뉴스레터

The history of the comfort women of the Japanese military began to be written anew in the early 1990s. It is leading world peace and human rights recovery, aiming for new perspectives, new language, and a new future.

At the heart of it are the survivors of sexual slavery. There were activists, researchers, and citizens with them who looked for records, made languages, and provided meaning. Recording this moment, we would like to let future generations inherit our history.

Japanese Military Comfort Women Victims Memorial Day and Kim Hak-sun

August 14 every year is the “Japanese Military Comfort Women Victims Memorial Day”. The Korean government began to commemorate the day on a national level in 2018. In fact, however, the activist groups and activists related to the comfort women had been commemorating the day before 2018. In the 11th Asian Solidarity Conference for the Resolution of the Issue of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan held in Taipei, Taiwan, in 2012, August 14 every year was established as the “Japanese Military Comfort Women Victims Memorial Day”. The Asian Solidarity Conference launched in Seoul in August 1992 is a conference attended by related organizations, activists, and individuals to resolve the problem of international sexual violence, focusing on the issue of the comfort women of the Japanese military. August 14 is the day that Kim Hak-sun, Korea's victim of sexual slavery, testified for the first time in public in 1991. Since designating the day as the day of memorial, the Asian Solidarity Conference has been discussing the problems of sexual violence against women and the Korean military comfort women and the #MeToo movement as well as the issue of the comfort women of the Japanese military. That is because Kim Hak-sun is the symbol of courage and solidarity, having defined the issue of comfort women that had been institutionalized on a national level as one of “violence” from the victim's position and demanded the prevention of recurrence.

“Kim Hak-sun”, the name that has changed people's lives

Activists and researchers related to the comfort women agree that “it all originated from Kim Hak-sun.” The Japanese activists that I have met have also cited the name Kim Hak-sun without exception when asked what motivated them to act. There is no special story to this. Having filed a compensation lawsuit with Japan's district court in Tokyo in December 1991, Kim Hak-sun testified at rallies held in various places in Japan; women, mostly full-time housewives, met Kim Hak-sun there, and their lives were changed.

Yun Myeong-suk, who had written a thesis themed with the issue of the comfort women of the Japanese military for the first time, confesses that her research life changed after meeting Kim Hak-sun. While studying in Japan, she tried to study Korea's independence movement history from the perspective of women's history, but it was difficult to take her course in the then male-oriented writing environment. She met Kim Hak-sun in the fall of 1991 and began to ponder the colonial rule, the war, and women's victimization.

Born in Manchuria, Kim Hak-sun was left fatherless at an early age and accompanied her mother to Pyongyang where her mother's parents' home was located. Her mother, who could not depend on her poor home of birth, was remarried, and Kim Hak-sun was not happy under her stepfather. Seeking a kind of refuge, she went to a gisaeng school, and her mother had Kim Hak-sun entered in the foster father's family register. In 1941, Kim Hak-sun moved to China with her foster father to make a living, and was taken away by Japanese troops after a confrontation at a restaurant and forced to live in sexual slavery. Kim Hak-sun's life was intertwined with three-fold discriminations of nationality, class, and sexism; in Kim Hak-sun's voice underscoring of Japan's responsibility for the war and colonial rule and the repetition of crimes was a stimulus that showed new ways forward for researchers in women's history.

Meeting with Kim Hak-sun who led changes and beginning

My start as a researcher of comfort women was triggered by Kim Hak-sun. In the 1980s when I was undergoing adolescence, the song “Street Seen from the Second Floor” by the group “Five Fingers” was in style. Although caught and changed in the process of censorship, there was a lyric that said “The world falls into a deep contradiction, like street drugstores sell tobacco,” which was the precise description of the world surrounding me in those days. During the period between the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Olympics, we had to stay alert because of “van ghost stories” of teenaged girls that were kidnapped and grind our teeth about “rumors of pervert teachers” alleged to be in every girls' school and attacks by “flashers” all the time. Now that I think of it, that tormenting everyday life had filled my adolescence.

Generation X and campus romanticism are the hot topics when talking about the 1990s, but the 1990s that I experienced was somewhat different. In 1991, there was the “Kim Bu-nam incident” involving the murder of a sexual attacker after 21 years, and in 1992 there was the “Kim Yeong-o incident” involving a girl's murder of her stepfather who had been raping her for more than 10 years. And in 1993 was a sexual harassment incident involving a Seoul National University professor, paving the way for labeling sexual bullying by abuse of rank as “sexual harassment”. We had to endure dreadful and inconvenient routines, but it was an undeserved and suffocating period because of the lack of the language to even indicate the nature of what was distressing us.

I met Kim Hak-sun around the time that I was trying to find the language to explain women's experiences and when my anxiety and sense of guilt took the form of anger. I happened to see a notice of Kim Hak-sun's visit, and entered the event hall as if possessed. What becomes clearer as time goes by is the message that Kim Hak-sun engraved that day. “You had a hard time, right? I have suffered pain since I became a comfort woman when I was even younger than you. It was not our fault. It was the fault of the people who engage in politics, incite wars, and bully the weak. They must be accountable for such crimes. Such behaviors could be halted once we record our stories clearly.”

Bronze statue of grandma Kim Hak-sun

Meetings and recording must go on

Kim Hak-sun's expression was calm, her eyes clear, and her voice full of confidence. How could one who had been harassed by the trauma of sexual violence for such a long time face up to her past like that? Just seeing her was enough to enable my life as a woman to be consoled, reconciled, and encouraged.

I felt the same when I later met survivors at Wednesday's rallies, and likewise when I met survivors for talks in person or visited their human rights camps. While seeing them give their accounts of their lives and convey the stories of their colleagues who could no longer be seen, I was struck with admiration that they did not just live because they were alive but survived resolutely with their will to live. What I learned from Kim Hak-sun and the Kim Hak-suns that came after was the value of living and human dignity. I furthermore learned the belief that we must put into practice what we learned by opposing all attempts at and causes of damaging our dignity.

Thirty years have passed since Kim Hak-sun appeared. We can now meet neither Kim Hak-sun nor the survivors who attended the Wednesday rallies. There have also been serious moves to erase the history recorded by the Kim Hak-suns while denying compulsory mobilization and sexual slavery with various sophistry. Yet those who met the Kim Hak-suns never feel nervous or precarious. They meditate more clearly on how urgent and necessary it is to realize what the victims had wanted. Kim Hak-sun should meet even more people all over the world as long as war and poverty, race and ethnic groups, and violence intertwined with sexual discrimination exist. The meaningfulness of the enactment of the international memorial day for Japanese military comfort women lies in this. The reason that the moment of meeting Kim Hak-sun is recorded is to enlarge the positive energy created at that moment. Our recording will never end until every human being can respect life and spend their everyday life in peace.