Korean ‘Comfort Women’ during the Asia-Pacific War

Trigger Warning: This article contains mentions of sexual assault, rape, and violence. There are no images showing violence. Reader’s discretion is advised.

I remember one woman in particular from the Philippines. Her name was Lola Maxima. She did not just speak her story; she physically acted out her experiences: clawing, screaming, falling onto the floor, crawling in an attempt to get away, curling up into a ball… Her daughter, who was present, froze as she watched her mother. It was the first time she had heard her mother speak about what had happened so many years ago”

- American Photographer Paula Allen, 2005

Introduction

On Monday night, December 26, 2022, Lee Ok-seon, a former ‘comfort woman’ passed away at age 94. This death reduces the number of registered World War II Korean ‘comfort women’ survivors from eleven down to just ten (Cho 2022). Called “the most brutal crime committed by the Japanese military”, so-called ‘comfort women’ were Asian (and some Dutch) women mobilized and enslaved by the Japanese military forces during the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945) (Min 2021, 1). It is estimated that between 50 000 - 200 000 women served as comfort women during the Second Sino-Japanese War (Min 2021, 1). The comfort women system (CWS) was widespread and present in China, Burma, Vietnam, but mostly in Korea (Min 2021, 1). This system was not spontaneous, regional, or unsanctioned. In 2000, Professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi from Chuo University discovered top secret files from the Japanese military that demonstrate the Japanese military’s prominent role, responsibility and intricate bureaucratic system of operating the comfort women stations (Min 2021, 2). This article will detail the origins, experiences, impacts, and contemporary legacies of the CWS.

Origins of the Comfort Stations: Delegate, not Resist

The CWS was established as a measure to regulate and contain sexual violence within the military complex. According to the Japanese military documents mentioned above, the first comfort station was created in Shanghai in 1931 by the Japanese Navy. By 1932, there were seventeen comfort stations in Shanghai serving Japanese navy personnel (Hongxi 2020, 29). The CWS was “operated by the top staff of the navy” (Hongxi 2020, 29). The CWS also was not contained within the military complex as the Japanese government was aware of the system. The “highly tacit cooperative relationship between the Japanese military and government” began when the Japanese military invaded Wuhan (Hongxi 2020, 29, 30). The CWS soon spread throughout the entire Japanese army. According to the recollections of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Shanghai Expeditionary Army, Okamura Yasuji, these stations were established in response to the publication of an ‘incident’ of a Japanese soldier raping a Chinese woman (Hongxi 2020, 29). This testimony was backed up by Okabe Naosaburō ,a Senior Staff Officer of the Shanghai Expeditionary Army, who said, “they [the Japanese military] felt that it would be better to actively prepare some facilities rather than restrict their behavior. Then they [the Japanese military] made all sorts of considerations of policies to resolve sexual issues for soldiers and started to enact them” (Hongxi 2020, 29). When the Japanese military moved on from Shanghai, the system came with them.

Mobilization & Recruitment: The Colonial Connection

The reasons and methods behind the Japanese military’s mobilization of women into the CWS were based on both ideological and practical foundations. The CWS was present in areas that the Japanese military either invaded such as China and/or colonized such as Korea. When Japan and China engaged in total warfare in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the system formalized and spread to other areas. Comfort stations were set up in “Indonesia, Indochina, Thailand…the Philippines…Okinawa, Korea…Taiwan” and even Japan itself (Min 2003, 940).

Women under the CWS were mobilized using forceful, coercive or manipulative methods. Some were simply abducted and forced to join the system, others were tricked. Some Korean women were manipulated by Japanese colonial officials, who offered employment opportunities in the military (Min 2003, 945). According to Korean historian Pyong Gap Min, the promise of abroad employment was particularly enticing because economic colonial measures imposed by the Japanese devastated the agricultural sector (Min 2003, 945). Peter Duns argues that Korea in the early 1900s was “essentially [designated] to serve as a purchaser of Japanese manufactured goods, a supplier of agricultural products, and as an emigration territory” (Duns 2008, 141). Some harmful initiatives include the imposition of Japanese farming techniques on the Korean landscape, the reorganization of the traditional land tenure system, and the stagnation of the agricultural sector when rapid industrialization moved to heavy industry in the 1930s (Pao-San Ho 2008, 350, 355, 361).

The violence and mechanisms of the Comfort Women System (CWS) had continuities with Japanese colonialism of Korea. Although the CWS affected more than just Korean women and included women from other colonial territories such as Taiwan, proportionally speaking Korean women made up the bulk of the population of comfort women. In addition, “almost all Korean women [within the CWS] were young, unmarried virgins in their teens and early 20s” (Min 2003, 944). Scholars on the Asia-Pacific War agree that “the victimization of many Korean women under Japanese military sexual slavery was partly a by-product of Japan’s colonization of Korea” (Min 2003, 944). Min adds that “[t]he Japanese government considered the Korean people—whether men or women—mainly as instruments to be expended for its war purpose” (Min 2003, 944). Apart from cultural and ideological reasons, using Korean women was also pragmatic in terms of mobilization and transportation. For instance, the preference of Korean women was “because of the convenience of drafting and transporting them to military brothels established in other countries” (Min 2003, 945). As a result, Korean women were targeted and treated inhumanely by the Japanese military.

