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Sexual slavery and sexual exploitation is an attachment of any ownership right over one or more people with the intent of coercing or otherwise forcing them to engage in sexual activities. This includes forced labor that results in sexual activity, forced marriage and sex trafficking, such as the sexual trafficking of children.
Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu (慰安婦), which literally means "comforting, consoling woman". During World War II, Japanese troops forced hundreds of thousands of women from Australia, Burma, China, Netherlands, Philippines, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and other countries into sexual enslavement for Japanese troops; however, the majority of the women were from Korea. Many women died or committed suicide due to brutal mistreatment and sustained physical and emotional distress. After the war, Japan's acknowledgment of the comfort women's plight was minimal, lacking a full apology and appropriate restitution, which damaged Japan's reputation in Asia for decades. Only in the 1990s did the Japanese government begin to officially apologize and offer compensation.
The Recreation and Amusement Association or RAA, was the largest of the organizations established by Japanese authorities to provide organized prostitution to prevent rapes and sexual violence by Allied occupation troops on the general population, and to create other leisure facilities for occupying Allied troops immediately following World War II. The RAA "recruited" 55,000 women and was short-lived.
The Three Alls policy was a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China during World War II. The three "alls" being "kill all, burn all, loot all". This policy was designed as retaliation against the Chinese for the Communist-led Hundred Regiments Offensive in December 1940.
Yūto Yoshida was a Japanese novelist and member of the Japanese Communist Party. He has published under a variety of pen names, including Seiji Yoshida, Tōji Yoshida, and Eiji Yoshida. He wrote "My war crimes", which is the origin of a dispute over comfort women 30 years after World War II; he admitted that portions of his work had been made up in an interview with Shūkan Shinchō on May 29, 1996. Later, his fictional work was used by George Hicks in his "The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War".
Ikuhiko Hata is a Japanese historian. He earned his PhD at the University of Tokyo and has taught history at several universities. He is the author of a number of influential and well-received scholarly works, particularly on topics related to Japan's role in the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
Kakou Senda was a Japanese writer who is known for writing one of the first books on comfort women in Japan. Born in Dalian, Kwantung Leased Territory he wrote Military Comfort Women in 1973.
Kim Hak-sun (1924–1997) was a Korean human rights activist who campaigned against sex slavery and wartime sexual violence. Kim was one of the victims who had been forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army between the early 1930s up until the end of the Pacific War. She is the first woman in Korea to come forward publicly and testify her experience as a comfort woman for the Japanese military. Her testimony was made on 14 August 1991. In December 1991, she filed a class-action lawsuit against the Japanese government for the damages inflicted during the war. She was the first of what would become hundreds of women from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Netherlands who came forward to tell their stories of their enslavement to the Imperial Japanese military. She was inspired to finally take her story public after 40 years of silence by the growth of the women's rights movement in South Korea. Kim died in 1997 and her court case was still ongoing.
Chizuko Ueno is a Japanese sociologist and Japan's "best-known feminist". Her work covers sociological issues including semiotics, capitalism, and feminism in Japan. Ueno is known for the quality, polarizing nature, and accessibility of her work. She was married to historian Daikichi Irokawa.
Takashi Uemura is a Japanese academic and former journalist who, while a reporter for The Asahi Shimbun, wrote about comfort women. He later came under scrutiny for alleged inaccuracy of terminology and omissions of information. Rival newspapers attacked him for twisting the truth, and more far-right figures went so far as to accuse him of fabrication.
Events from the year 1991 in South Korea.
Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin is a 2000 book edited by Sonia Ryang, published by Routledge. It discusses Zainichi Koreans in Japan.
Comfort bag was a gift packet prepared by civilians to be sent to Imperial Japanese Military soldiers for the purpose of encouraging them. The bag contains comfort articles not issued by the Japanese Military, such as toiletries, dried fruits, canned foods, and letters of encouragement. Bags were prepared by schoolgirls or local patriotic women's societies. These activities were also made in Korea, which was then under Japanese rule, to encourage Korean soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Military.
