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Julea Chin

Professor Valerie Kinsey

Rhetoric of Trauma

8 March 2016

Belated Justice: Korean “Comfort Women” Demand Historical Acknowledgement

American high school curriculum defines World War II to be a major battle between the

Axis powers and Allied forces, pitting Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan against

the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, China, and the United States (Bentley 942). As a

consequence, if one’s exposure to world history is solely based on his or her time as a student, he

or she can lack awareness of events that transpired beyond European borders in East Asian

territory due to the Eurocentric perspective of most American textbooks. In fact, colonies in

Korea, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, and Indonesia were all forced to aid the Japanese war

effort while subject to Japanese imperialism. Such support involved the use of an estimated

100,000 to 200,000 young girls as sex slaves for the Japanese military, with nearly ninety percent

of victims coming from Korea (Kim-Gibson 40). Yet their voices were not heard until the

summer of 1991 when Hak-Sun Kim shocked the world with a public testimony of her

experiences in Seoul and used her own name in a lawsuit against Japan (Soh 1233). Her outburst

sparked a revolution, convincing more and more women to break their silence, share their

traumatic experiences, and demand reparation from the Japanese government, which had

previously portrayed their testimonies as exaggerated, if not fabricated. Since January 1992,

protesters have rallied every Wednesday in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea.

Yet due to insufficient political action by 2011, the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for

Military Sexual Slavery by Japan erected a five-foot-tall bronze statue of a young girl beside an
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empty chair in order to commemorate the activists’ 1,000th Wednesday protest (Lee 1). The

statue, referred to as the “Pyeonghwabi” or “Peace Statue,” is located in front of the Japanese

embassy in South Korea and serves as a non-intimidating yet constant reminder of Japan’s

comfort women system in order to raise national awareness and influence foreign negotiations

occurring inside the embassy.

Although protestors’ efforts have succeeded in bringing about change, the extent of this

new development remains unsatisfactory to former comfort women and Korean activists alike.

On December 28, 2015, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and South Korean President Geun-

hye Park officially “resolved” the comfort women issue with a one-billion-yen donation, worth

8.3 million US dollars, from the Japanese government budget to finance a foundation to support

former comfort women (Choe 1). In return, the Korean government would acknowledge

Japanese concerns over the Peace Statue and consider the relocation of this visual symbol.

However, the deal-making process failed to include the victims themselves. Rather than reveal

social justice, this deal suggests an act of political expediency from both countries in order to

look toward the future. The methods that both Japan and Korea utilized in order to stifle the

comfort women issue suggest that this suppressed piece of history indicates deeply-rooted, socio-

cultural issues from both sides. Although the Japanese government did provide some form of

monetary and verbal reparation, Japan’s equivocation when depicting the comfort system and

Korea’s marginalization of these survivors after the war suggest a larger, cultural

misrepresentation of these sexual slavery victims.

The Basis for the Comfort System: World War II and Japanese Imperialism

The comfort system stemmed from Japan’s formal annexation of Korea in 1910, which

placed Korea under a “military administration” that strictly regulated every aspect of daily life
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(Kim-Gibson 35-36). After Japan absorbed Korea into its empire, Koreans became subjects of

the Japanese emperor and technically accessed the same status as the native Japanese. However,

even Korean nationals who had assimilated into the Japanese lifestyle were considered “racially

inferior” (Orreill 132). Once the Japanese launched the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 against

China, the Japanese government mobilized the entire country, including its Korean youths.

Japan’s militarism crushed any hint of dissent and stifled Korean identity under the logic that it

was Japan’s duty to “civilize its colony” which was plagued with “Korean backwardness” (Kim-

Gibson 36). By 1940, Japanese culture permeated through Korea: students were forced to speak

solely in Japanese and a reported 84 percent of Korean families had adopted Japanese names

(Soh 1228). After 1942 when the Sino-Japanese War evolved into the Pacific War, the drafting

process of Koreans became “more organized and compulsory,” with approximately 20% of

Korea’s population involved with the war effort (Soh 1228). Japanese occupation lasted until the

end of World War II in 1945.

