New Ways of Solidarity with Korean Comfort Women

This chapter focuses on the power of testimonies by Korean Comfort “Women” in the redress movement for the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery. It is divided into three major sections. The first section introduces two impetuses of the Korean Council’s redress movement in the beginning. The first impetus was the Korean women’s leaders’ acquisition of Japanese Diet memoire in June 1990. The memoir includes the historical information that the Japanese military forcibly mobilized 1.5 million Korean men and women and that it hunted many Korean women to Japanese military brothels. The other impetus of the movement was Kim Hak-sun halmeoni’s emergence into society and her public testimonies in August 1991. Whereas the obtainment of this historical information strengthened their determination to formally start the redress movement, Kim Hak-sun’s public testimony accelerated the nascent redress movement globally. The second section examines how enthusiastically about thirty-fifty KCW’s testimonies were given in Japan, the United States, and other countries, and international human rights organizations. The third section examines the statical value of 103 testimonies by KCW collected by the Korean Council and the Korean Chongshinde Research Institute with two sample tables. I strongly believe that the social science knowledge is based on the rule of majority or the vast majority since there are always a few or several deviant cases in almost all groups. 103 testimonies by KCW comprise a large sample, the largest one available in Asian countries, enough to make statistical analyses.

The three decades of worldwide activism have made the comfort women system one of the most well-known human rights violations committed by Imperial Japan during World War II. Since the first public testimony of a Korean comfort woman, Hak-sun Kim, in 1991, the comfort women issue has generated diverse conversations over war and gender-based violence, women’s rights, and history and memory. This paper approaches this important issue from yet another angle: the Korean diaspora. As it examines how Korean American activists have organized the comfort women redress movement in the United States, it discusses how their ethnic identity has inspired them to organize, while their national identity has guided their strategic choices and priorities. It also contextualizes their activism in critical domestic changes, including the increasing visibility of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) and the pan-AAPI movement. Thus, this paper presents a new perspective in analyzing the comfort women redress movement.

With the remaining survivors of the WWII-era “comfort system” aging and increasingly unable to tell their own stories, how can their histories and campaigns for justice be kept alive and remain urgent, especially for younger audiences of English speakers, such as university students? Asian and American women writers, in particular, have been using new ways of reaching those readers. They have turned to genres such as futuristic speculative fiction, illustrated/graphic narratives, and experimental forms of poetry to do so. This essay surveys a small sampling of texts that are currently being incorporated successfully into classroom teaching. It ends by suggesting that instructors further a sense of engagement by encouraging students to produce creative works of their own, while modeling how to do that, and includes as examples three poems by the author.

The growing influence of Korean arts and entertainment—particularly that of TV dramas, movies, and pop music, otherwise known as the Hallyu wave—along with increased societal interaction and intergenerational changes are seen as favorable factors for improving strained Korea–Japan relations. However, the historical issue, particularly that of “comfort women,” remains a subject of contention in the bilateral ties. Korean onscreen portrayals of young girls and women who were forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese imperial army before and during World War II undoubtedly reflect and influence the public collective memory and how civic societies in Korea and Japan tackle the sensitive matter. Previous research has mostly been limited to analyses of individual Korean films such as Spirits’ Homecoming (2016) and Snowy Road (2015) or has focused on the differences between Korean and Japanese cinematic depictions of comfort women. This paper aims to examine the depiction of comfort women in Korean films following the landmark 2015 Korea–Japan Comfort Women Agreement (also referred to as the 2015 Korea-Japan Foreign Ministerial Agreement on Comfort Women) in the context of strained bilateral relations and the historical background of the ties. Also to be scrutinized are the changes in the depiction of comfort women onscreen as well as their place in the cinematic landscape and changing social discourse on the subject matter. Some progress has been made in Korean cinema’s portrayal of comfort women as proactive “survivors” rather than passive “victims,” but more sensitivity and caution are needed as the issue marks one of the cornerstones of the historical problem that continues to be a source of conflict between Korea and Japan.

The Japanese Imperial Army abducted, abused, and raped thousands of women and girls within their occupied territories during World War II. These women are referred to as comfort women. Those who are still living and their families have long sought justice for the human rights atrocities they suffered. Now, they are taking on an even more difficult fight, to keep their memory alive while many seek to erase it. Historically, women who are victims of sexually violent crimes are often overlooked, looked down upon, and even discredited. This chapter examines the case of comfort women, who are a prime example of this neglect and erasure. Using archival research, victims and witness testimonies, and military correspondence documents, this chapter examines the sequence of events following World War II related to comfort women and how the actions taken by people in power have impacted the lives, identities, and collective memories of comfort women. This study specifically examines qualitative and quantitative measures to observe and evaluate the possibility of using social media as a virtual space for memory and education surrounding the topic of comfort women. Collectively, this research assesses the different political power dynamics at play throughout the comfort women timeline that have further oppressed comfort women and have made it difficult for physical memorial spaces to remain in place. The findings of this study point to the fact that there has been a major abuse of power and influence to silence comfort women and note how in order to continue to preserve their memories and ensure their stories reach new generations, social media platforms may be the right medium to do so.

