old woman who lives in squalor in a depressed neighborhood.  The woman had lived in a tiny apartment for the last five years where her nephew had placed her. Her nephew’s motive is to have an address in an area he believes will get renovated and be more valuable in the near future.

Her self-isolation is due, in part, to the fact that she is afraid of her own past as a so-called “comfort woman,” or military sex slave.  Kidnapped at age 13 by the Japanese military, she survived and went back to Korea after seven years to an unwelcoming family and country. The TV news of the death of the woman assumed to be the last onni makes her want to speak the words “I was a victim too.”

The scenario is realistic, as only a few hundred women in South Korea came forward starting in 1991 to publicly tell their stories of the war crimes committed against them. Many became activists for the cause. The total number of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery is estimated at 170,000 to 200,000; only a fraction of that number survived.  Due to the shame of publicly admitting even forced prostitution, it was always understood by the comfort women’s activist movement that there must be hundreds of survivors who remained anonymous.  

Magpies figure into the story.  In the West, the magpie is a harbinger of bad news.  In Korean culture, it is a national bird, the bearer of good news and luck.  In Korea, magpie songs can mean that guests or good news will arrive soon.  

In the story, the woman’s cat drags a dead magpie to her door, leaving her anxious about what it could mean.  The stray cat’s name is Nabi, Korean for “butterfly.” The butterfly is the symbol for the global human rights and justice movement of the former comfort women and their supporters.

In actuality, there are less than a dozen declared former comfort women alive today in South Korea.  These elderly women have been dying at a faster pace as the years pass. However, the awareness of the global human rights campaign of the former comfort women is alive and growing today, due to the reach of the internet and the many women’s rights and human rights activists who have taken up the cause.   

Their campaign, which began in 1991 and extends to the present day, is to demand justice and reparations from the Japanese for their war crimes against them, including educating the next generation in Japan about the true war history, which is sanitized in Japanese culture. The movement also supports other movements to support women in war.

One Left is Soom Kim’s first novel that has been translated into English. She is a prize-winning writer of nine novels and six collections of short stories.  The book is well-researched, with interviews of the actual comfort women, and reviews of the records compilations.  Award-winning translators Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton are familiar names, with their fluid translations of literary works from Korean to English.

In this a telling of a tragic history from the perspective of one elderly former sex slave who sees herself as “the last one,” Kim revitalizes energy for this irreconcilable injustice in a new generation of readers.  

The U.S. military’s long history of anti-Asian dehumanization

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When soldiers returned home, they brought with them stereotypes that became embedded in American culture | By Marie Myung Ok Lee (Spring 2021 issue)

“Fry ‘em out! Burn ‘em out! Cook ‘em!”

You wouldn’t be faulted for guessing this dialogue is from a new cooking show. But it’s actually from the 1951 documentary, This Is Korea. Directed by distinguished filmmaker John Ford, the documentary was commissioned by the U.S. Navy to show off its military prowess to American audiences. Hollywood hero John Wayne narrates the film, including one scene where he exhorts a U.S. soldier with a flamethrower to “cook ‘em” — the ‘em in this case being Koreans.

Ford’s documentary follows a dark U.S. tradition of treating Asian people as less than human. It’s a particularly insidious form of racism that can be traced back to its imperialist wars and continues today. One has to contemplate the level of dehumanization necessary for a white man to travel to three Asian-owned massage parlors recently, and shoot and kill eight people — six of whom were Asian American women.

Honoring those murdered in Atlanta.

The local police responded to the killing spree by increasing patrols around Asian-owned businesses, adding “there are no known threats at this time.” What’s lost here, however, is an understanding that there is and has been a war raging against Asians in this country, that America’s wars in Asia have injected racism into the country’s veins, and this racism will continue to erupt into violence against innocent Americans repeatedly unless we stop to acknowledge and understand it. As is the case for many minority communities in America, existence is itself a threat.

War involves humans killing other humans. One way governments make this process easier is by otherizing combatants, often by race. It’s no surprise that the tactics of America’s genocidal wars against Native Americans were reprised in the Philippines. During World War II, in Japan, the U.S. used nuclear weapons to vaporize not one, but two cities full of noncombatants. After the Korean war, the slur “gook” was merely recycled to use on the Vietnamese. The quick succession of World War II, Korea, Vietnam also meant that many top brass served in multiple wars in Asia.

