Special Feature

The Korean Women’s Movement of

Japanese Military “Comfort Women”:
Navigating between Nationalism and
Feminism
Lee Na-Young

The Review of Korean Studies Volume 17 Number 1 (June 2014): 71-92

©2014 by the Academy of Korean Studies. All rights reserved.
72 The Review of Korean Studies

Introduction

Since the issue of Japanese military “comfort women” publicly emerged in the
late 1980s, it has traveled the world, crossing the boundaries of nation, race,
class, gender, culture, and language. Vacillating between varied dichotomies,
the body of “comfort women” has been recurrently constructed. Japanese and
Korean governments, activists, scholars, journalists, and the media, as main
commentators, have been engaged in discursively constructing the issues,
truths, histories, and even personal narratives of “comfort women.” Meanwhile,
important questions have been raised concerning imperialism, colonialism,
nationalism, militarism, and patriarchy in relation to war crimes, sexual violence
and slavery, an unresolved colonial history, nationalized victimization, and
state-regulated prostitution. The dominant discourse, however, with differing
emphases, continues to change due to partial understatement and partisan
interests. As Laura Hyun-yi Kang (2003) properly pointed out, “the matter
of Korean ‘comfort women’ poses multiple problems—of nomination, of
identification, of representation, and of knowledge production. Who can
know and then, in turn, account adequately for both the historical event and
its multiple subjects?” (25). Similarly, Sara Soh (2008) challenges us to take a
critical stance in understanding the complicated truth regarding the history of
Japanese military “comfort women.”
Existing feminist literature has examined this phenomenon in relation to
the fundamental inquiry of nation-state positionality, the meaning of history,
the relationship between gender and nation, and as an unmarked subject
speaking about or for Japanese military “comfort women” (Chung 1999, 2003;
Kang 2010; Kim 1994; Kim 2008; Park 2013; Stetz and Oh 2001; Yang
1997, 1998, 2001, 2006). Despite abundant discussion, mostly focused on
investigating “a historical truth,” only a few have fully addressed legal and/or
political perspectives, historical responsibility and legacies, and the trajectory of
activism in relation to “comfort women” (Chung 2001; Kang 2005; Lee 2010;
Soh 2008). Discussions on how the women’s movement has navigated ongoing
conflicts or negotiations with nationalism are particularly rare. Even in the

* This research was supported by the Chung-Ang University research grant in 2013.
 The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” 73

discussions, some scholars depict the Korean movement as a simply “nationalist

one” (J. Kim 2006; Yamashita 2011) or understand that “[t]he domestic public
discourse in South Korea on the “comfort women” issue has been built [on]
around two major orientations: one feminist and one nationalist” (Varga 2009,
292).
This paper’s purpose is to explore the multifaceted aspects of the Korean
women’s movement of Japanese military “comfort women” (hereafter the
“comfort women movement”) from a postcolonial feminist perspective. This
perspective, which simultaneously pursues the fight against androcentric
nationalism and colonialism, is necessary to understand the issue of “comfort
women” as a past event that is continuously reconstituted by the hegemonic
power relationships surrounding South Korea’s present postcolonial setting.
Specifically, I will analyze the ways in which the movement’s activism and its
dominant principles shifted within the context of an expanding political space
brought on by ongoing negotiations and/or conflict with legacies of Imperial
Japan and androcentric nationalism. Based on ethnographic research, over ten
years of participant observation as an insider-outsider of the movement, and
in-depth interviews, I will critically interrogate the relationship between the
women’s movement and nationalistic aspiration as mapping the way in which
“comfort women” have transformed in the progress of the movement.
I believe that any attempt to represent the historical “reality” of “comfort
women” as perfectly distinct from colonial and postcolonial historicity is
haunted by ghosts that shed light on the other side of that “reality.” According to
Avery Gordon (1997), “[the] ghost is not simply a dead or a missing person, but
a social figure, and investigating it can lead to that dense site where history and
subjectivity make social life. The ghost or the apparition is one form by which
something lost, or barely visible, or seemingly not there to our supposedly well-
trained eyes, makes itself known or apparent to us, in its own way, of course”
(8). Therefore, this paper’s ultimate goal is not to unearth “a historical truth”
nor to represent the palpable experiences of “comfort women,” but to discuss
the broader discursive conditions to reshape this phenomenon as a national and
international subject. In the process, how these ghosts are known/unknown and
finally incarnated into a social figure will be addressed.
74 The Review of Korean Studies

Invisibility and Visibility: Keeping Silence and Signifying

Practices

Several feminist scholars collaborating with activists from the Korean women’s
movement first publicized the issue of “comfort women” (wianbu) in the late
1980s. This led to establishment of the Jeongdaehyeop (Han-guk Jeongsindae
Munje Daechaek Hyeobuihoe which is the Korean Council for the Women
Drafted for Sexual Slavery (hereafter the Korean Council) in 1990. For almost
half a century, however, silence has been a common feature of both Japanese
and Korean nation-states. Why had Korean society remained officially ignorant?
Why and how was the silence broken?
Why the existence and experiences of “comfort women” have been
dismissed and forgotten can be explained in various ways. First, state
undesirability and international power dynamics, which are deeply connected
to the problem of post-war readjustment in the Far East, should be considered.
Tammy Kim (2006) argues, “[e]xternal geopolitical factors at the end of the war
meant that less was demanded of Japan than Germany in terms of criminal and
economic accountability” (225). The “Tokyo Tribunal,” procedurally similar to
the Nuremberg Tribunal,1 failed to try Emperor Hirohito (226), which suggests
that the United States cannot avoid the responsibility for the unsettled colonial
legacy and common silence regarding “comfort women.” Against emerging
communist confrontation in East Asia—including the Soviet Union, China,
and North Korea—the U.S. government wanted Japan to be a strong bulwark
of democratic alliance during the Cold War (Chung 1995, 180). The U.S.,
anxious to maintain its presence and continued hegemony in East Asia, “decided
to [help] build its former enemy into an economic powerhouse and competitor”
(T. Kim 2006, 226).
Such decisions reflect Korea’s incomplete decolonization. After Japan’s defeat
in 1945, the U.S. declared the establishment of a free and independent Korean
nation, and changed Japanese colonial system to meet Korean national interests.
It progressed superficially in South Korea with the introduction of American

