Comfort Woman

Through painting, a Korean woman breaks her 50 years of silence on being forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Army during World War II.

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News & Politics

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• Comfort
• Women

[jpnsunrise1]

@r

A "comfort girl" is nothing more than a prostitute or "professional camp follower" attached to the Japanese Army for the benefit of the soldiers. The word "comfort girl" is peculiar to the Japanese.

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U.S.Army already proved S.Korean govt. and S.Korean are shameless liar. Shame on you S.Korean !! You are descendant of slaughterer which executed 1.2M S.Korean citizens, many Vietnamese citizens and Japanese fishermen. S.Korean soldiers raped Vietnamese women. S.K. is a liar.

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

What a shameless liar S.Korean is!!

It keep telling lies about Japan without any evidence. It try to deny S.Korean' brutal massacre and scream groundless lies about Japan.This video is evidence that S.Korean is a liar. S.Korean was Japanese citizen. They were protected by Japanese law. But after S.Korean dictator started governing in S.Korea, S.Korean people were robbed human right which was given by Imperial Japanese govt. and 1.2M S.Korean were slaughtered by S.Korean.

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

“The more I think about my life, the more I think women like me were the biggest sacrifice for my country’s alliance with the Americans,” she said. “Looking back, I think my body was not mine, but the government’s and the U.S. military’s.”

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S.Korean govt systematically involved in the prostitution for U.S.Army. S.Korean women like a flower were sold to U.S.Army as sex slave.

This video is evidence that S.Korean govt. try to hide their crimes against the humanity.

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

She had a son in the 1960s, but she became convinced that he would have a better future in the United States and gave him up for adoption when he was 13.

About 10 years ago, her son, now an American soldier, returned to visit. She told him to forget her.

“I failed as a mother,” said Ms. Jeon, who lives on welfare checks and the little cash she earns selling items she picks from other people’s trash. “I have no right to depend on him now.”

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

Many former prostitutes live in the camp towns, isolated from mainstream society, which shuns them. Most are poor. Some are haunted by the memories of the mixed-race children they put up for adoption overseas.

Jeon, 71, who agreed to talk only if she was identified by just her surname, said she was an 18-year-old war orphan in 1956 when hunger drove her to Dongduchon, a camp town near the border with North Korea.

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

Both Mr. Kim and Ms. Moon back the women’s assertions that the control of venereal disease was a driving factor for the two governments. They say the governments’ coordination became especially pronounced as Korean fears about an American pullout increased after President Richard M. Nixon announced plans in 1969 to reduce the number of American troops in South Korea.

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

In one exchange in 1960, two lawmakers urged the government to train a supply of prostitutes to meet what one called the “natural needs” of allied soldiers and prevent them from spending their dollars in Japan instead of South Korea. The deputy home minister at the time, Lee Sung-woo, replied that the government had made some improvements in the “supply of prostitutes” and the “recreational system” for American troops.

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

Bars and brothels have long lined the streets of the neighborhoods surrounding American bases in South Korea,

But the women say few of their fellow citizens know how deeply their government was involved in the trade in the camp towns.

Transcripts of parliamentary hearings also suggest that at least some South Korean leaders viewed prostitution as something of a necessity.

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

“If the question is, was there active government complicity, support of such camp town prostitution, yes, by both the Korean governments and the U.S. military,” said Katharine H. S. Moon, a scholar who wrote about the women in her 1997 book, “Sex Among Allies.”

In some sense, the women’s allegations are not surprising. It has been clear for decades that South Korea and the United States military tolerated prostitution near bases,

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

They picked out the women using the number tags the women say the brothels forced them to wear so the soldiers could more easily identify their sex partners.

The Korean police would then detain the prostitutes who were thought to be ill, the women said, locking them up under guard in so-called monkey houses, where the windows had bars. There, the prostitutes were forced to take medications until they were well.

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

The United States military, the scholars say, became involved in attempts to regulate the trade in so-called camp towns surrounding the bases because of worries about sexually transmitted diseases.

In one of the most incendiary claims, some women say that the American military police and South Korean officials regularly raided clubs from the 1960s through the 1980s looking for women who were thought to be spreading the diseases.

[jpnsunrise1]

@sol3a1

They say the government not only sponsored classes for them in basic English and etiquette — meant to help them sell themselves more effectively — but also sent bureaucrats to praise them for earning dollars when South Korea was desperate for foreign currency.

“They urged us to sell as much as possible to the G.I.’s, praising us as ‘dollar-earning patriots,’ ” Ms. Kim said.