Tell Us More, Grandmother!
Korean “Comfort Women”
Re/constructing and Re/presenting
the “Truth” and Memory of Survival
through Narratives
2009 thesis
This was a very interesting thesis that was done on a very personal level by the writer. She is an activist and interviewed women who had been comfort women. Below are some of the parts of the thesis that I thought were quite significant.
Among many of the issues that were related to my questions, the “Comfort
Women” issue appeared to me as a very unique, heartbreaking research topic. I had
vaguely known about it before, and the thought that women of my age several
decades ago suffered something so horrifying and unimaginable made me upset
about the tragic history of early 20th century Korea. In addition, I hated Japan for
causing such a pain to “us.” It was the “Korean mentality” telling me that I should
not like “them,” as I had been taught all my life to dislike Japan. Such sentiment was
almost “natural” since at school and through the media, I was exposed to very
patriarchal and patriotic discourses. The long enmity and nationalistic sentiments
were not completely unreasonable. Japan had never appeared to be sincere for the
aftermatters of colonialism, and Japan had not been willing to take responsibility for
its war crimes. Such hatred against Japan (or rather, the idea of Japan) has always
been an essential element of modern Korean identity.
So, I contacted the Korean Council for
the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (the Korean Council, from
here on) which is the primary advocacy organization for “Comfort Women.”
The military sexual slavery system imposed by Japan, or the “Comfort
Women” system, during World War II was one of the most horrendous parts of
human history and could be compared to the Holocaust against European Jews
during the same period. Unfortunately, neither the “Comfort Women” system nor
the cruelty of it are well-known outside of a few East Asian countries with survivors
who bravely have come out in the last two decades. The system encompasses
several broad issues anthropologically, including sexism, colonialism, nationalism,
and most of all, power exercised through broader racial/ethnic and patriarchal
systems.
After Japan took over Korea in 1910, the colonizer fully exploited Korea’s
resources, especially labor. Korean people were often used as manual laborers
producing war necessities, especially before and during the Second World War
period between the late 1930s and 1945 as Japan was participating in the war full force.
While going into dangerous areas to earn money for their families, the women, who
expected to participate in the manual labor for the war time production lines, did
not have any idea about what kind of horrifying labor and suffering were waiting for
them.
Statistical facts show how cruelly the women were treated. Initially the
“Comfort Women” were Japanese sex workers who were employed to “entertain”
soldiers. However, the limited number of Japanese prostitutes and their hesitation
made the government gradually replace them with destitute women from the
colonies.6 Ahn found a record showing that 80-90% of the slaves were Korean
women while there were also women from various countries, such as Japan, Taiwan,
China, the Philippines, Burma, the Netherlands and Australia.7 Since most of the
records were destroyed around the time the war ended, it is very difficult to
estimate exact or even the approximate numbers of “Comfort Women.” However,
the sex slaves were derogatorily nicknamed “Ni-gyu-ichi” which means 29 to 1 in
Japanese since each sex slave had to “receive” about 29 soldiers per day or per shift.
Based on this, there were about 80,000 to 200,000 women who were sacrificed for
military sexual slavery.
The “official” minimum age for the
Japanese women was 18 and for the Korean women, 17, according to the data that
Ahn found. Yet she claims there were many women who were much younger than
17 years old, like Ms. Lee Kyong-Sang, who testified that she was 12 years old when
she had been dragged into the war as a “Comfort Woman.”
The Japanese government and military used many different methods to
recruit the women. Many women were from poor rural families that struggled with
daily survival. In addition, sons and males were much more valued assets than
female children —culturally and economically— and therefore daughters were the
ones forced into the “Voluntary Corps” so that their brothers did not have to join the
Japanese military.
Many women eventually came to be involved in prostitution,
and the recruiters — both private and governmental, Korean and Japanese—
targeted these women.1They were transported in military trucks and ships and
treated as military supplies while they were placed in a section with a sign saying,
“Prohibited – Do not use in the ship” and they were addressed as “military purpose
materials” in paperwork.
There are only 93 “Comfort Women” survivors left in Korea
Poverty drove some women into becoming comfort women. Apparently there was extreme poverty in Korea at that time.
She also mentions han, which is a culturally specific term for the
internalized, inexpressible anger and sadness, as explained in the first chapter.
Q: If the Japanese government provides official reparation and apologizes, do
you think you can forgive them?
L: There’s no “if.” I can’t forgive them until the Japanese Prime Minister
Kneels down in front of me asking for forgiveness. There’s no “if.” That’s
absurd. When I die, I’m going to be cremated. If he comes there after I die, I
won’t forgive him. He has to do it while I’m alive. I’m a living proof regarding
this history. This history has been dragged this far, and that’s why I’m still
working. Japan still says that it never happened, and that makes them more
unforgivable. As we think about our descendents… We cannot pass down
this issue to them. We cannot pass down the pain. […] We are trying to
finish it at our generation.
Some survivors “made choices” to follow “Comfort
Women” brokers so that they could work and earn money for their destitute
families (although it turned out that they did not earn any money), but they did not
choose to be poor and be subjected to gruesome systematic sexual violence.
They
wanted to be independent, “modern” women by providing for themselves, but such
illusions were exploited by the colonizers who, in turn, exploited the women.
Even though, in the early 90s, military sexual slavery was proved
as a crime committed against Koreans during the Pacific War, the textbook for high
school during that period, which was written and published by the Ministry of
Education (therefore reflecting the national agenda), did not include more than a
few sentences regarding “Comfort Women.”
Several thousands of women
gave their consent, yet it was not really their choice because they were living in
extreme systemic violence that did not allow women to develop any sort of agency.
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