1. ‌The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied Forces of World
War II between November 20, 1945 and October 1, 1946. They were most notable for the
prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi
Germany.
 The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” 75

democratic ideals and policies. Inevitably, this transplanted liberal democracy,

which was based on Japanese colonial systems and infrastructures and utilized
colonial, social, and human capital, had many defects. The U.S. occupation of
Korea retained imperial, colonial, and military attributes; the principles of liberty
and democracy coincided with American—not Korean—national interests.
Moreover, the United States’ ignorance of the local people’s desires resulted in
a fixation on national divisions that eventually caused the Korean War, which
was predictably accompanied by intensive militarization and the neo-colonial
condition (Lee 2006).
Secondly, South Korea’s national issues should not be dismissed. An
unsettling colonial history and legacy, the U.S. military occupation, national
division, the Korean War, and continued national poverty caused the Korean
government’s inability to raise the issue of “comfort women.” Moreover,
humiliating negotiations with its former enemy seemed inevitable to achieve
the nation’s prior goal of economic growth and security at the expense of its
people. During Park Jeong-Hee’s military dictatorship, the regime tried to
rebuild the country’s relationship with Japan and signed the 1965 Korea-Japan
Accord. Essentially, “Korea gave up the right of its citizens to sue the Japanese
government for civil damages,” which came in the form of reconstruction
funding (Kim 2006, 226) which means “economic development grants and
loans” from the U.S.
The patriarchal sexual culture of the postcolonial era was interlocked with
ethnocentric nationalism and served as an important hidden backdrop for the
long period of silence within South Korea. Because Confucian cultural norms
were still deeply entrenched in Korean society, unmarried women sexually
abused by foreigners were labeled as “defiled” (Yamashita 2012, 215). The
defiled daughter or wife brought shame to her family. Accordingly, former
“comfort women” could not return home or had to hide their experiences
even from their kin. Additionally, for Korean people as a nation, a “comfort
woman” symbolized the helplessness and impotence of Korean men who could
not protect their own women, families, and nation from their Japanese enemy.
Young Korean virgins, collectively raped by Japan, the colonizer, symbolized the
lost nation, lost sovereignty, lost motherland, and consequently lost national
pride. This historic and traumatic memory, which is deeply embedded in the
nation’s subconsciousness, has long haunted Korean society and resulted in
survivors’ lifelong suffering.
76 The Review of Korean Studies

Thirdly, in addition to “fascistic paternalism” and “masculinist sexism”

(Soh 2008, 31), other domestic factors in postwar Japan hindered the “comfort
women” issue from being uncovered. As several scholars pointed out, “a
defensive posture of nationalism and a long militaristic history have made Japan
‘an extraordinary example of forgetting, suppression, or denial by significant
and influential groups in the population’” (T. Kim 2006, 226). Instead of a
sense of responsibility and guilt about wartime aggression, Japanese people carry
feelings of victimhood in relation to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, as well as grievance regarding national defeat, which were fostered by
the Japanese government to reconstruct national identity (226). Consequently,
Japan has tried to compensate its nationals financially and emotionally for
war victimization, while ignoring victims from other nations (Chung 1995,
181). The pervasive ethos of victimhood has foreclosed the possibility of a
“new beginning” in the post-Cold War constellation (Izumi 2011, 486), not to
mention the resolution of issues related to “comfort women.”
Despite a long history of ignorance—except sporadic disclosures, scattered
publications, and media coverage—interior and exterior driving forces have
finally given the ghost of “comfort women” a social and political shape. This
issue was first raised in South Korea in April 1987 during a small seminar on
“International Tourism Gisaeng” held by Korean Church Women United
(Han-guk Gyohoe Yeoseong Yeonhapheo, hereafter KCWU). This organization
had been concerned about sexual exploitation since the 1970s when the Korean
government promoted international tourism focused on female sexual services.
This was particularly targeted at male Japanese tourists and euphemistically
called “gisaeng tourism.”2 Professor Yun Jeong-ok of the Department of English
at Ewha Womans University, a lone researcher of the “comfort women”
issue, was invited to talk. Barely escaping forced draft into Volunteer Corps

2. ‌In 1973, KCWU organized protests against Japanese sex tourism and presented the issue at the
first Japan-Korea Church Conference in Seoul (Kim 1987, 142), during which they issued a
“Statement Responding to the Tourism Policy” to President Park Jeong-Hee and the Minister
of Health and Social Welfare (KCWU 1984, 55). In December 1973, several demonstrations
at Ewha Womans University and other universities were held to demand that the government
correct the policy. Ewha students also staged a protest against “sex tourism” at Kimpo Airport
near Seoul, the only international airport in South Korea (55). Despite several limits, the protests
were significant in that progressive women gathered en masse to rally against the exploitation of
women’s bodies to serve national interests.
 The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” 77