During World War II, not only did the Japanese army recruit Korean men, but they also

forced hundreds of thousands of young Korean girls to aid in the war effort. This aid came in the

form of Japan’s “Yoja Chongsindae,” or the Women’s Voluntary Labor Service Corps, where

Japanese forces systematically recruited young girls as sex laborers (Soh 1228-1229). Okabe

Naosaburo, Chief of Staff of the North China Area Army, sent an official order in July 1938 that

claimed that rape cases against Japanese women were increasing, and “the provision of facilities

for sexual comfort… [would] eliminate cases in which people violate the prohibition [on rape]

for lack of facilities” (Yoshiaki 55). With this intention, Naosaburo established military comfort

stations as a countermeasure against the rape of Japanese women who had to fulfill “the national

mission of motherhood” (Soh 1228). Japanese military personnel could alternatively prey on
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young Korean girls whose sole purpose was to satisfy their sexual needs during the war. Their

bodies were treated as “military supply” rather than “reproductive vessels,” which exemplified

the “accomplished degradation of the category of ‘Korean’” (Yang 65). The creation of the

comfort system was a matter of militarism, sexism, and severe racism against the Korean people.

The current debate arises from whether the Women’s Voluntary Labor Service Corps was

based upon a voluntary act of nationalism toward imperial Japan or a mandatory call to duty

inflicted by the Japanese government on colonized subjects. Should these women be treated as

prostitutes hired by the Japanese military or as rape victims enslaved by the Japanese

government? Although there is a scarcity of formal documentation, testimonies of former

comfort women reveal that the Japanese “depersonalized [women] as the common property of

the soldiers” and treated them as “sanitary public toilets” (Soh 1238-1239). Recruitment tactics

included false promises of better job opportunities, military coercion into joining the Volunteer

Labor Service Corps, and even abduction. For example, former comfort woman Keum Ju Hwang

recalled that her family had received an official draft notice for “virgin work recruitment” that

required an unmarried girl to work in a Japanese factory; instead of a factory job, Hwang ended

up at a comfort station in Manchuria, which indicates official government deceit (Kim-Gibson

18). After local authorities or Imperial Army representatives had successfully lured these young

women, the girls were transported to a comfort station where they could be used as sex slaves for

the Japanese military. Soldiers went even so far as to refer to the women as “nigyuichi” or “29 to

1,” in regards to the number of men each woman was expected to service that day (Jung 57).

Once the war ended in 1945, survivors remained silent about the trauma they had

experienced at these comfort stations. It was not until forty-five years later that these women

began to speak out about their experiences, share their stories, and protest in front of the
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Japanese Embassy. Currently, only forty-six registered survivors are still alive in South Korea,

all aged in their late eighties and nineties. Nine women passed away in 2015 alone (Japan 2-3).

Though the recent deal provides monetary atonement, many women remain unsatisfied because

of the Japanese government’s refusal to take responsibility for the ordeal. Since the women had

joined a “volunteer organization”, Japan treated the issue as a matter of prostitution rather than

sexual slavery. One former comfort woman explained that she felt resentment from “hearing the

Japs say that we became ‘comfort women’ simply to earn money” and argued “why didn’t [the

Japanese] send [their] own daughters if it was all about good money-making? What if your

family members were forced to suffer such horrible misfortunes?” (Mun). If the Japanese

government continues to delay its statement of direct involvement with the comfort system, the

likelihood of such a correction will diminish after this generation of witnesses is gone.