A long-standing threat of war on the Korean Peninsula has retarded recognition and reconciliation of military-related atrocities committed in the establishment of this divided territory. Meanwhile, surviving generations utter their grief over the internecine and foreign killing of their ancestors in grassroots memorials and ceremonies. When restless ghosts of mass-murdered individuals appear in shamanic ritual spaces, they summon subversive networks around capsulated moments of the most unrestrained violence and shake onlookers out of their Cold War vigilance. They enact their whispered family traumas to push against nationalist narratives and to provoke a shared experience of injustice while often overlooking consensus on political mobilization. This chapter will consider one such ritual specter: there is a community ritual for the spirits of “comfort women”; a case that may be seen as a form of femicide of sexually enslaved women by the Japanese imperial army. Taking a close look at these atrocity rituals does three things: they highlight the presence of colonial forces in a Cold War-bifurcated region. Secondly, by seeing them as a shamanic liberatory practice, these rituals can demonstrate a type of epistemological disobedience to modern, militarized states. Thirdly, their predominance of female ritualists, clients, patrons, and onlookers speaks to the demand to involve non-patriarchal communities in intergenerational healing, decolonial states of being, and Indigenous cultural resilience.

This study examines North Korea’s “comfort stations.” Beginning with the public testimony of Ri Kyung-saeng, a former North Korean “comfort women,” in 1992, the issue of comfort women has risen to the surface in North Korea. In the case of South Korea, active interest in civil society and academia has become the main driving force for comfort women issues. However, in the case of North Korea, there is no civil society or free academic environment. Research on North Korean comfort women, who account for half of the 200,000 Korean comfort women, is very scarce, and the discovery and preservation of data have been difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, in efforts to equally acknowledge the victimhood of all comfort women, research on North Korea’s comfort women is necessary. This study explores three comfort stations, which have been discovered and officially acknowledged by the government of North Korea, and provides an overview of the government’s position toward these historical sites and comfort women’s memories. What is the status of comfort women’s memories as it relates to these comfort stations? How are these places being used by the government? These are some of the questions that guide this chapter’s discussion on how sites of memory are politicized and used as a political tool by governments. In reflecting upon these questions, this study argues that the narratives and stories of North Korea’s comfort women victims should be organized in a more universal and peaceful way as collective memory beyond the individual and state levels.

The issue of comfort women is not a mere historical occurrence; it persists to this day. Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, stressed this stance in her statement in 2014, arguing that the violation of these women’s human rights will continue unless the right to pursue justice and reparations are recognized and facilitated. An official statement from the United Nations’ leader for human rights unequivocally demonstrates how the United Nations and international community view the “comfort women” issue. However, satisfactory outcomes for the victims have not been forthcoming. As of October 2022, only 11 Korean victims remain alive and actively continue to seek resolution, raising their voices continuously in the international community rather than for their own government.

This chapter analyzes the significant actions the United Nations has taken to address the issue of comfort women. Given the United Nations’ reputation and legitimacy among multiple international organizations, its stance on the comfort women issue, as well as any resolution, would be symbolic and constitute an impressive historical record if accomplished. In this regard, this chapter analyzes how the United Nations has approached the issue of “comfort women.” In doing so, this will provide insight into what the United Nations has done, is doing, and may do in the future to address comfort women’s concerns and demonstrate the principles that the organization claims to represent.

International human rights norms have been effective in setting a common global standard of human rights, including those that protect collective group rights, such as that of children and women. Reflecting upon the memory of Korean comfort women, this study brings a new focus to an understudied group of victims—the children. Interweaving archival research, testimonies from Korean victims, and normative markers from international human rights law on children’s rights, this study explains how and why the sexual violence committed against comfort girls-women ought to be understood within the framework of children’s rights. Critically unpacking the human rights violations endured by Korean comfort women as a children’s rights violations and using the normative standards from the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child, the International Labor Organization’s Minimum Age Convention, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child are crucial, for it elucidates, in short, the gravity of the crimes committed against girls or children. In revisiting the Korean comfort women’s experiences from a children’s rights angle, the findings of this study also serve to present a new angle of legal argument that may be of use for advocates, advocacy movements, and victims.