(Jeongsindae)3 thanks to her class status when she was a freshman at Ewha
Womans University, Professor Yun has suffered guilt regarding the women of
her generation who could not return to their hometowns after “their service.”
Motivated by her experience, she personally located relevant documents and
survivors (Interview with Yun Jeong-ok, December 2012). Shocked by Yun’s
talk of a “hidden story” within colonial history, the KCWU established the
Research Committee on the Jeongsindae Issue under the Committee on
Church and Society, to support her research (Interview with Yun Young-ae,
secretary of KCWU, July 2012).4 In 1988, right before Seoul’s 1988 Olympic
Games, they organized an international symposium on Jeju Island titled
“Women and Sex Tourism Culture,” during which Yun presented “the Japanese
military sexual slavery issue” to international and national participants. A strong
sense of awakening rapidly spread among the Korean women’s movement and
organizations because of democratization in 1987 (Soh 2008, 372-73).
Led by Korean Church Women United, the Korean Council
(Jeongdaehyeop) was established in 1990 as an umbrella organization composed
of thirty-seven women’s organizations. Due to the Korean Council’s rigorous
activism and Kim Hak-soon, one of the first women to speak out publicly in
August 1991 about her experience as a “comfort woman,” the issue finally drew
international attention.5 The ongoing Wednesday Demonstration, which began
in January 1992, reached its record 1,100th gathering in November 13, 2013.
The Korean Council’s report on “comfort women,” submitted to the United
Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) in 1992, is often cited as
pivotal in internationally publicizing this issue (Kang 2003, 48). In November
1991 and January 1992, official documents supporting charges against Japan
were unearthed (in the U.S. and Japan, respectively) and publicized by scholars
including Yoshimi Yoshiake (2002). The so-called era of survivors was ushered

3. ‌At that time, most Koreans confused Volunteer Corps (Jeongsindae) with “Comfort Women”
(wianbu) which means Japanese military sexual slavery. However, due to progressed research
and activism, Korean people realized the difference between the two entities in 1990s.
4. ‌Therefore, it is not surprising that two founding representatives of the Korean Council and
longtime friends, Yun Jeong-ok and Lee Hyo-jae, were the age-mates of former “comfort
women.”
5. ‌In December 1991, Kim Hak-soon, along with two other former “comfort women,” filed a suit
against the Japanese government in Tokyo District Court, garnering huge international interest
on the issue.
78 The Review of Korean Studies

in with a series of international public meetings, survivor hearings, scholarly

publications, and international reports, including the “Radhika Coomaraswamy
Report” in 1996 and the “Gay J. McDougall Report” in 1998 (both UN
special rapporteurs on violence against women, its causes and consequences).
This seemingly shifted the paradigmatic story of “comfort women” and the
issue became characterized as “military sexual slavery” and by “rape camps”
respectively.
Obviously, the professed success of internationalizing the “comfort
women” issue would not have been possible without Korean activists’ sincere
devotion to victim-survivors and their endless effort to solve the “problem.”
It should be remembered, however, that increased international awareness
on gender inequality and violence against women has contributed to
problematizing Japanese sexual slavery on an international level. As Sally E.
Merry (2006) observed, since the 1980s “the relevance of human rights for
the campaign against violence toward women has taken on new importance
as human rights have become the major global approach to social justice” (2).
Since the 1990s, gender violence as a human rights violation has become the
centerpiece of women’s rights worldwide. Many suggest that what occurred
between March 1, 1992 and December 14, 1995 during the Bosnian War
was a turning point for the international women’s movement. The war was
characterized by bitter fighting, the indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns,
ethnic cleansing, and systematic mass rapes led mostly by Serbian and, to a lesser
extent, Croat forces. International media coverage of mass rape as a war strategy
contributed to internationalizing the issue of “comfort women.” People began to
see it as a global issue of systematic sexual violence against women in situations
of armed conflicts (Soh 2008, 41).
In addition to the two previously mentioned favorable international factors
and Korean women’s rigorous activism—without considering the complex
relationship between female and androcentric civic organizations and their
conflicting perspectives on gender and nation, feminism and nationalism—
it is difficult to fully understand why the ghost of “comfort women” has at last
appeared on the historical stage. Women’s movements are neither homogenous
nor static. Rather, they are characterized “as fluid and amorphous, diverse and
fragmented, sporadic, issue-oriented, and autonomous with several streams of
ideological thought and varying strategies” (Bystydzienski and Sekhon 1999,
11). They undergo continuous transformation in response to the diverse needs
 The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” 79

of women, communities, or the nation. In addition, women’s subjectivity is

not stable or fixed; instead, it is constantly reconstituted through discourse on
gender, sexuality, class, and nationhood, which is informed by changes in social,
cultural, and political climate. To comprehensively understand the “comfort
women’s” movement, it is therefore important to retrace the multiple context
and multifaceted aspects that specifically relate its unfolding within the new
dynamics of a post-democratized Korean society.

