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Korean Comfort Women

Japanese Military Comfort Women: History

There is ample evidence to show the victimization of sex slavery, of so-called comfort women being forced to sexually serve the Japanese military, during World War II. A great number of female children and adolescents from Asia were kidnapped or told they would get a job or study abroad, only to be coerced and threatened into sexual slavery. Among them, Koreans were the most victimized, since Korea was under Japan’s colonial rule at the time. Numerous Korean comfort women were forced into being sex slaves of countless Japanese soldiers, and as a consequence, many suffered from sexually transmitted diseases (e.g., syphilis) without proper medical treatment and were illegally and ruthlessly forced to undergo abortion. The only way for those girls to be free from a living hell was to commit suicide. When comfort women became severely ill, most of them were brutally killed and burned by the Japanese military. Even if they survived unbelievably painful, life-threatening torture and hardship, they suffered from physical pains and post-traumatic stress disorder, which makes it impossible to sustain normal, ordinary lives. Worst, considering that the Confucian philosophy valuing women's fidelity and chastity was predominant in Korean culture in the twentieth century, Korean comfort women had to deal with social and cultural stigma associated with their experience with the Japanese Army. For these reasons, most of those women had to keep silent about their terrible experience.

This short video clip from The Washington Post proves the existence of Korean comfort women during World War II.

On August 14, 1991, Hak-Sun Kim (김학순 할머니) confessed, for the first time in South Korean history, survivorship as a comfort woman for the Japanese military. See more on the story of Kim’s life. Many other women from China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan also shared their lived experience of serving as comfort women during World War II.

To grieve and memorialize the deceased victims and survivors, the “So-nyeo-sang” statue, the so-called Statue of Peace, was first erected in Seoul, Korea in front of the Japanese Embassy on December 24, 2011; it is now established all over the world.

The roughly trimmed, short-cut hair implies forced separation from parents and loved ones.
A tight fist expresses comfort women’s wish to acquire an official apology from the Japanese government.
A little bird on the left shoulder symbolizes the notion of freedom and peace and connects the comfort women who are deceased with those still alive.
The empty seat offers a space for comfort women who passed away as well as for those who have empathy with the girls.
Bare feet with the heels up indicates that comfort women’s shoes were taken away to keep them from escaping. It also presents their sorrow and difficulty in settling down caused by the social and cultural stigma toward comfort women after their return home.
A white butterfly in the dark shadow implies deceased comfort women's wish for rebirth and the healing of their deep sorrow.
The back of the statue creates a shadow that looks like an old lady; it represents the comfort women’s feelings of deep sorrow and heartbreak.

In spite of persistent efforts by Korean comfort women and other activists, the Japanese government refuses to admit that the Japanese military illegally kidnapped innocent girls for sexual slavery and abused them to death. They insist that it was the Korean girls’ decision to make money by becoming involved in voluntary prostitution and have never apologized for what they did to those women. In the past few decades, the Korean and Japanese governments have tried to handle the issue but never reached mutual agreement.

A clip from the AP Archive shows comfort women entering a US hearing room and speaking about their experience.

Learn more about comfort women and their experience from a non-profit organization that supports comfort women.

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Statue 1
Statue 3
House Hearing on WW2 Korean comfort women
Comfort Women
Statue 2 News1 PR Shoot 30/07/2013 - Glendale Central Library, 22. E. Harvard St. Glendale, CA 91205 - 30/7/13 Bok-dong Kim, a Korean sex slave survivor, sits on a chair, which is a part of a statue remembering Korean sex slave survivors, commonly known as comfort women, is unveiled in honour of the victims of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan during World War II, in Central Park outside the Glendale Central Library in Glendale, California Mandatory Credit: Action Images / Danny Moloshok Livepic