Japanese Equivocation: The Evasion of Responsibility

"I myself did not experience the war... but I think that it is important today, when memories of

the war are fading, to look back humbly on the past and correctly pass on the tragic experiences

and history Japan pursued from the generation which experienced the war to those without

direct knowledge.” — Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito

On February 23, 2015, Naruhito warned that Japanese government should accurately

portray Japan’s war crimes and refrain from glorifying the past (Kingston 1). However,

supporters of the comfort women cause argue that Japan has not fully recognized its unethical

actions during the war and is spreading misinformation about the comfort women situation, even

when speaking in the press. Previous attempts to settle the issue had failed because Japan refused

to use its official treasury and preferred spending non-government funds that resembled charity,

not restitution (Soh 1237). Although the Japanese government acknowledges military and police
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involvement with the comfort system, it evades responsibility for the comfort women system,

claiming that private operators recruited these girls in response to requests from the military

(Schmidt 19-20). Thus, the government can shift blame on to civilian businessmen and maintain

a clean record. Prime Minister Shinzo, who orchestrated the recent December deal, claimed in

2007 that “there is no evidence to prove there was coercion” (Tabuchi 1). As a right wing

nationalist, Shinzo has evoked a resurgence of jingoistic nationalism and attacks against liberal

press (Kingston 3). However, in December 2015, Shinzo expressed his “anew sincere apologies

and remorse from the bottom of his heart to all those who suffered immeasurable pain and

incurable physical and psychological wounds as ‘comfort women’” (Choe 2). While a step in the

right direction, his response only expressed the pity of an individual rather than recognition from

an entire body of government, and it failed to provide a thorough divulgence and confession for

the crimes committed within the comfort system. Shinzo’s ambiguous views on the issue paired

with his blanket statement of “sincerity” insinuates a hasty attempt to placate the Korean

population.

One of the main claims against Japanese involvement with Korean comfort women is the

lack of incriminating, documentary evidence. According to David Andrew Schmidt, a research

fellow at Tsukuba University and Chiba University in Japan as well as Yonsei University in

South Korea, the Korean government received 390 reports of women drafted for forced labor,

with 155 of which toward sexual service by July 1992. At the same time, 127 items of

documentary evidence, most of which had been kept by the Foreign Ministry and Defense

Agency, as well as 131 case studies were publicized (Schmidt 48). However, the Japanese

government refused to accept testimonies as a sign of evidence because it would be impossible to

verify the authenticity of these memories. It is ironic, then, that the government has agreed to
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provide compensation to victims while continuing to invalidate their testimonies. Similarly, the

Japanese government has been uncooperative with the disclosure of information. The National

Police Agency, which had a major role in the operation of comfort stations, suspiciously

produced no evidence on the existence of comfort women (Schmidt 48). Once the war had

ended, the director of Japan’s Military History Archives of the National Institute for Defense

Studies estimated that approximately 70 percent of the army’s wartime records were burned or

otherwise destroyed, wiping out any incriminating evidence of their misdemeanors (Drea 9).

Similarly, the government has not prosecuted any Japanese war criminals related to military

sexual slavery since it was such a widely understood practice (Orreill 129-130). This lack of

punishment reflects Japan’s position toward the comfort system and its refusal to consider it a

state issue.

Japan’s attitudes toward the war and how the nation itself would like to be perceived

strongly influence how Japan handles the issue. Schmidt explains that Japan’s actions can be

equated to an “unspoken orchestration of a synchronized perpetuation of tatemae or the

maintenance of a public face” in order to keep Japan’s history clean. Both the government and

Ministry of Education worked together to “forget selectively specific events” in an effort to

portray Japan as a victim at the end of World War II (Schmidt 15). In this way, Japan’s role as a

violent perpetrator is lessened by its own post-war trauma. Although the atomic bombings of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki deserve historical recognition, national trauma does not excuse the

Japanese from the pain they inflicted on other nations during the war. The censorship and

manipulation of historical events is detrimental to future generations’ understanding of the past

as well as foreign relations between both Japan and South Korea.