Feminist Aspirations against Gendered Nationalism:

Questioning the Nation, Revisiting Transnationalism, and
Reconstructing Identities

In the 1980s, South Korea was fraught with aspirations of forming an effective
resistance against its military dictatorships, a desire for democratization, and
massive popular protests accompanied by recurrent clashes between protesters
and riot police, of which the June Uprising of 1987 is exemplary.6 It is
considered an “important turning point in Korea’s democratization” driven
by a “dynamic expansion, revitalization, and eventual outburst of civil society”
(Choi 2000, 24). Women’s collective identity during this decade, in contrast to
that of the 1970s or 1990s, is characterized by the experience of waging street
demonstrations and protests, forming independent organizations, and building
coalitions with men, other groups, and active political party members.
From its onset, the “comfort women” movement was organized and led by
politically inspired female activists and students, not to mention churchwomen
who had played a pivotal role in the Korean democratization movement. Even

6. ‌When President Chun handpicked General Roh Tae-woo as his successor in April 1987,
students, religious groups, labor unions, and opposition politicians waged a series of massive
demonstrations throughout May and June demanding a direct electoral system. They
successfully obtained a presidential election, which eventually caused the military dictatorship’s
collapse. This is the citizen-initiated “Great Struggle for Democratization,” which is generally
called the “June Uprising of 1987.” (For further discussion about the June Uprising, please
refer to Choi 2000; Lee 2006.) It is significant that the June Uprising, initiated by the
burgeoning civil society, emerged from periods of resistance in the 1960s and 1970s, enabling
a grand democratic alliance among diverse groups longing for domestic democratization and
reunification. Korean people therefore remember 1987 as an “important turning point in
Korea’s democratization process” (Choi 2000, 27).
80 The Review of Korean Studies

though they did not identify themselves as feminists, nor bluntly challenge
the androcentric culture embedded in the progressive movement, many of
them were inwardly questioning the pervasive hegemonic gender ideology
and ethnocentric nationalism of male activists and movement organizations.7
They were frustrated by the continual messages they received from male
activists suggesting “you must be patient until the prior national goals of
democratization, independence from imperialism, and national unification are
achieved” (Interview with Yun Mee-Hayng, December 2012). Yun Mee-Hyang,
a current Korean Council representative once actively engaged in both the
democratization and the “comfort women’s” movements, painfully recalled how
“[i]n those days, we were all supposed to be nationalists—at least in public.”
While female nationalists continued to “struggle to resolve one demand at a
time or with one in the foreground, others in the background,” they “never lost
the vision and relevant practices for social changes [for women]” (Yuval-Davis
2001, 136). One particular historical incident of sexual violence provided the
momentum for women nationalists to put forth their inner struggles.
The Korean women’s collective uprising against gender violence was
triggered amid this political atmosphere by “the Sexual Torture Incident at the
Bucheon Police Station” in 1986, wherein a twenty-two-year old college student
was imprisoned because she allegedly camouflaged her employment as a laborer.
After being sexually abused by an investigator, Moon Gwi-dong, Kwon In-
Sook courageously came out to the public. Despite her official appeal to “see
the incident as an issue of class and labor not as that of gender” (Cho 1996,
148-49), the issue contributed to a rise in feminist consciousness among female
students and women activists. This new, widespread awakening regarding
women and sensitivity to gender violence enabled Korean female activists to see
“comfort women” as victims of sexual violence and their issues as representative
of all women.
Paradoxically, Korean women activists and feminists also witnessed how
Korean nationalists, newly arrived on the official scene, appropriated the issue of
“comfort women.” Male nationalistic aspirations, which coincided with Korea’s
anti-American sentiment of the early 1990s, were immersed in constructing
the paradigmatic figure of “comfort women” that became dominant in public

7. See Lee 2011, regarding the relationship between women activists and male organizations.
 The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” 81

discourse. As Ann McClintock (1996) indicates, nationalism is a historical

practice and contested system of cultural representation. Historically, nations
have only amounted to the sanctioned institutionalization of gender differences,
through which women’s access to rights and resources have been restricted;
symbolically, gender differences serve to define the limits of national differences
and power between men (260-61). Though nationalism has typically emerged
from masculine memory, humiliation, and hope—excluding women’s
experiences for its purposes—it spontaneously needs a catalyst to fuel national
sentiment. Hence, nationalism as a gendered discourse cannot be understood
without a theory on gender power (261).

Masking the truth, due to ignorance, neglect, and defeatism, brings shame
on our people. Furthermore, that girls were recruited to Chŏngsindae from
elementary school is a matter of our national pride, prior to the question of
compensation. Therefore, we should disclose the truth with our own hands
this time. (Editorial in Dong-A Ilbo, January 16, 1992; Yang 1998, 128;
emphasis added)

The comfort women issue is not that pleasant in its nature. In the wake of
an apology from the Japanese government, why don’t we close this shameful
historical phase with our own responsibility for financial compensation?
(Editorial in Chosun Ilbo, August 5, 1993; emphasis added)

While the Japanese government rejected the historical existence of “comfort

women” by denying its legal responsibility or looked down upon them as
“voluntary prostitutes,” activists in various social movements, mass media, and
intellectual communities mobilized a unified national sentiment against Japan’s
immorality, utilizing the dichotomous divisions of “us vs. them,” “comrade
vs. enemy,” “victim vs. offender,” and “good vs. bad.” “To disclose one truth,”
“thorough apology,” “compensation,” “national pride/shame,” “our chaste
girls forcibly drafted to sexual slavery,” and “innocent victims” were the most
commonly employed phrases in South Korean media editorials and activist
articles. It is understandable how such strategic discourse originated in response
to Japan’s “denial” of responsibility, lack of official apology and compensation
to survivors, and its conceptualization of “comfort women” as “mere voluntary
82 The Review of Korean Studies

prostitutes”8 or even “defiled Josaen-pi” which is a derogatory Japanese term for

