Korean "Comfort Women": Military Brothels, Brutality, and the Redress Movement

Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights

by Pyong Gap Min

Arguably the most brutal crime committed by the Japanese military during the Asia-Pacific war was the forced mobilization of 50,000 to 200,000 Asian women to military brothels to sexually serve Japanese soldiers. The majority of these women died, unable to survive the ordeal. Those survivors who came back home kept silent about their brutal experiences for about fifty years. In the late 1980s, the women’s movement in South Korea helped start the redress movement for the victims, encouraging many survivors to come forward to tell what happened to them. With these testimonies, the redress movement gained strong support from the UN, the United States, and other Western countries.  

Korean “Comfort Women”  synthesizes the previous major findings about Japanese military sexual slavery and legal recommendations, and provides new findings about the issues “comfort women” faced for an English-language audience. It also examines the transnational redress movement, revealing that the Japanese government has tried to conceal the crime of sexual slavery and to resolve the women’s human rights issue with diplomacy and economic power.

Genres: History

324 pages, Hardcover

Published March 26, 2021

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a German who as been taught about World War II for many years in school I was shocked as an adult how little (like almost zero) we were taught about the World War II outside of Europe.

Just by consuming Korean movies and dramas I learned about Korean "comfort women" but I wanted to know more. More than what was written on a Wikipedia page.

This book is well researched and was written over a time span of almost 25 years. So it covers a lot of (recent) history and interesting progress in the fight for justice.
Since the book was finished at the end of 2020 and published in 2021, we sadly don't hear the authors opinion about Shinzo Abe's assassination.

I can only recommend this book to anyone who doesn't know anything at all about Asian "comfort women" and to those who want to learn more.
As quoted in the book:

Our worst fear is that our painful history during World War II will be forgotten.
- former "comfort women"

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very dense, slow read, especially given its scholarly angle. That being said, it's an extremely important read. We're losing so many witnesses to the atrocities of WWII—many of the women who were trafficked and raped by the Japanese military were already elderly in the 90s and early 00s when the redress movement started to pop off—and as history starts to repeat itself we need to know what happened so that we're better equipped to stand up to avoid it. More than being a dense read, it's a soul crusher and not for the faint of heart or anyone easily triggered by sexual trauma, but don't let that deter you from reading it (if you can find a copy, mine came from Rutgers University Press).

[Megan]

Read for grad school, a well researched book into a part of history that I knew nothing about