This systematic dehumanization was not inadvertent, and it continues to eat away at American society today. The release of This is Korea was just one of the ways the American public has historically been groomed to see Asians as less than human. In 1974, in the Oscar-winning documentary Hearts and Minds, the commander of American military operations during the Vietnam War famously said, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.”

Gender and misogyny enter this mix of intentional psychological warping that the government institutes and rationalizes as one of the necessities of war. For instance, while decrying the sex slavery World War II Japan instituted on its Korean subjects — kidnapping and forcing young girls to serve in military brothels euphemistically known as “comfort stations” — the U.S. military ended up repurposing this system and even some of the same women for U.S. soldiers during the Korean war.

Korea’s war ended in an armistice agreement in 1953, and yet in 1965, 85 percent of GIs surveyed reported having “been with” or “been out with” a prostitute. As scholar Katherine Moon has noted, “military prostitution… has been so commonplace that people rarely stop to think about how and why it is created, sustained, and incorporated into military life and warfare.” These cultural attitudes and stereotypes about Asian women don’t end when a soldier returns home. They become incorporated into American culture such that, like with the nexus of military life and prostitution, the origins of these stereotypes become forgotten and obscured while the stereotypes of hypersexualized Asian women are unforgettable.

Just ask yourself, are these phrases familiar?

“Me so horny.”

“Me love you long time.”

These are both from one movie “about” the war in Vietnam, a place where the U.S. bombed noncombatants and used chemical weapons. The sexual needs of U.S. troops there were so great, as Columbia University professor Lien-Hang T. Nguyen points out, “Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas fumed that ‘both literally and figuratively Saigon has become an American brothel.’” Years later, there was little objection when a sitting U.S. Senator and presidential candidate used the slur “gook.”

Beyond these flashpoints centered in Vietnam, or Atlanta, our entire cultural training tells us to avert our eyes, to not think of murdered Asian men, women, and children as people who love and have dreams and faces. Doing so would disturb our narrative as a great nation, one where white people cannot really do wrong; that there is always an explanation. And even if it’s a bit wonky, illogical, impossible, the lives it has taken don’t really matter because “they” were just faceless Asians working in a disreputable trade or bodies that got in the way of the good war.

In Atlanta, the police captain declared, not even 24 hours after the murders, that the poor killer was just “pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him,” and noted he was trying to thwart “temptation” by removing these Asian bodies from earth. Many interpreted his point as saying, subtly and not so subtly, a white man’s “bad day” is certainly worth more in this calculus than six Asian American women’s lives.

Former comfort women Won Ok Gil and Bok Dong Kim, with the memorial statue to the comfort women statue in the background, at the weekly demonstration in Seoul in 2014. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

Lest white people mentally compartmentalize the Atlanta shooter as a shiftless uneducated type, it is useful to see how this combination of racism and misogyny flourishes and is even rewarded at the highest levels of society. This year, in the hallowed ivy hall of Harvard Law, a professor of contracts law has been busily trying to “prove” a new point about “comfort women” during the Second World War. This scholar professes that the Korean girls as young as 11 and kidnapped as sex slaves for the Japanese, were “just” prostitutes who had signed contracts with brothel owners. The professor, notably, was never able to produce said contracts, and his assertions contradict all testimony from survivors and the Japanese government, which apologized with reparations in 2015.

American soldiers are not only conditioned to believe humans in their host countries are just there to serve them, they are often also legally protected from jurisdictional crime. Take, for example the murder of Geum-i Yun, a 26-year-old waitress who was killed inside of a military camptown in Korea in 1992. An American soldier left her body “naked, bloody, and covered with bruises and contusions — with laundry detergent sprinkled over the crime site… a coke bottle was embedded in Yun’s uterus and the trunk of an umbrella driven 27cm into her rectum.” What’s most chilling is the fact that this kind of act was so “typical” and also unpunishable that it did not make any U.S. media (I only learned of it when I was working at a Korean women’s shelter in Flushing, where the above quote appeared in their 1994 newsletter). This sexual violence wreaked on Asian women otherwise was tacitly accepted and ignored by both the U.S. military and the Asian host country’s governments who depend on the military support. It took a kidnapping and gang rape of a 12-year-old by three U.S. Marines in Okinawa in 1994 to finally stir any interest from the U.S. media.

