In recent Korean politics, the historical issue of comfort women has found a significant amount of attention from the media and activists. While interest in the issue seemed to have died down after Japan issued official apologies in the early 1990’s, discussion of the subject resurged again in the 2010’s as the Japanese conservative and Korean feminist groups pressed their respective countries towards gradually more oppositional views. Although Shinzo Abe, their prime minister, has made new apologies and payments to the victims, many Koreans are still unsatisfied with the ‘sincerity’ of such reparations. The issue of comfort women appears now to be more of a lens through which Koreans may focus their anger at national problems than just a relevant historical topic.
There are many plausible reasons for Koreans to have become so interested recently in Japan’s attitude towards the issue of comfort women. Japanese textbooks have often brushed aside the atrocities Japan committed during the Second World War in favor of lending greater importance to their role as the losers(1). Shinzo Abe’s trips to the Yasukuni Shrine, a war memorial dedicated to those who died serving the emperor of Japan, have been interpreted by many as insensitive to the victims of the Japanese Empire. Some Japanese, part of ultra-conservative nationalistic groups, have even gone as far to deny that comfort women were at all coerced into prostitution, stating that comfort women entered into fair and mutually beneficial agreements understood by both parties(2). These provocations, relatively harmless and arguably not representative of Japanese attitudes as a whole, have ignited deep-seated emotions in many Koreans and have brought the issue of comfort women center stage in Korea-Japan relations Koreans, inhabitants of a peninsula stuck between two much larger powers, have often felt victimized in international affairs. Historically, the area has been conquered by foreign powers on numerous occasions, so much that there exists a uniquely Korean trait known as “Han”, a feeling of “sorrow caused by heavy suffering, injustice or persecution, a dull lingering ache in the soul. It is a blend of lifelong sorrow and resentment, neither more powerful than the other.”(3) This feeling is expressed through Korea’s unending demands for Japan acknowledge the full extent of their role in sexual slavery during WWII.
Comfort women have also been focused on for nationalist and feminist reasons as well. While Korea was colonized by Japan, the national liberation and women’s liberation movements were often thought of as one and the same. After the war, though, supporters of nationalism wanted to return women to their previous status in a restoration of Korean identity, so the movements diverged. However, in the 1970’s the ‘democratization movement’ developed, and in 1987 the Korean’s Women’s Association was formed, which fought for “(1) The political struggle of democratization and (2) the economic struggle for the right of the ordinary woman to minimum standards.” (4)The initial motivation for comfort women to be brought up in academic discussion was that those women hadn’t been judged fairly in a male-dominated society, and although today it is centered around getting reparations from Japan, it has began as a feminist movement.
1. Minear, Richard H. Through Japanese eyes. New York: Center for International Training and Education Distributed by Apex Press, 2008
2. ibid.
3. Kroman, Alex (17 September 2000). "HAN - The Soul of Korean Literature".
4. Yeong-ae, Yamashita, and Sarah Kovner. "Nationalism in Korean Women's Studies: Addressing the Nationalist Discourses Surrounding the "Comfort Women" Issue." U.S.-Japan Women's Journal. English Supplement, no. 15 (1998): 52-77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42772133.
2. ibid.
3. Kroman, Alex (17 September 2000). "HAN - The Soul of Korean Literature".
4. Yeong-ae, Yamashita, and Sarah Kovner. "Nationalism in Korean Women's Studies: Addressing the Nationalist Discourses Surrounding the "Comfort Women" Issue." U.S.-Japan Women's Journal. English Supplement, no. 15 (1998): 52-77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42772133.