大学掲示板への投稿

The untold story of comfort women

http://www.campustimes.org/2019/09/08/the-untold-story-of-comfort-women/

By Sungwon Yoon
September 08, 2019



Everyone wants an apology when someone has wronged them. Whether on an individual or national scale, it’s difficult to forgive and forget even small slights. 
Korea and Japan have been stuck in this argument since the end of World War II and the start of Korea’s liberation. 
When the Japanese colonized South Korea in 1910, they stripped Koreans of their nationality. Anything and everything in Korean or that belonged to Korea was taken – including the Koreans themselves. Girls as young as 14 were forcibly taken out of their homes and made to serve as sex slaves, or “comfort women,” for the Japanese soldiers until the end of World War II, getting raped on a daily basis for an average of six hours at a time.
And yet Japan puts aside – and ignores, to say the least – this brutal event, acting as if the whole concept of comfort women has never existed. Japan’s government has removed all traces of comfort women from Japan’s education system and history textbooks, even, according to a Guardian article, “[demanding] that a US publisher remove ‘inaccurate’ descriptions of tens of thousands of women” who worked as comfort women throughout the war. Without these descriptions and stories, Korea’s history and pain continues to get washed away as younger generations grow more removed from the tragedy. In Japan today, relatively few from our generation truly know of the events that happened behind the curtains of Japan’s colonization of Korea.
Since then, Koreans have been constantly reaching out and asking for an apology from Japan. In response, Japan sent Korea “$8.3 million in reparations for the few dozen surviving comfort women” in 2015. Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe has also been insisting that Japan apologized to South Korea a long time ago. 
But money is not an apology, nor is removing an essential, horrific part of Korea’s and Japan’s history and calling it “inaccurate.” Money doesn’t cover up or permit Japan to ignore the pain and emotional trauma comfort women experienced throughout their lives, nor does it cover up the cold, hard facts carved into Japan’s history.
Acknowledging and writing the correct facts in history textbooks is the least that can be done. All we want is an apology and the truth. Nothing more.


This narrative is very typical one that Korean people want to disperse.
But simply they are not true.
And these narratives and attitude, which ignore the facts and fabricate the history, are severely criticized by many Korean professors at Seoul Univ, Busan Univ. etc. (They call these Koreans attitudes as Anti-Japanese-Ism.)
In particular, you may want to see Comfort Women Issue as a human right issue. Yes, when Japanese find those women and put lights on these women at a time No Korean cared about them, yes this was a human right issue.
But when they got spotlight, many Korean politicians and highly politically motivated Special Interest Group came in, this issue could not be a human right issue anymore but became a political issue and messed up a lot by those people.
(Details are written in the many books written by the professors of Seoul Univ, so learn
it if you’re interested.)
I am not trying to offend you because I believe you’re still on the way to learn and at a preparation stage to get into the adult world.
But when you learn this issue deep enough, I’m sure you would realize how easily those human right issues can be manipulated by the politicians and Special Interest Group and used as a leverage for their political agenda.
I hope you would learn a lot in college and become a great leader in the future.





The fact is that Japanese imperial forces trafficked and imprisoned underage girls. Details are written in the book "Military Comfort Women" by Japanese historian Yoshimi Yoshiaki. As you acknowledged, this is a human rights issue that should not be obfuscated or diluted by any government's political motives (including Japan) and all parties should work towards a comprehensive resolution, perhaps under the auspices of the United Nations. I hope you learn a lot in life and become better at English grammar and punctuation in the future


Thanks for you reply.
First off, English is not my first language. I would apologize if my sentences in my previous post are not grammatically correct.
However, it doesn't mean what I am writing is not true. Moreover, when you say this, you are oppressing the opinion who are not good at English.I strongly believe it's not the attitude for the people who study things in an academic way should take.
Now, let me go back to the subject.
First writer described that
>Girls as young as 14 were forcibly taken out of their homes
and made to serve as sex slaves, or “comfort women".

I understand that this is the typical narrative which is widely dispersed.
This description will certainly give readers the impression that Japanese Army suddenly came to your home and brought girls away from their home. But this statement cannot be endorsed even by Korean Government Comfort Women Research Institute.
Since you brought up the book by Yoshiaki Yoshizawa, you might have had a chance to watch "Shusenjo", " Arirang" or have read the book title Spirits 'Homecoming'.
On this September 6th, The Korean Covernment Comfort Wome Research Institute clearly stated in its contribution to the Korean Newspaper for those movies and books, that
"It is not accurate to depict as if Japanese Army abducted Korean women.' It continues ‘whether there was an abduction by Japanese Army is not the point to discuss. Only simple fact that they had to work against-their-will matters.”