This tacit acceptance and ignoring of violence against Asians, especially Asian women, adds to the supersaturation of anti-Asian racism. Donald Trump coincidentally used the racist term “China virus” on TV the night of the Atlanta shooting, which also happened to be the anniversary of the Mỹ Lai massacre, when hundreds of unarmed civilian men, women, and children were raped, mutilated, and murdered by American GIs on a rampage. A sluggish police force, puzzlingly more concerned with parsing what the white murderer “means” over individualizing the victims and demanding justice for them, tills the same soil of “Life is cheap in the Orient,” leaving landmines for the next racist person who will detonate it, telling himself we are faceless and replaceable, unlike white people, who are individual, complex, inherently worthy.

Thus, while the well-intentioned Atlanta police assures constituents that they will patrol Asian-owned businesses “for the foreseeable future for the safety and comfort of the community,” these are actually words of propaganda.

The solution is not for each Asian American person to get her own police officer, but for America to openly reexamine a culture that is openly killing a portion of its populace. It is necessary to pull off the veneer of America’s saintliness and self-appointed role as the world’s “good guy” policeman, to expose that Americans already know what the foreseeable future is: More violence against Asian Americans — against me, my family, my friends, people of a community I value and love. And to pretend otherwise, to pretend to be shocked when it happens again, is just lies.

Victory for human rights

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Former comfort women win the right to reparations from Japan for military sexual slavery | By Martha Vickery (Winter 2021 issue)

Former comfort women at the Wednesday demonstration in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

A legal victory was announced in January in favor of a small group of Korean former military sexual slaves in a Korean court, ordering the government of Japan to pay reparations for war crimes suffered by the women when they were captured or lured into forced prostitution by the Japanese military during World War II.

This case is a historic win because it is the first ruling of its kind by a court in South Korea against Japan.  The court rejected the claim by Japan that the case should be dropped based on sovereign immunity, a legal doctrine that allows a state to be immune from a civil suit in foreign courts. It sided with the victims that the immunity rule should not apply  to “systematic crimes against humanity, and war crimes.”

Former comfort women Won Ok Gil and Bok Dong Kim at the weekly demonstration in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2015. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

The January 8 decision ordered Japan to pay the plaintiffs an estimated $100 million won each (about $91,300) as reparations in this case which was filed in 2013 (12 individuals originally filed, of whom five are surviving).  A second case on behalf of a group of 20 former comfort women (four of whom are surviving), was filed in 2016, and is still pending.  In South Korea, there are 16 surviving former comfort women (known as the halmonis, or grandmothers) of the 240 who publicly told their stories starting in the early 1990s.

Former comfort woman Bok Dong Kim in 2015. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

The advocacy organization that maintains the registry and represents the former comfort women’s cause is the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (known as the Korean Council). The suit was filed by the progressive legal and human rights organization Minbyun (Lawyers for a Democratic Society) along with the House of Sharing, an assisted living home and advocacy organization for surviving former comfort women.

A representative of the Korean Council, who goes by the pseudonym Horang, wrote in an email, “We would like to emphasize that the meaning of the ruling lies on that the South Korean court acknowledged the illegal colonization and war crimes of the Japanese military sexual slavery for the first time. Therefore, we believe this ruling serves to restore human rights and dignity for all victims, both deceased and alive.”

One of the protesters at the weekly demonstration holds the hand of former comfort woman Bok Dong Kim. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

Na-Young Lee, Chair of the Board of the Korean Council, said at the 1474th consecutive Wednesday demonstration on behalf of the former comfort women, that the ruling “reminds us of the truth that state immunity can be rejected and that universal human rights can take precedence over agreements between countries in cases of major violations of the International Human Rights Law and the International Humani-tarian Law.  It set a significant precedent that foreign states can be judged by the court if they seriously violate human rights of individuals.”

Lee also noted that the “illegality of Japan’s actions during the colonial period was recognized for the first time by the judicial system” and that by confirming that forcibly mobilizing women into sexual slavery is illegal, the ruling recognizes Japan’s crimes against humanity.

The ruling also empathized with the victims and “implemented judicial justice with a victim-centered approach,” and also “respected the rights of victims to remedy and reparations and accepted the appeal of the victims “whose other measures of remedy have been blocked.” Lee said that the ruling also “affirmed that no existing statement or agreement has solved this issue.”

Former original comfort women statue sits across from the Japanese embassy in Seoul. There are over 40 statues dedicated to comfort women throughout South Korea now and at least ten in the U.S. Stephen Wunrow photo

There was a treaty between South Korea and Japan in 1965 that ostensibly settled claims between South Korea and Japan for a sum of $300 million.  It was later legally established that the claims settled did not include claims of individuals who were forced into slave labor by Japan. Furthermore, Horang noted, the treaty did not cover claims by former military sex slaves, because at that point, the Japanese government had not acknowledged that it had ever enslaved women into military forced prostitution.