Post-Traumatic Silence: The Effects of Korean Gender Roles

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After the war ended and victims were freed, surviving comfort women remained silent

for over forty years due to the cultural implications and potential backlash of disclosing their

trauma. After all, these women were victims of rape, an unspoken topic in most Asian countries.

Korean society had strong patriarchal customs before and during the war. In particular, Korean

society stressed the importance of virginity and the “absolute obeisance” to maintaining virginity

for unmarried women (Orreill 133). These young girls, tricked or kidnapped against their will,

were forced into a situation that comprised their ability to protect their precious virginity. Still,

rape victims blamed themselves for losing their virginity, enduring social stigmatization rather

than seeking help (Jung 275). According to Confucian ideology, “if [women] were raped, suicide

was the only way to restore the family honor” (Jung 274). Due to pain, shame, and guilt,

survivors did not share their traumatic experiences with their families, and many never returned

home at all because of this social stigma. Furthermore, their existence was a reminder of the

emasculation of Korean men under Japanese domination and their inability to protect their own

women (Yoshiaki 5). Discussion of the comfort system would force a forward-looking country to

look back at its humiliating past under Japan. Even now, these old women are “marginally

accepted due to their status as national martyrs” (Schmidt 17).

Even if comfort women could look past the social stigma surrounding rape, no language

existed at the time to express their suffering. The Korean language employed such as ‘violence’

or ‘violation of chastity’ to depict rape, and rather the term ‘home breaker’ was used instead of

revealing a rapist’s identity (Jung 275). This linguistic gap illustrates the unspeakable nature of

rape in Korea after World War II. These words did not elucidate the severity of the issue and

protected the perpetrators instead of the victims. The use of euphemistic language to depict rape

in Korean media also plays a negative role in the perception of comfort women in today’s
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society. Female survivors of sexual assault expressed that their “body was destroyed” or

“virginity was broken,” employing metaphors that compared the female body to glassware (Jung

275). This depiction portrays women as fragile and weak, while also stressing that girls were

permanently ruined after sexual encounters. Language inflicted an implicit marginalization of

rape victims and pushed them into reclusion and solitude.

The North Korean documentary, Extraordinary Crime Against Humanity of the 20th

Century, revealed this strong patriarchal bias as it attempted to unite Koreans against the “lewd

and immoral bastards unprecedented in the world” who had tainted their women. These young

ladies, “who would otherwise have bloomed like flowers under the care of their parents” suffered

from “every subhuman humiliation and innumerable misfortunes” (Mun). By comparing women

to flowers, the documentary contrasts the delicacy and purity of girls with Japanese brutality in

order to evoke pathos from the audience. Instead of focusing on the strength and resilience of its

survivors, this anti-Japanese propaganda focused on the “meanness” of the Japanese. Interviews

of survivors served to juxtapose their grief and anger with their gentle, elderly appearances in

order to raise pity and record their tremendous hardship. Through a deeper analysis of the

documentary, many women were left unnamed because their identities did not matter as much as

their story, which could be used to smear Japan’s reputation. Only the torture they endured

during WWII was important; their individuality and life beyond that period was ignored. The

filmography choices used in this film share similarities with modern media portrayals of comfort

women as objects of study. Current views dehumanize victims’ struggles by labeling the comfort

women as a social issue whose existence is “justified solely by the horrendous years they

suffered” rather than recognizing them as individuals suffering from a mutual trauma (Kim-

Gibson 9). Traditional Korean gender roles, the lack of open dialogue on rape, and the portrayal
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of comfort women in media not only affect the way these women are perceived but also shape

the ways victims view themselves.

Creating a Legacy: Peace Statue Leads a Perpetual Protest against Injustice

As previously mentioned, the Japanese-Korean agreement reportedly rests on the

condition of removing the Peace Statue in front of the Japanese Embassy. Since its installation in

December 2011 dedicated to the 1,000th Wednesday protest, the statue has morphed from a

commemorative sculpture into a national symbol against wartime sex slavery (Lee 1).