As you know, this is the idea from Yoshiaki Yoshizawa who wants Japanse Gov. to take more responsibilities from wider view ( “widely difined degree of forced”, did they call it this way in English?)
However, this is significant change. But this change was made possible by the years of efforts by Korean professors, who believes that his/her job is to find the truth, not to find pollical narratives that Korean people want to hear. Given that they had to risk their physical /social lives to say something that may work for Japanese, I really think they are brave professionals. I believe them not because their conclusions work for Japan but because they were the ones who conducted hundreds of inteviews with Comfort Women at a very early stage.So, I want to clarify this point first.
Then you wrote in your comment;
'Japanese imperial forces trafficked and imprisoned underage girls'.
You made more recent discussion point.
Yes, human trafficking was the huge problem back then. Comfort women Research Institute and Yoshiaki Yoshizawa recognize that most of those human trafficking was conducted by local brokers, most of the case they were Korean brokers, not Japanese Army. (Did you forget this? or did the translated version described as you described?)
And these Human trafficking were illegal even based on the law back then. There still remains many copy of the local newspaper articles to at that time that reported that Japanese police arrested local human trafficking groups that were selling women to local brothels, or took women to far west China or even to Russia.
Every article gave an alert the existence of such trafficking groups and gave the public the warning, it also concluded its article saying "despite of the continuous crackdowns by police, those human groups came up endlessly."
Because Comfort Women were highly paid jobs as well as local prostitutes, those brokers always came up and were active underground. (As you might be aware, Comfort Women sometimes earned more money than the Prime Minister back then, and bought diamond for herself and sent money to her mother, and enjoyed shopping twice a week. One of the Comfort Women said in her testiment that ‘My earnings were better than the others because I could get more ‘tips’ than others, because I could sing Japanease song and dance well.”
(I personally feel sorry for her. But let me put this topic apart, otherwise my comment would be too long.)
Now, let me write my view.
There is no doubt that our goal is the same. We have to prevent this tragedy from happening again. If you fablicate the story and blame Japanese Army for abducting (or trafficking) women, that won't give you a real alert.
Knowing that real human trafficking group come from your neighbour with a good faith, that will give you a real and effective alert.
Lastly, the awareness of the human right (women's right) is very important. Until Japan annexed Korea and placed a public population record system in place, Korean women even did not have their own name. They were treated as if they were stuff which can be sold and bought in a society where men were deemed superior in every aspect than women. That low level of recognition of the human rights(women's right) in the society brought huge tragedies.
After the WWⅡ, Korean Govvernment held very similar sysytems at a time of Korean war, providing facilites to U.S Armies, huge rapes condcuted by Korean soldiers in Vietnam are the evidences that blaming Japanese Army by fablicating facts won't bring any actual solutions. Further, public brothels were permitted until 1990’s in Korea, that may show you how Korean women were considered then,
Thus ehancing awareness of the women's right in the society is important.
From this perspective, current activities by Korean and other activists looks way off the point.
There are a lot more aspects we need to discuss, since this issue has decades of history.
But lastly, I would mention that PM of Japan wrote a long letter to Comfort Women in Phillipines to aplogize with his hand writing signature on each of them, and delivered it through Asian Women Foundation, which is supposed to work for women in Asia. But Korean Special Interest Group destroyed that organization and hide the fact from Comfort Women for years that PM wrote an aplogies letter to them. So,never had a chance to deliver it to Korean Comfort Women.
Probably, this is too long,.( I wonder how many people would read this) Anyway, I would like to leave the rest to everybody's further studies.
Also, I would like to appreciate to have an opportunity to leave my opinion here.


(delete されたので修正版)