A more recent 2015 deal by conservative President Geun-hye Park with Japan, which claimed to settle outstanding war issues between Korea and Japan failed in terms of public buy-in, in part because it was vehemently rejected by the former comfort women.  Under that agreement, Japan paid $1 billion yen (about $8.3 million) to set up a foundation to support the survivors. The former comfort women, represented by the Korean Council, publicized that it was settled by Park without input from the victims.  It was suggested in the media that Park had sold out the survivors’ dignity in exchange for short-term diplomatic and geopolitical gain.

The comfort woman statue in Seoul is clothed by supporters during the weekly Wednesday demonstration in Seoul. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

Immediately after the court decision, the Japanese government rejected it, arguing that the Korean government had no right to prosecute, citing state immunity.  The Korean Council has kept the story of the comfort women alive through various activites: Speaking tours by the surviving women, and invitations for youth to learn about advocacy and participate in it.  It has also appealed to the public through its weekly public demonstrations in front of the Japanese embassy (the longest running weekly demonstration in history), and through its War and Women’s Rights Museum in Seoul.

Horang explained that the movement to clarify legal responsibility of the Japanese government for the war crimes of Japanese military sexual slavery began in early 1990s.  Shortly after the first former comfort woman Hak-soon Kim came forward in 1991, several cases were filed in Japan and the U.S.  At that time Japan also argued for immunity, she said.

The reparations money, if and when the Japanese government pays it, will go to the surviving women or to successors (named by the plaintiffs in the event of their death).  If Japan does not comply with the ruling, Horang wrote, “a separate process would take place for execution of the ruling. Therefore, we urge Japan to respect and comply with the ruling to restore justice and dignity for victims.

To educate about this ruling, the Korean Council has informational images, videos, and newsletters, and organized a series of forums to discuss the implications of the ruling.  In late February, the group will hold an international symposium to educate about the case and its meaning to international human rights.

The most important achievement of this ruling, said Lee, is that it “paved the way for restoration of victims’ honor and dignity.”  In terms of the law, and the international community,  “it recognized that Japanese military ‘comfort women’ victims are not helpless victims who are socially excluded, but proud agents with rights guaranteed in the Constitution. 

Editor’s note: This story was compiled with answers to an emailed questionnaire to the Korean Council, along with information from the Council’s press releases, and an English language story by Yonhap News filed January 8, and headlined “‘Comfort Women’ win first legal victory against Tokyo in wartime sex slavery case.”  Horang (“Tiger” in Korean) wrote as explanation for her request to use a pseudonym: “Activists in Korea, especially the ones working for sexual violence issues, use nicknames to protect their identities against backlash.” 

Former comfort women Won Ok Gil and Bok Dong Kim, with the memorial statue to the comfort women statue in the background, at the weekly demonstration in Seoul in 2014. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

Remembering Bok Dong Kim

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Former ‘comfort woman’ passes away (1926 – 2019) | By Stephen Wunrow (Winter 2019 issue)

Comfort Women: Former comfort woman Kim Bok Dong at the weekly demonstration in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea
Bok Dong Kim (center) at the weekly demonstration (#1100) in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Photo by Stephen Wunrow
Comfort Women: Former comfort woman Kim Bok Dong at the weekly demonstration in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea. A poster of a butterfly (sympol of the Comfort Women) with an image of Kang Il Chul who passed away in 2017.
Bok Dong Kim at the weekly Wednesday vigil and protest in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. A poster of a butterfly (the symbol of the former comfort women) with the image of Il Chul Kang who passed away in 2017. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

Bok Dong Kim, one of the surviving ‘comfort women,’ passed away January 28, 2019, at age 93, in Seoul, Korea.

Bok Dong Kim was a victim of sexual slavery under the Japanese military during WWII. She was 14 years old when she was forcibly taken to China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, wherever the Japanese soldiers invaded a new territory.

She began as an activist in 1992, giving her testimony and demanding justice and dignity to ‘comfort women.’ She was always at the forefront of the Wednesday Demonstrations (in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul) and travelled all over the world to spread her inspiration to other victims of war crimes and sexual violence.