vagina.
It was embarrassing, however, that the contradictory terms “national
shame” and “national pride” became entangled on the surface of Korean society,
which reflects existing mixed feelings toward Japanese “comfort women.” As
Yang (1997) indicated, such a nationalistic focus gives too much agency to
Japan by ceding authority to Japanese historians to tell the “truth.” It also reveals
how a political dimension, such as the Korean government’s economic concerns,
operates in discourse. It is more problematic that “comfort women” should
symbolically remain the exploited sexual slaves and victims of the Japanese empire,
without agency to control their own lives. Homi K. Bhabha (1994) simply
termed such stereotypical representation as the “problematic process of access
to an image of totality” (51). The experiences of colonized Korean women were
trivialized and exploited as the material or background of androcentric national
conversations. As a result, “the [Japanese] military comfort women issue [is] no
longer between Korean women and Japanese men, but between Korean men
and Japanese men” (Yang 1998, 131). In this sense, androcentric nationalist
discourse, which made the existence of “comfort women” hyper-visible, was
neither about nor for women, their position neither subject nor object.
As such, the allegory of “comfort women” (wianbu) is arbitrarily utilized
in accordance with national interests, leading to the politics of inclusion and
exclusion that constitute a nation’s history. “Comfort women’s” experiences,
voices, or bodies—utilized to represent national shame and then hidden from
official national history—became visible only when they were needed to
mobilize feelings of national unity against Japanese imperialism and to recover
Korea’s national pride (minjogui jajonsim).
Moreover, the abrupt change in the public’s awareness of “comfort
women” actually rendered them invisible. According to Gordon (1997), “hyper-
visibility is a persistent alibi for the mechanisms that render one unvisible”
(17). Korea’s patriarchy is complicit with Japanese colonialism in creating this
collective hyper-visible image of “forced victims of the Japanese.” As a result,

8. ‌Japanese conservative politicians have argued, “‘Comfort women’ were [voluntary] prostitutes
working under state-regulated prostitution, who earned money by selling sex, and [that] they
were not forced ‘sexual slaves’” (Uesugi 1997; Kimura 2008, 17).
 The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” 83

only the archetype of “comfort women” remains, while the real experiences of
these women, which are determined by ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality in
the context of Korea’s colonization, are erased.
In the process of reproducing multiple cultural versions of the “comfort
women” issue, many feminists inside and outside Korea have criticized Korean
and Japanese nationalistic paradigms, which have affected the transnational
mode of knowledge production. Since the mid-1990s, Korean feminists,
confronted with Korean and Japanese nationalism, have sought to produce
alternative narratives about “comfort women” from feminist perspectives.
Examining the complex relationship between women and nations, as well as
feminism and nationalism, Chung (1999) argues that issues related to Japanese
military sexual slavery relate not only to women but also to the nation and
that both are rooted in the colonial context of women’s dual oppression by
patriarchy and national relations. On the other hand, Yang (1997) criticizes the
masculine and Japanese-centered focus in representations of Korean “comfort
women’s” issues, and suggests the articulation of viewpoints from counter-
positionalities, exploring the possibility of collective and personal memories as
alternative subjects of analysis and history. While differentiating the Bosnian
War’s “collective rape” from the case of Korean “comfort women,” Yang argues
that the practice of using “comfort women” should be understood as one of
the genocidal aspects of Japanese imperial projects.9 Slogans such as the “Great
East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” and “one body and one family under the
Japanese emperor would not be effective without preexisting patriarchal social
practices in Korea” (63-65). She therefore asks that the “comfort women” issue
be relocated “at the intersection of state, race, class, and gender contradiction”
(61). In another article, Yang (2001) pointed out that the survivors’ agony
and suffering were mainly caused by the postcolonial patriarchal nation-
state. Conversely, Korean-American feminist Laura Hyun-yi Kang (2003)
problematizes contemporary transnational dynamics by positioning the United
States as the central and enabling locus in which different modes and methods

9. ‌Yang argues that the project was “an apparatus designed to protect Japanese women from the
threat of rape by military personnel” as well as to protect Japanese soldiers from venereal disease
(63). Furthermore, by destroying Korean women’s virginity, the destruction and restatement
of Korean identity was simultaneously possible. In the process, Korean women’s bodies were
treated “as military supply, a resource to enable the Japanese victory” (65).
84 The Review of Korean Studies

of representation and adjudication on the subject of “comfort women” occur.

The tendency toward this type of critique is not new. At the beginning
of the movement, co-founder Lee Hyo-jae, while requesting Korean and
Japanese responsibility, clarified that the “comfort women” issue is a symbol of
unsettled colonialism and war crimes against humanity (Lee 1992, 8). Colonial
history and current mechanisms of visibility and invisibility, based on the
understanding that the “comfort women” issue is a consequence of “a complex
system of permission and prohibition, punctuated alternately by apparitions
and hysterical blindness” (Gordon 1997, 17), have been the objects of intensive
feminist inquiry in South Korea.
In reality, as Lee (1992) pointed out, the Korean Council was founded
upon interest in women’s suffering and harm caused by colonial suppression and
national division, paying attention to the commonality between gisaeng tourism
and “comfort women” (10-11). The idea that female sexuality is inseparable
from issues of nationhood was a primary principle of the organization.
Accordingly, Korean Council activists have long raised questions about ethnic
nationalism, militaristic sexual culture, colonial legacy, and sexual violence.
They clearly conceive that Korean patriarchy and androcentric nationalism was
intentionally or unintentionally complicit in reproducing and reconstructing
“comfort women,” while criticizing the major role that Japanese imperial state
institutions played in conducting, concealing, and normalizing the violence
committed against “comfort women” in colonized Korea. Shared experiences
of commitment to struggle against an incompetent patriarchal government
enabled a collective shift in women’s identities toward becoming “feminist
activists,” which redirected the movement’s focus toward transnational gender
issues (e.g., women and war crime, the state exploitation of women’s sexuality,
etc.). Since the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japanese Sexual
Slavery was held in Tokyo in December 2000, activist sensitivity to differences
in gender, race, ethnicity, and language has increased, coinciding with
growing social awareness of human rights.10 Recognizing the “impossibility”

