Confronting Korea’s Censored Discourse on Comfort Women

 

漢陽大学の韓国系米国人Joseph Yi教授の最新のThe Diplomat寄稿文に韓国人は発狂しているが、私が3年前に取り上げた寄稿文の方が良くまとめられている。これこそ日本人がソースとして使うべき名文。 https://t.co/m1iDavN1PW

— H.S. Kim (@xcvbnm67890) February 22, 2021

I n the award-winning books of professors Sarah Soh (San Francisco State) and Park Yu-ha (Sejong University), women initially offered various testimonies for working at comfort stations, such as supporting their families economically, escaping overbearing parents, or deception by brokers. Some women experienced abusive conditions at comfort stations, others more supportive.

The authors note the complicity of family and neighbors in mobilizing women into brothels, and argue that survivors should freely share their diverse experiences. However, activists pressure survivors to publicly conform to the dominant narrative of Japanese villains and innocent Koreans

South Korean media rarely discusses the well-documented finding that post-1945 South Korean governments also encouraged and supervised brothels for American soldiers or the allegation that South Korean troops patronized local women in Vietnam. No Korean publisher has translated Soh’s English-language book. A Seoul court partially censored Park’s Korean-language book and fined her 90 million won ($74,000) for defaming survivors; prosecutors requested a three-year prison sentence. A foreign (Korean-American) professor was sharply criticized for discussing the Soh book in his politics courses. The university investigated activist charges that he supported Japanese war crimes, and he was pressured to write a letter of apology.

The censored discourse reflects an underlying, authoritarian-nationalist perspective in which Koreans portray themselves as innocent victims and dissenting voices to the anti-Japanese narrative undermine South Korea’s moral power.