She gave her entire life’s savings to create a fund, the ‘Kim Bok Dong Scholarship Fund.’ Her last wish at her deathbed was to ‘get a sincere apology from Abe’ (Prime Minister of Japan).”

Comfort Women: Former comfort woman Kim Bok Dong at the weekly demonstration in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea, recenly passed away.
Bok Dong Kim at the weekly demonstration (#1100) in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

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Comfort women history

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White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht

(G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2017, ISBN #978-0735-2144-39)

Review by Aidan Ma   (Fall 2019 issue)

White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht

In White Chrysanthemum, author Mary Lynn Bracht tells one woman’s story, and incorporates the devastating history of modern Korea. This novel is emotional and imbued with historical details.

Bracht gives the reader an insight into World War II in Asia as she follows the lives of two Korean sisters separated during that time.  The novel begins from the point of view of the eldest sister Hana during the summer of 1943 on Jeju Island.  The novel continues to alternate between Hana’s and Emi’s perspectives so the reader can see the story through the two characters’ eyes.

Hana knows nothing beyond her life under Japanese control.  She is forced to speak Japanese and is educated in Japanese history. Korean, her native tongue, is forbidden.  She follows in her mother’s footsteps and becomes a haenyeo, a woman who free-dives for abalone and other sea creatures, and she can enjoy freedom of movement that is not available to most Koreans.

Hana, as an only child, once yearned for a sibling to spend time with.  Her wish was finally granted when her little sister Emi was born. On that day, Hana swore to protect Emi at all costs because it was her responsibility now as a big sister. Hana is forced to act upon her pledge when Hana saves Emi from being taken by a Japanese soldier. While doing so, she is captured and shipped to Manchuria.  There she is forced to become a comfort woman in a Japanese military brothel.

Although Hana is in pain, she is glad that her innocent sister is not in her grim situation.  Hana remembers she is a haenyeo, women of strength, and vows to find her way home to her family.  She tries to escape many times but without any luck.

Hana’s gloomy story is intercut with Emi’s narrative taking place on Jeju Island and in Seoul in 2011. Forced into a passionless marriage with a Korean officer, Emi is now a widow with two older children.  Emi is traumatized by the dreadful memories of what happened to her family and her town during the Korean War.  She has been looking for her older sister Hana for 60 years and has insulated herself from the memory of Hana’s kidnapping.

Hana had once protected Emi from the Japanese soldier determined to take her.  Both Hana’s and Emi’s accounts finish on optimistic and inconceivable notes.  The author commemorates all of the Koreans forced into becoming comfort women.  During World War II, the Japanese military controlled Korea.  As part of its complete control of the population, it forced many women into sexual slavery.

This captivating novel delves into what happened to those women and how it affected the lives of those taken prisoner.  This was a ruinous period, and Bracht explores the immense effect the abduction of young women had on friends and family, and the Korean society as a whole.

Bracht also acknowledges the willpower of the women who withstood such atrocious situations.  The title White Chrysanthemum suggests a Korean symbol of mourning.  Bracht achieves her purpose of writing this novel to inform the public of the horrors experienced in Korea so that no event like this will occur again. 

The author, who is of Korean descent, is precise in describing the lives of both sisters.  Her change in tone throughout the book allows the reader to experience a variety of emotions.  The author also skillfully integrates the ugly history between Korea and Japan.

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Through a survivor’s eyes

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Moving and mystical film shows closure of a comfort woman’s horrifying experience  | Film Review by Ed Jopling (Summer 2019 issue)

(Spirits’ Homecoming, Directed by Jung-Rae Cho, DVD, Jo Entertainment, 2016)

"Spirit's Homecoming" film about Korean comfort women
Spirits Homecoming

What flaw lies within the human psyche that we excuse brutality to one another on an epic scale?  The flaw lies in our decision to see someone else as an “other,” which frees us to join in their oppression.  Once that distinction takes hold in the oppressor, the victims are no longer human and may be exploited.

In Spirit’s Homecoming, award-winning director Jung-Rae Cho does not attempt to delve into the tendency of the powerful to oppress the weak.  Rather, he tries to expose the problem at a deeper level by telling his story through the victim’s eyes.  This moving and mystical film describes the horrific experiences of Korean comfort women, that is, the women forced into military sexual slavery before and during World War II. 

Through the use of flashback, he tells the story of Young-Hee (played by Mi-Ji Seo) and Jung-Min (played by Ha-Na Kang), two teenage girls who are taken from their homes and forced in to sexual slavery by the Japanese Army.