10. ‌In South Korea, since 2000, violence against women and other human rights violations are
considered serious psychological and physical injuries that are deeply embedded in daily life
and constructed by various ideologies related to gender, sexuality, class, and nationhood.
Therefore, progressive people, including feminists, have come to understand that prevention
requires a social transformation of community, family, and national systems.
 The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” 85

of international solidarity based solely on gender and the dilemma of going

beyond a limited national framework, the Korean Council began expanding
its extensive network of victims of wartime sexual assault to all human rights
organizations in various parts of the world that fight against violence (The Korea
Council 2007).
Korean Council activists’ endeavors to embrace the idea of women’s
rights as human rights led to the establishment of the “War and Women’s
Human Rights Center” in July 2001. The “Women’s Coalition for Survivors
of U.S. Camptown Prostitution” was formed in 2010 by various women’s
organizations that were concerned with military prostitutes or were involved
in the peace movement. The Korean Council then founded the “War and
Women’s Human Rights Museum” in May 2012. In addition to emphasizing
historical remembrance, education for future generations, and the resolution of
issues related to “comfort women,” the museum initiated the “Butterfly Fund”
to realize the dream of some survivors to share similar experiences with other
women. On International Women’s Day in March 2012, two comfort station
survivors, Gil Won-ok and Kim Bok-dong, established the fund to support
victims of sexual violence in other countries.

We have established the “Butterfly Fund,” which financially aids victims of

sexual violence from the Congo and Vietnam wars and their families. The
dream of the “Butterfly Fund” is to change war to peace and give hope to
the victims of wartime sexual violence through support and solidarity. The
fluttering butterfly stirs its wings with all its power to fly high free from
discrimination, subjugation, and violence. Our dream is that halmeonis,11
“Comfort Women,” and all other women will spread their wings wide
and fly freely like the butterfly. Through this fund’s activities, the Korean
Council wants to stop violence against women in armed conflicts, promote
a firm solidarity among us and our friends, set history right, heal the
wounds of the victims, and uphold truth and justice. (The Korean Council
2013; author’s translation)

This groundbreaking idea would not have been possible had the identities
of “comfort women” not changed during the movement’s deployment. Through

11. Halmeoni means grandma in Korean—a fictive kinship term.

86 The Review of Korean Studies

engagement in activism that has reached beyond nationality, race, gender,

and language, “comfort women”—once invisible “ghosts,” helpless victims,
and sexual slaves—have gradually raised consciousness regarding gender,
nationhood, and the recognition that “there was/is always a system in society
that makes a certain group of people suffer” (Kimura 2008, 18). As Maki
Kimura (2008) observed, “many Korean ‘comfort women’ have realized that
the nation-state with which they identified, and which they regarded as their
protector, can itself become oppressive to non-nationals.”
Likewise, Kim Bok-dong said:

It still hurts to remember the past and tell the painful stories of my
experience in public. Every night, I cannot sleep well because I am haunted
by my horrible experiences. …By presenting my testimony, I regain my
sense of self and feel supported and connected with other women. …By
attending seminars around the world, talking about my experiences, and
meeting various people, I have come to recognize that there are many
people who suffered like I did. Though I have many supporters, including
the Jeongdaehyeop and ordinary people of all ages, nationalities, and genders,
many do not have anyone to help them…Please do the right thing, not
just for me but also for other women who have suffered from violence
and severe discrimination the world over, as well as the next generation.
(Interview with Kim Bok-dong, July 2013; author’s translation)

By listening to the experiences of others, “comfort women” recognize

their shared agony, pain, and past as women. By narrating their own stories,
they begin to heal and feel connected to others and society. As Kimura (2008)
properly pointed out that “the ‘Comfort Women’s’ testimonies should not
be read dimensionally in the light of ‘truth’ and ‘falsity,’ but should rather be
considered as the site of their subject-formation. By narrating their traumatic
experiences, victims can acquire a unified sense of self that has long been
fragmented by shame and pain” (14-15). As Song Sin-do (2009) confidently
stated, “I am not an absolute victim, but instead I have a victimized experience
like other women” (from video clip, My Heart Is Not Broken Yet). Consequently,
they have become “more communicative so as not to be as seen only as ‘victims’
of sexual violence” (Kimura 2008, 18).
Consciousness is not fixed or transparent, nor is it acquired all at once.
Discursive boundaries in the construction of identity always change with
 The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” 87

historical conditions. According to Stuart Hall (1996), “identity is a process,

identity is split. Identity is not a fixed point but an ambivalent point. Identity
is also the relationship of the Other to oneself” (345). Halmeoni, once a defiled
girl in the colonized Korean territory, now identifies herself as a human rights
activist troubling our colonized consciousness by asking for social justice for
other wartime victims and future generations. The fact that halmeonis are able
to speak out once they have become elderly women may signify that social,
cultural, and political conditions are at last favorable for subalterns to speak
each other. Due to women’s resistance and revisions made to the androcentric
historical narrative, the authentic voices of “comfort women” can be finally
heard. Now, halmeonis begin to rewrite not just an alternative national history,
but also peaceful world histories.

