The role of Comfort Women in actual South Korea’s antagonism toward Japan

The role of Comfort Women in actual South Korea’s antagonism toward Japan

“You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once—there has to be a limit”. Edward Said

There is one topic that keeps coming up in the South-Korean newspapers even very

recently and that strongly affect the Korean people, I want to talk about the Comfort Women

issue. From 1910 to 1945 South Korea went through the Japanese colonization, with the

setting of a Protectorate in 1905 and then the annexation of South Korea in 1910. The

Japanese Empire took the peninsula by force and held over it a repressive domination that

Korean people never stopped to fight. Japan also started to open Comfort Stations, brothels,

for the soldiers and hired Comfort Women, young women mostly from Korea but also from

other South-east Asian countries to work as prostitutes. After the war, many human right

lawyers, writers and journalists condemned the Japanese wartime as a “military sexual

slavery” and Comfort Women are still considerate as the very essence of the war crimes

committed by the Japanese army. Even now, the trauma of the Japanese colonial rule is

present in the Koreans’ mind and because of it, South Korea is very reluctant to promote the

Japanese culture or Japanese companies which creates tensions between the two countries.

When I asked my Korean friends, mostly young people, what they thought about the Comfort Women, they all recognized that it is a very sensible topic in South Korea. Thus, even the young generation of Koreans who have not known the war, have a very strong resentment for the Japanese government. They accuse the Japanese government of not acknowledging its wrongs and some of them even admitted that they felt hatred towards the Japanese people because of colonization.

It seemed to be such a big issue for them that I wanted to know more about the Comfort Women and try to understand how something that occurred more than 70 years ago

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can still influence the opinion of Korean people about Japan and degrade the relations between the two countries.

In the first part of my paper, I will try to explain how the Comfort Stations appeared in the Korean patriarchal society, how they were managed and what the Korean women went through. In a second part I will talk about current controversies and try to understand how even many years after, Comfort Women reflect the resentment toward Japan that still lingers in Koreans hearts to the point where they cannot turn the page over their colonial past.

I- The Japanese Colonial rule over Korea and the start of Comfort Stations

First appearance of prostitution in Korea

I think it is important to note that the licensed prostitution started in Korea during the Joseon Dynasty after Korea was forced to sign the Kanghwa Treaty with Japan. In 1881 the first pleasure quarters for the Japanese soldiers were opened in port cities such as Busan or Incheon and later in Seoul. The Japanese owners of these brothels recruited young Japanese women, luring them with the promise of a job as a geisha (which in Japanese culture was not considered as a prostitute but rather as artist). A large number of Japanese women came to Korea with the hope to make some money for them and for their family, but they only ended as prostitutes who could not get back to their home country. After Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, the prostitution industry flourished and took a bigger part in the society and everyday life in Korea as it was allowed even outside the brothels, in the streets. Korean women were strongly discriminated and made less than half the money a Japanese prostitute could make. It is important to remember that this ethnicity based discrimination between Japanese and Korean people also played a role in the Comfort Stations a few years later, as Japanese prostitute where more coveted and paid more than other prostitutes. It was also a big deal for Korean men during the colonization as they could not have the same rights or the

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same access to high-ranking job as Japanese.

The beginning of Comfort Stations

In the early 1930s, Japan wanted to expand its territories and invaded many Asian countries. After taking the possession of Manchuria, the Japanese Empire also wanted to possess territories in China, that led, in 1932, to the Battle of Shanghai. In the aftermath, the Japanese army command was informed that more than 200 rapes were committed by their army in China. The situation was problematic for Japan; its the image in the International community was very bad and because of the rapes Japanese soldiers were exposed to venereal diseases. To solve that problem the General Staff decided to develop a network of military brothels called “comfort stations” in its occupied territories in Korean and other Asian countries. In order to supply these “comfort stations”, the Japanese army recruited young women from the poorest areas of the Japanese-dominated territories, including Korea. Sometimes girls were kidnapped, some were sold by their parents and forced to work as prostitute but most of the time Korean recruiters went to rural villages and promised girls an easy and well-paid job within the Japanese Army, of course not telling them what the job consisted in in details.

Yi Sun-ok, who used to work for a Japanese family, the Moritas, was fooled by a

Korean man and ended up as a sexual slave in a “comfort station”. She recalls:

“I learn from her (Mrs. Morita) that there were many factories were girls could earn lots of money by working there. I told her that I wanted to go to Japan to earn money. […] One day a Korean man, a Mr. O in his forties visited Mr. Morita. I was there and listened to their conversation. Mr. O said that he had come to recruit girls to work in a new silk factory in Japan. Answering my questions, he even told me that I could quit work anytime if I didn’t like work there.”

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