Set simultaneously in 1991 and 1943, the film opens in 1991 as a now-elderly survivor Young-Hee (played by Sook Son) listens to a former comfort woman being interviewed on television.  Young-Hee suffers from suppressed trauma of her past experience and a sense of survivor’s guilt linked to the death of her close friend Jung-Min in 1943.  The lifelong shame of her experience at age 15 is vivid within her.   

The television program urges former comfort women to tell their story publicly; however, she overhears the office workers speak with scorn about such victims, suggesting that a women who admitted such an experience would have to be insane. This only adds to the pain she suffers. 

However, the elder Young-Hee finds her strength in Eun-Kyung (played by Choi-Ri).  Eun-Kyung has experienced a personal trauma of her own, is taken in by the local shaman and begins to experience mystical powers.  Upon holding a cloth talisman called a gwe-bul-no-ri-gae, similar to one given to Young-Hee by her friend Jung-Min in 1943, Eun-kyung begins to channel the spirit of Jung-Min. 

Through Eun-Kyung’s visions, the film depicts the atrocities Young-Hee and Jung-Min suffered at the hands of the Japanese military when they and dozens of other young girls are warehoused in a stable-like building.  There, they are repeatedly raped and beaten by the Japanese soldiers for sadistic sexual gratification.

We see the girls survive months and years of brutality with only occasional moments of peace when they are allowed outside as a group to briefly see the sun and breathe fresh air.  In the end, once they become ill or deemed to have outlived their usefulness, they are marched off to a pit to be shot.  Their corpses are burned.  Young-Hee and Jung-Min survive and escape when the Japanese soldiers retreat at the war’s end.  However, they are pursued by the Japanese commander who wants to destroy the human evidence of the brutality their army has inflicted.   Jung-Min dies by the commander’s bullet as she shelters Young-Hee from the gunshots.

Returning to 1991, we find the elderly Young-Hee, attending a shamanic ritual wherein Eun-Kyung channels the spirit of Jung-Min once more and the two face each other for the first time since Jung-Min’s death in 1943.  In a ritual called the Spirit’s Homecoming, the shaman Eun-Kyung seeks to unshackle the spirits of lost women and girls who died as comfort women from the horrors that befell them in this world.  Eun-Kyung’s ritual releases them to journey to the spirit realm.

There is much tragic beauty to ponder in this film.  It is not a documentary, making no attempt to tell the broader story of the approximately 200,000 young women, some little more than children, who were forced into military sexual slavery.  Rather, it seeks to dig deeper into one fictional individual’s experience, describing the spiritual pain they suffered, as well as the guilt, shame and embarrassment they experienced.

Nowadays we address such issues more openly; however, it is important to remember in the decades following World War II, topics of sexual violence were suppressed and were not spoken about.

To effectively tell his story, Director Cho beautifully uses the supernatural element of shamanic vision to connect past and present.  As a vehicle for this story, the idea works well and is effective in achieving its goal of reliving the past and seeing the situation through the eyes of the survivor. 

The film is rich in representational imagery with the butterfly playing a central role as metaphor for the spirit.  We see Jung-Min happily watching a butterfly and later, while walking along a pathway, Eun-Kyung has a vision of Jung-Min joyfully pursuing that butterfly.  Later, in the commander’s quarters, we briefly see the Japanese commander pinning a dead butterfly in his collection, breaking a wing in the process, symbolizing death and broken spirits of these young girls.  Finally, we again see butterflies, taking wing from the dead bodies of the executed girls, their spirits now free to return home.

The use of the shaman channeling the spirit of Jung-Min adds transcendence, lifting the story above the dark cruelty it explores.  In the end, it offers an uplifting sense of redemption when Young-Hee, having spoken with her friend Jung-Min, through Eun-Kyung’s trance, can finally let go of her shame and her survivor’s guilt.

Spirits’ Homecoming is effective in exploring both the experience of the former comfort women, as well as the aftermath of that experience. Rather than cold historical rendition of fact, this film offers the viewer to engage the imagination to connect with the reality of the inhumanity we inflict upon one another.  The story is both captivating and uncomfortable; however, the film does not exploit the emotions of the viewer.  It does, however, implore us to reflect on how we view one another, and reminds us to stop and think before we label someone as “other,” or deem their ways as inferior to ours.

Spirit’s Homecoming carries an important lesson for our current times.  When memories of our recent history die with the last who had lived it, it is then we are ripe to repeat our mistakes.

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