Conclusion

This paper explored multifaceted aspects of the women’s movement in relation

to Japanese military “comfort women” by retracing the trajectories of its
activism and the shifting conditions under which the multilayered images of
survivors have been discursively reconstructed. Particularly, I explored how
Korean feminists and activists have navigated through ideological conflicts and
negotiations between woman and nation, as well as feminism and nationalism.
The “comfort women” movement, which has persisted through Korea’s
dynamic political transition from dictatorship to democracy and state
nationalism to globalization, is an example of postcolonial feminist practice.
From the outset, the movement has questioned the colonial legacies and
androcentric nationalism that doubly oppress colonized women. Above all, it
has problematized the way in which the elision of “I” represented in repetitive
national narratives, actually insists that subaltern “comfort women” cannot
speak for themselves. In such a re-represented/unrepresented form of “comfort
women,” a subject position of master knowledge is reproduced and maintained.
Women activists have enthusiastically interrogated “our” right to speak for
what and for whom, as well as what effects are produced in listeners, and “what
effects get stored away to be released in the future” (Cho 2008, 49). Throughout
the rigorous endeavor of rewriting history from the alternative perspectives
of “comfort women,” the movement has revealed that speaking from the
88 The Review of Korean Studies

enunciative subject position is to speak from a place of privilege, which has been
the most important contribution to our society. That “comfort women” are
speaking out now in the progress of the movement exposes the impossibility of
nationalism without competitive performativity.
According to Gordon (1997), “[b]eing haunted draws us affectively…
into the structure of feeling of a reality we come to experience, not as cold
knowledge, but as a transformative recognition” (8). Now both Koreans and
Japanese need to take responsibility to produce a new space that can offer insight
about our past in the present with a transformative recognition of this “ghost,”
since “to give form to the haunted spaces marked by trauma creates openings
for trauma’s productive possibilities” (48). We have already encountered many
truths. Seeking “only true picture” does not matter anymore. As Hayashi (2008)
rightly indicated, “the comfort women issue and other questions of Japan’s war
responsibilities are not only problems to be settled for the sake of victims of a
war long past, but also issues closely related to Japan’s future” (131) and our
future of humanity.

References

Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.

Bystydzienski, Jill M., and Joti Sekhon. 1999. “Introduction.” In
Democratization and Women’s Grassroots Movements, edited by Jill M.
Bystydzienski and Joti Sekhon, 4-24. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Cho, Joo Hyun. 1996. “Yeoseong jeongcheseongui jeonchihak.” Journal of
Korean Women’s Studies 12 (1): 138-79.
Choi, Jang Jip. 2000. “Democratization, Civil Society, and the Civil Social
Movement in Korea: The Significance of the Citizens’ Alliance for the
2000 General Elections.” Korea Journal 40 (3): 26-57.
Chung, Chin-Sung. 1995. “Jeonhucheoriwa jeongsindae munjae.” Studies on
Modern History 7: 176-91.
. 1999. “Minjok mit minjokjuie ganhan hankukyeoseonghakwi nonui.”
Journal of Korean Women’s Studies 15 (2): 29-53.
. 2001. “2000 chennyeon Ilbon-gun seongnoyejeonbeom yeoseonggukje-
beopjeongui baegyeonggwa ui-ui.” Women and Society 12: 163-79.
 The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” 89

. 2003. “Jeonsiha yeoseongchimhaeui bopyeonseongkwa yeoksajeok

teususeong.” Journal of Korean Women’s Studies 19 (2): 39-61.
Gordon, Avery. 1997. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological
Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hall, Stuart. 1996. “Ethnicity: Identity and Difference.” In Becoming National,
edited by Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, 339-51. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Izumi, Mariko. 2011. “Asian-Japanese: State Apology, National Ethos, and the
‘Comfort Women’ Reparations Debate in Japan.” Communication Studies
62 (5): 473-90.
Kang, Ga-Ram. 2005. “2000 chennyeon yeoseonggukjaebeopjeongeul tonghae
bon chokukjeok yeoseong yeondaeui ganeungseong.” MA Diss., Ewha
Womans University.
Kang, Jeong Sook. 2010. “Ilbon-gun ‘wianbu’ jae-ui sikminseong yeon-gu.”
PhD diss., Sungkyunkwan University.
Kang, Laura Hyun-yi. 2003. “Conjuring ‘Comfort Women’: Mediated
Affiliations and Disciplined Subjects in Korean/American
Transnationality.” Journal of Asian American Studies 6 (1): 25-55.
KCWU (Korean Church Women United). 1984. “Gisaeng gwang-gwang.”
Unpublished Document.
Kim, Bu-Ja. 2008. “‘Wianbu’ munjae-wa talsingminju-ui.” In History and
Responsibility, edited by Nakano Toshio and Kim Bu-Ja, 119-46. Seoul:
Seonin.
Kim, Elaine H. 1987. “Sex Tourism in Asia: A Reflection of Political and
Economic Inequality.” In Korean Women in Transition: At Home and
Abroad, edited by Eui-Young Yu and Earl H. Phillips, 127-44. Los
Angeles: California State University Press.
Kim, Eun-Sil. 1994. “Minjokdamron-gwa yeoseong: munhwa, gwollyeok,
juche-e gwanhan bipanjeok ilgireul wihae.” Journal of Korean Women’s
Studies 10: 18-52.
Kim, Jeong-Ran. 2006. “Ilbon-gun ‘wianbu’ undonge natanan minjokju-uijeok
gyeonghyang.” Philosophy and Reality 69: 108-18.
Kim, Tammy E. 2006. “Performing Social Reparation: ‘Comfort Women’ and
the Path to Political Forgiveness.” Women & Performance: A Journal of
Feminist Theory 16 (2): 221-49.
Kimura, Maki. 2008. “Narrative as a Site of Subject Construction: The ‘Comfort
90 The Review of Korean Studies

Women’ Debate.” Feminist Theory 9 (1): 5-24.