Photographer Sung-Jun

Chung’s snapshot of the

Peace Statue, featured

in Figure 1, depicts a

teenage girl sitting

beside an empty chair.

The girl’s youthful

appearance personifies

the hundreds of

Figure 1: Statue of a girl symbolizing the comfort women issue in front of the Japanese thousands of young girls
embassy in Seoul, South Korea after the announcement of the Japanese-Korean agreement.

that were forced into comfort stations, while her clenched fists indicate her will to fight for a

sincere apology from the Japanese government (Lee 2). Beneath her is a painted shadow that has

the features of an old woman, the current state of survivors, suggesting that former comfort

women are still bound by the traumatic experiences of their past. The empty chair is a dedication

for deceased victims who continue to fight for the cause even in death. The bird on her left

shoulder is not only a symbol for peace, but it also connects victims who passed away with those
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who are still alive (Lee 2). The three stages of life featured in this statue—youth, adulthood, and

death—suggest that the comfort women issue is a national trauma and represent an everlasting

protest against sexual slavery.

That being the case, the Japanese-Korean agreement reportedly rests on the condition of

removing this statue from Seoul. Many comfort women want the statue to remain as a permanent

tribute to their suffering. Activists fear that once the generation of witnesses has disappeared, the

issue could be buried away and Japan’s war crimes against women could be obscured if not

distorted. Sim Mi Ja, a former comfort woman, explained that for someone of her age, “what

compensation is money? The entire world has changed. I want to tell the entire world about

Japan’s atrocities” (Schmidt 131). Although the lives of these women are fleeting, the bronze

statue serves as a permanent protestor against injustice even if the victims themselves have

passed away.

Political Exigency to Raise Awareness of the Comfort System

While Korea’s national trauma from World War II is etched into the memories of former

comfort women, there is a lack of global awareness of this crime against women. This

concealment of suffering is due to Japan’s misrepresentation of the comfort system as well as

Korea’s traditional views on women and sexual abuse. Though Japan is willing to provide

money in order to irrevocably settle the comfort woman issue, the survivors themselves fear that

such a decisive resolution will end discussion on this serious issue before the Japanese

government takes accountability for their war crimes. Former comfort women fear that their lives

will be misconstrued after they pass away, especially since most of the evidence against Japan

are victim testimonials. Thus, the Peace Statue should remain as a platform for expression in

order to maintain the legacy of this disenfranchised group in a more permanent manner.
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More importantly, Japan must open up space for accountability, rather than suppress the

issue. The Japanese government must clearly state its involvement with the comfort system. The

use of euphemisms and misleading language perpetuates tension with South Korea that cannot be

mitigated by monetary reparation. Protestors’ disapproval with the settlement made in December

correlates with the lack of closure between the Japanese government and former comfort women.

Similarly, South Korea should promote open discussions on sexual assault and utilize political

and social platforms to change cultural perceptions of rape. Confucian ideology and traditional

gender roles stifled comfort women in the past and continues to influence modern Korean gender

dynamics. In order to facilitate open, truthful conversations about sexual crime, cultures must be

more socially accepting and welcoming toward rape victims.

Furthermore, the comfort women issue is unfortunately one that has occurred time and

time again in history and around the world. In regards to the Japanese comfort system, the

Japanese military imported thousands of women from its other colonies during World War II.

Likewise, the use of sexual slavery as a “metaphorical ‘rape’ of the enemy’s motherland” was a

military tactic used by other nations as well, such as the Serbs against the Muslims in Bosnia

(Yang 62). Since this is an unfortunately common issue, the negotiations between Japan and

South Korea could serve as an example for how instances of sexual slavery and war crimes are

handled in the future. If Japan and Korea can formulate a practical agreement that will honor the

wishes of former comfort women and raise global awareness of the comfort system, both nations

can gain closure from the past and shift their attention toward the future.
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