First writer described that
>Girls as young as 14 were forcibly taken out of their homes
and made to serve as sex slaves, or “comfort women".
I understand that this is the typical narrative which is widely dispersed.
This description will certainly give readers the impression that Japanese Army suddenly came to your home and brought girls away from their home. But this statement cannot be endorsed even by Korean Government Comfort Women Research Institute.
Since you brought up the book by Yoshiaki Yoshizawa, you might have had a chance to watch "Shusenjo", " Arirang" or have read the book title Spirits 'Homecoming'.
On this September 6th, The Korean Covernment Comfort Wome Research Institute clearly stated in its contribution to the Korean Newspaper for those movies and books, that
"It is not accurate to depict as if Japanese Army abducted Korean women.' It continues ‘whether there was an abduction by Japanese Army is not the point to discuss. Only simple fact that they had to work against-their-will matters.”
As you know, this is the idea from Yoshiaki Yoshizawa who wants Japanse Gov. to take more responsibilities from wider view ( “widely difined degree of forced”, did they call it this way in English?)
However, this is significant change. But this change was made possible by the years of efforts by Korean professors, who believes that his/her job is to find the truth, not to find pollical narratives that Korean people want to hear. Given that they had to risk their physical /social lives to say something that may work for Japanese, I really think they are brave professionals. I believe them not because their conclusions work favourably for Japan but because they were the ones who conducted hundreds of inteviews with Comfort Women at a very early stage.So, I want to clarify this point first.
Then you wrote in your comment;
'Japanese imperial forces trafficked and imprisoned underage girls'.
You made more recent discussion point.
Yes, human trafficking was the huge problem back then. Comfort women Research Institute and Yoshiaki Yoshizawa recognize that most of those human trafficking was conducted by local brokers, most of the case they were Korean brokers, not Japanese Army.
And these Human trafficking were illegal even based on the law back then. There still remains many copy of the local newspaper articles at that time that reported cases Japanese police arrested local human trafficking groups that were selling women to local brothels, or took women to far west to China or even to Russia.
Every article gave an alert to the public, stating "despite of the continuous crackdowns by police, those human groups came up endlessly."
Because Comfort Women were highly paid jobs as well as local prostitutes, those brokers always came up and were active underground. (As you might be aware, Comfort Women sometimes earned more money than the Prime Minister back then, and bought diamond for herself, sent money to her mother, and enjoyed shopping twice a week. One of the Comfort Women said in her testiment that ‘My earnings were better than the others because I could get more ‘tips’ than others, because I could sing Japanease song and dance well.”
(I personally feel sorry for her. But let me put this topic apart, otherwise my comment would be too long.)
Now, let me write my view.
There is no doubt that our goal is the same. We have to prevent this tragedy from happening again. If you fablicate the story and blame Japanese Army for abducting (or trafficking) women, that won't give you a real alert.
Knowing that real human trafficking group come from your neighbour with a good face, that will give you a real and effective alert.
Secondly, the awareness of the human right (women's right) is very important. Until Japan annexed Korea and placed a public population record system in place, Korean women even did not have their own name. They were treated as if they were stuff which can be sold and bought in a society where men were deemed superior in every aspect than women. That low level of recognition of the human rights(women's right) in the society brought huge tragedies.
After the WWⅡ, Korean Govvernment held very similar sysytems at a time of Korean war, massive rapes condcuted by Korean soldiers in Vietnam are the evidences that blaming Japanese Army by fablicating facts won't bring any actual solutions. Further, public brothels were permitted until 1990’s in Korea, thase facts may show you how Korean women were considered in the society.
Thus ehancing awareness of the women's right in the society is important.
There are a lot more aspects we need to discuss, since this issue has decades of history.
But lastly, I would mention that PM of Japan wrote a long letter to Comfort Women in Phillipines to aplogize with his hand writing signature on each letter, and delivered it through Asian Women Foundation, which is supposed to work for women in Asia. But Korean Special Interest Group destroyed that organization and hide the fact from Comfort Women for years that PM wrote an aplogies letter to them. So,never had a chance to deliver it to Korean Comfort Women.
Probably, this is too long,.( I wonder how many people would read this) Anyway, I would like to leave the rest to everybody's further studies.
Also, I would like to appreciate to have an opportunity to leave my opinion here.

これでダメなら諦めよう。

First writer described that
>Girls as young as 14 were forcibly taken out of their homes
and made to serve as sex slaves, or “comfort women".
I understand that this is the typical narrative which is widely dispersed now.
But this description will certainly give readers the impression that Japanese Army suddenly came to your home and brought girls away from their home. But this statement cannot be endorsed even by Korean Government Comfort Women Research Institute.
Since you brought up the book by Yoshiaki Yoshizawa, you might have had a chance to watch "Shusenjo", " Arirang" or have read the book title Spirits 'Homecoming'.
On this September 6th, The Korean Covernment Comfort Wome Research Institute clearly stated in its contribution to the Korean Newspaper for those movies and books, that
"It is not accurate to depict as if Japanese Army abducted Korean women.' It continues ‘whether there was an abduction by Japanese Army is not the point to discuss. Only simple fact that they had to work against-their-will matters.”
As you know, this is the idea from Yoshiaki Yoshizawa who wants Japanse Gov. to take more responsibilities from wider view ( “widely difined degree of forced”, did they call it this way in English?)
However, this is significant change. But this change was made possible by the years of efforts by Korean professors, who believes that his/her job is to find the truth, not to find pollical narratives that Korean people want to hear. Given that they had to risk their physical /social lives to say something that may work for Japanese, I really think they are brave professionals. I believe them not because their conclusions work for Japan but because they were the ones who conducted hundreds of inteviews with Comfort Women at a very early stage.So, I want to clarify this point first.
Then you wrote in your comment;
'Japanese imperial forces trafficked and imprisoned underage girls'.
You made more recent discussion point.
Yes, human trafficking was the huge problem back then. Comfort women Research Institute and Yoshiaki Yoshizawa recognize that most of those human trafficking was conducted by local brokers, most of the case they were Korean brokers, not Japanese Army. (Did you forget this? or did the translated version described as you described?)
And these Human trafficking were illegal even based on the law back then. There still remains many copy of the local newspaper articles at that time that reported Japanese police arrested local human trafficking groups that were selling women to local brothels, or took women to far west China or even to Russia.
Every article concluded its article saying "despite of the continuous crackdowns by police, those human groups came up endlessly."
Because Comfort Women were highly paid jobs as well as local prostitutes, those brokers always came up and were active underground.
(As you might be aware, Comfort Women sometimes earned more money than the Prime Minister back then, and bought diamond for herself and sent money to her mother, and enjoyed shopping twice a week. One of the Comfort Women said in her testiment in her court statement that ‘My earnings were better than the others because I could get more ‘tips’ than others, because I could sing Japanease song and dance well.”
(I personally feel sorry for her. But let me put this topic apart, otherwise my comment would be too long)
Anyway, when things happened, it's important to understand social background

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