The Korean Council. 2007. “Annual Report.” Unpublished Document.
. 2013. “Resource Materials.” Unpublished Document.
Lee, Hyo-jae. 1992. “Normalization of Relationship between Korea and Japan
and Issues of Chŏngsindae.” Christian Philosophy: 8-17.
Lee, Na-Young. 2006. “The Construction of U.S. Camptown Prostitution in
South Korea: Trans/Formation and Resistance.” PhD diss., University of
Maryland.
____. 2007. “The Construction of Military Prostitution in South Korea during
the U.S. Military Rule, 1945-1948.” Feminist Studies 33 (3): 1-29.
____. 2010. “Ilbon-gun ‘wianbu’ undong: poseuteusingmin-gukga-ui
yeoksajeok hyeonjaeseong.” Journal of Asiatic Studies 53 (3): 41-78.
____. 2011. “Negotiating the Boundaries of Nation, Christianity, and Gender:
The Korean Women’s Movement against Military Prostitution.” Asian
Journal of Women’s Studies 17 (1): 34-66.
McClintock, Ann. 1996. “No Longer in a Future Heaven: Nationalism,
Gender, and Race.” In Becoming National, edited by Geoff Eley and
Ronald Grigor Suny, 260-85. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Merry, Sally E. 2006. Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating
International Law into Local Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Soh, C. Sarah. 2008. The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial
Memory in Korean and Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Song, Yeon-ok. 2008. “Singminji yeoseong-gwa taljaegugui peminijeum.” In
History and Responsibility, edited by Nakano Toshio and Kim Bu-Ja, 440-
61. Seoul: Seonin.
Stetz, Margaret, and Bonnie B. C. Oh, eds. 2001. Legacies of the Comfort Women
of World War Ⅱ. New York: East Gate Book.
Varga, Aniko. 2009. “National Bodies: The Comfort Women’s Discourse and
its Controversies in South Korea.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 9
(2): 287-303.
Yamashita, Yeong-ae. 2011. “Revisiting the ‘Comfort Women’: Moving beyond
Nationalism.” In Transforming Japan: How Feminism and Diversity are
Making a Difference, edited by Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow. New York:
Feminist Press at CUNY.
Yang, Hyunah. 1997. “Revisiting the Issues of Korean Military Comfort
Women.” Positions 5 (1): 51-71.
 The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” 91

. 1998. “Re-membering the Korean Military Comfort Women:

Nationalism, Sexuality, and Silencing.” In Dangerous Women: Gender and
Korean Nationalism, edited by Elaine H. Kim and Chungmoo Choi, 123-
39. New York: Routledge.
. 2001. “Jeung-eon-gwa yeiksa sseuki.” Society and History 60: 60–96.
. 2006. “Jeugeoneul tonghae bon Han-gukin ‘gunwianbu’-ui
poseutsingminui sangheun.” Journal of Korean Women’s Studies 22 (3): 133-
67.
Yuval-Davis, Nira. 2001. “Nationalism, Feminism and Gender Relations.” In
Understanding Nationalism, edited by Montserrat Guibernau and John
Hutchinson, 120-41. Cambridge: Polity.

Lee Na-Young ([email protected]) is Associate Professor in the Department of

Sociology at Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea. Since graduating from the
Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland in 2006, she has
developed wide-ranging research interests such as politics of representation, political
economy of globalization, post/colonialism, gendered nationalism, and sexuality. She
has published many books and articles including Feminist Oral History: Deconstructing
Institutional Knowledge (co-editor & co-author) (2012), Post/Modern Asia and Women
(co-author) (2011), and “The Construction of Military Prostitution in South Korea
during the U.S. Military Rule, 1945-1948” (2007).
92 The Review of Korean Studies

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the multifaceted aspects of the Korean
women’s movement of Japanese military “comfort women” from a postcolonial
feminist perspective. Based on ethnographic research, over ten years of
participant observation as an insider-outsider of the movement, and in-depth
interviews, this paper analyzes the ways in which the movement’s activism and
its dominant principles shifted within the context of an expanding political
space brought on by ongoing negotiations and/or conflict with legacies of
Imperial Japan and androcentric nationalism. From the outset, the “comfort
women” movement questioned the colonial legacies and androcentric
nationalism that doubly oppress colonized women. It has problematized the
way in which the elision of “I” represented in repetitive national narratives,
actually insists that subaltern “comfort women” cannot speak for themselves.
I argue that the most important movement contribution is to lead “comfort
women” to speaking out, which exposes the impossibility of nationalism
without competitive performativity. Therefore, what we need to do, rather than
insisting that the movement is a simple “nationalist one,” is to take responsibility
to produce a new space that can offer insight about our past in the present with
a transformative recognition of “comfort women.”

Keywords: Japanese military comfort women, women’s movement, feminism,

nationalism

Submission: 2014. 3. 31. Referee/Revision: 2014. 5. 29. Confirm: 2014. 5. 30.