Their Experiences: Holistic Impacts

Everyday life for comfort women was brutal and cruel. They were forced into tiny, unsanitary rooms and forced to have sexual relations with Japanese men up to thirty times a day (Min 2003, 941). As a result of the constant sexual violence and pain, many women contracted veneral diseases that killed them or made them infertile. Others committed suicide (Min 2003, 941). Even if they managed to survive until the end of the war, several accounts given by former comfort women mentioned that many Japanese soldiers abandoned or murdered comfort women upon hearing that Japan had officially surrendered (Min 2003, 941). The pain did not end when the war ended, and many survivors faced social and economic repercussions as “the state-supported patriarchal system in Japan was central to the establishment of Japanese military brothels while patriarchal customs in Korea have been mainly responsible for the Korean victims’ lifelong suffering after their return home” (Min 2003, 939).

The incredible levels of open brutality from the Japanese military has a legal dimension. As Pyong Gap Min explains that a potential reason for targeting Korean women could have been because before the war, Japan detailed in Article 11 of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921) that subjects from their colonies (i.e. Korea and Taiwan) were not to be included within its prerogatives. Thus, Japanese men probably thought that sexual slavery of Korean women would not be considered a violation of international law (Min 2003, 945).

The trauma from the CWS was holistic as it impacted the survivors socially, emotionally, psychologically, and physically. Due to shame and stigma of sexual assault, many women would not disclose their traumatic experiences during the war. As part of their research, Pyong Gap Min interviewed several Korean women on their experience in the CWS. They observed that “The majority of my interviewees initially returned to their parental homes but could not tell their parents what had happened to them” (Min 2003, 949). Some women had to endure hysterectomies (surgical removal of the uterus) because of either extreme bodily damage or damage caused by venereal diseases. While visiting South Korea and the Philippines for Amnesty International, social documentarian and American photographer Paula Allen recalled that,

“[t]here were many who would tear off their clothes while we were interviewing them. They pointed to the areas of their bodies that had been wounded: a breast where a soldier had beaten a woman with a hot spatula, a vagina where penetration had been brutal and relentless, or feet that had been bound with tight ropes” (Allen 2005).

The effects of the CWS impacted the women’s relationships with their family and friends. It has been recorded that some women got divorced because their spouse discovered their infertility or their past as a comfort woman (Min 2003, 941). Marital issues had a strong economic dimension as at that time Korean women were dependable on a husband for economic survival. Thus, female divorcees often had a hard time finding work while single (Min 2003, 949). The pain went beyond the physical and many women lived with psychological issues. Women have detailed that they continue to have nightmares of Japanese men chasing them (Min 2003, 941). Other psychological effects include “nervous breakdown[s], excessive drinking, and fear of men” (Min 2003, 948).

Distant Legacies: The Redress Movement & Japan’s Historical Problem

With the end of military authoritarianism in 1987, Korean women formed several organizations and coalitions demanding justice, compensation, and acknowledgement of the injustices perpetrated by the CWS (Ushiyama 2021, 1260). The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (the Korean Council) was established in 1990 by thirty-seven women’s organizations (Min 2021, 1). In 1991, Kim Hak-sun gave the first public testimony on her experiences as a comfort woman and demanded an apology from the Japanese government. This brave action inspired other survivors to come out and speak as well. Shortly after, despite Japan’s persistent reluctancy, the Japanese government issued their first public apology in 1992 (Ushiyama 2021, 1260).

In 2015 an agreement was proposed by the Japanese government to the Korean government to donate 1 billion yen as compensation to the survivors in exchange for the issue to be “finally and irreversibly” dropped by the Korean government. Both the Japanese and Korean governments accepted this deal without asking the input of the Korean Council, nor any survivor organization. It is unsurprising then to know that the Council rejected the 2015 proposal (Min 2021, 2).

The topic of Japanese atrocities during the Asia-Pacific War remains a very sensitive one in Japan. Yonson Ahn conducted several interviews with former comfort women as well as former Japanese soldiers. In their book, Whose Comfort? : Body, Sexuality and Identity of Korean “Comfort Women” and Japanese Soldiers During WWII, they detailed an interview with a “former high-ranking officer in the Imperial Japanese Army” who was stationed in Indonesia. She observed that,

“[f]rom the beginning of the dialogue, it was evident that he wished to defend the conduct and the honour of the Japanese military during the war. During the course of the conversation she [his wife who was present] even attempted to stop him from talking several times: by interjecting, ‘Are you sure? If you are not really sure, isn’t it better not to say anything about that?’” (Ahn 2020, 25).

There has been a recent trend promoted by Japanese right-wing activists to erase or downplay Japanese wartime crimes and atrocities in World War II historiography (Ushiyama 2021, 1256). In 1996, these right-wing activists formed the Society for History Textbook Reform (Ushiyama 2021, 1261). This trend is present at all levels of society. On June 11, 2005, the Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Nakayama Nariaki publicly stated that the CWS “did not exist at all” (Hongxi 2020, 29). In 2007, in response to the US House of Representatives voting to censure the Japanese government for their continual downplaying of the CWS, the Japanese far-right group, Committee for Historical Facts, posted an advert that denied any claims of sexual slavery and even claimed that comfort women “earned incomes far in excess of what were paid to field officers and even generals” (Ushiyama 2021, 1261). The Committee’s most common demand is for the removal and the de-installation of comfort women statues in Korea that acknowledge the injustice and commemorate the victims (Ushiyama 2021, 1256). Another survivor, Park Ok-Sun, commented that “Until the Japanese government resolves the Jungshindae issue, it cannot have normal relations with Korea. The Korean government should put pressure on the Japanese government to acknowledge the crime and compensate the victims” (Min 2003, 945).

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