The House of Sharing is a nursing home for living comfort women in Seoul, South Korea. The House of Sharing was founded in June 1992 through funds raised by Buddhist organizations and various socio-civic groups. The original location was a dilapidated, more traditional Korean-style rental house in Hyehwa-dong in Seoul. With continued private funding and a notable donation of private land from prominent Buddhist businesswoman Cho Yong-ja, a spacious, modern compound was completed in December 1995. The 'comfort women' were relocated to the new building located in Gwangju, Gyeonggi, on the outskirts of Seoul, in February 1996. The House of Sharing includes “The Museum of Sexual Slavery by Japanese Military” to spread the truth about the Japanese military's brutal abuse of comfort women and to educate descendants and the public.
The Statue of Peace, often shortened to Sonyeosang in Korean or Shōjo-zō in Japanese and sometimes called the Comfort Woman Statue, is a symbol of the victims of sexual slavery, known euphemistically as comfort women, by the Japanese military during World War II. The Statue of Peace was first erected in Seoul to urge the Japanese government to apologize to and honour the victims. However, it has since become a site of representational battles among different parties.
The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan was written by Professor Chunghee Sarah Soh of San Francisco State University. The book delves deeper into the World War II comfort women issue.
The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan is a Korean non-governmental organization advocating the rights of the surviving comfort women and lobbying the Japanese government to take actions of a full apology and compensation.
Kim Soon-duk (1921–2004), also known as Kim Tŏk-chin, was a Korean comfort woman who became one of the best-known survivors due to her vivid paintings that depicted life as 'comfort women.' She participated in movements against sex slavery including the Wednesday Demonstration. She also travelled abroad to attend exhibits that displayed her paintings, participated in international speaking tours, and testified about her experiences.
Korean women have had changing roles in society over time.
Comfort women – girls and women forced into sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army – experienced trauma during and following their enslavement. Comfort stations were initially established in 1932 within Shanghai, however silence from the governments of South Korea and Japan suppressed comfort women's voices post-liberation. Catalysed by the feminist-led Redress movement of the 1990s, the cause of comfort women has since been better publicised – in part due to the role of the visual arts in promoting healing and the creation of activist communities.
References
- ↑ 한국여성의 정치참여(1948~2008) [South Korean women's participation in politics (1948–2008)]. Asian Center for Women's Studies, Ewha Womans University . 2009-05-28. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-10-23.
- ↑ 蘇 貞姫サラ (2005). 帝国日本の「軍慰安制度」論 歴史と記憶の政治的葛藤. In 倉沢愛子 (ed.). 岩波講座 アジア・太平洋戦争〈2〉戦争の政治学. Iwanami Shoten. pp. 347–380. OCLC 62789230.
- ↑ "Chunghee Sarah Soh". San Francisco State University. Archived from the original on 2015-02-28. Retrieved 2015-03-07.
- ↑ "Chunghee Sarah Soh". Institute for Corean-American Studies.
- ↑ Kingston, Jeff (May 10, 2009). "Continuing controversy of 'comfort women'". The Japan Times .
- ↑ Volodzko, David Josef (January 15, 2017). "Can Korea handle the truth about Japan’s 'comfort women'?" South China Morning Post .
- ↑ The Comfort Women Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture. University of Chicago Press.
These women have usually been labeled victims of a war crime, a simplistic view that makes it easy to pin blame on the policies of imperial Japan and therefore easier to consign the episode to a war-torn past.
- ↑ "Understanding the plight of the "comfort women"". San Francisco State University. March 18, 2009.
Soh illustrates how the prevailing, simplistic view of the phenomenon overlooks the diversity of the women's experiences, the influence of historical factors and the role that Koreans played in facilitating the Japanese comfort system.
- ↑ Soh, Sarah (2008). The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226767772.
