GRSJ224/Comfort Women and Colonial Japan
Introduction
Comfort Women means that girls and women who were recruited and forced to serve as sexual slaves. During the Asia-Pacific War(1931-1945), countless young Korean girls were imposed to provide sexual services to Japanese military, not only officers, but also rank-and-file men. Even if many young women have died and suffered from the trauma, comfort women issue is not completely solved and the survivors are still struggling against to Japan. This issue became one of the important problems which are related to woman's right and human's right so, nowadays international institution has forced to Japanese Government to apologize to the victims.
Historical Facts
During the Asia-Pacific War, Japanese Government started to establish places which are called "comfort station" in order to keep young women for a special purpose and it spread out all over in Asia. Japanese recruited young Korean women by saying that they can earn a lot of money if they follow soldiers also, they deceived young girls by suggesting jobs that they can work. Countless young girls and women were recruited by diverse means such as trafficking, deception and abduction. The ostensible purpose of comfort women was working in factories or helping Japanese army as an assistant. However, most of them were deceived and forced to work as a sexual slave. The purpose that Japanese government aimed at this was reducing the spread of venereal disease and the frequency of rape committed by Japanese soldiers.However, it caused countless girls suffered from sexual assaults and treated as soldiers' plaything.In this process, at least 200,000 girls and women were required to work in order to serve the Japanese soldiers sexually. They lost their family, friends, even the right as a human. Also, they were forced to work in terrible, dangerous conditions. According to the victims' interview, girls could not live as a normal person in a horrible condition. Soldiers forced young girls to sex with them, so each girl had to serve at least five guys per day. In addition to, countless girls were killed in various ways by Japanese soldiers. For example, if there is a girl who is pregnant, it means that she is not able to work as a sexual slaver so, she was killed or they cut her belly in order to take out the baby from woman body. Also, many girls were attacked by soldiers and even they made a tattoo on girls bodies. Many young girls were dead but there were no documents including victims' information so, it was difficult to recognize who they were exactly and estimate the number of comfort women. After the war was over, Japanese started to kill comfort women in order to remove and hide all of the evidence which is related to comfort woman. After the war was over, survivors are suffering from the trauma of working as a comfort woman. One of the comfort women requires and stands for the apologies from the Japanese Government. She insists that Japanese government must take a responsibility for this issues and pay to profer compensation with an apology, however, Japanese government keeps denying it because they believe there is not enough information to support that comfort women have existed during the war. Therefore, comfort women issue became one of the important issues that have to be solved between Korea and Japan.
the perspectives Change
Korea is one of the countries where Confucian is spread out people emphasized chastity from women. Therefore, in the past, even if women were deceived by a Japanese, women who came back to home were ignored or looked away from their society and families. It was obvious that they were victims and were supposed to be protected by government but there was no specific help.Thus, many comfort women suffered from not only trauma in comfort station but also contempt from Korean society. This situation caused comfort women to have a worse experience and could not get sympathy but have been criticized by their family. Since most comfort women were in silence, people could not know what exactly happened to comfort women and there was no apology from the Japanese government. After one of the victims insisted on an apology from the Japanese government by accusing the truth of comfort women, comfort women issue became one of the important issues that are related to women right and human right. In the modern society in Korea, comfort women issue is still in process and many people are participating and requiring Japanese government for proper compensation and apology.
On the other hand, for "Japan", comfort women issue is one of the issues that they do not want to expose to the public. This is because if it is true, they can be criticized and lost their pride. In the past, Japan denied the existence of comfort women and kept saying there was no evidence to support it. However, Japanese stood for comfort women and agreed that they must provide compensation to victims. Despite citizen's effort, the government did not change their opinion and avoid to answer the solution for this issue. Before the world agency forced to Japan to solve this issue, Japanese had positive aspects to comfort women, however after the world agency intervened this issue and required Japan to deal with this issue seriously, many people changed their opinion and started to protect their country. In Japan, people are divided into two groups. one group has the same thoughts as Korean has, the other has totally opposite position.
Movement In Korea and Japan
Since comfort women issues became one of the world issues that are related to human right and women right, there are many movements occurred in both Korea and Japan. In Korea, people started to interview the survivors, broadcast their story and even make movies including historical facts of comfort women, Also, they made a brand which is called "Marymond" and raised funds by selling products that survivors made. Also, Korea requested this issues to world agency and kept trying to receive proper compensation and apology from Japan. Also, as this issue is considered as women right, feminists made a movement for comfort women.
References
"The ‘comfort women’ issue and the embedded culture of sexual violence in contemporary Japan" Muta Kazue
"Settlement Without Consensus: International Pressure, Domestic Backlash, and the Comfort Women Issue in Japan" Kim, Ji Young
"Can the Japan-Korea Dispute on "Comfort Women" be Resolved?" Jonsson, G
Jee Hoon Park, KyongWeon Lee, Michelle D. Hand, Keith A. Anderson & Tess E. Schleitwiler "Korean Survivors of the Japanese “Comfort Women” System: Understanding the Lifelong Consequences of Early Life Trauma"