동아시아의 평화와 화해의 정치학 Scrapbook: Disputing Korean Narrative on ‘Comfort Women,’ a Professor Draws Fierce Backlash

Disputing Korean Narrative on ‘Comfort Women,’ a Professor Draws Fierce Backlash - The New York Times

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Disputing Korean Narrative on ‘Comfort Women,’ a Professor Draws Fierce Backlash

405

Park Yu-ha, the professor who wrote “Comfort Women of the Empire,” in Seoul, South Korea.Credit...Jean Chung for The New York Times

By Choe Sang-Hun
Dec. 18, 2015

SEOUL, South Korea — WHEN she published her book about Korean “comfort women” in 2013, Park Yu-ha wrote that she felt “a bit fearful” of how it might be received.

After all, she said, it challenged “the common knowledge” about the wartime sex slaves.

But even she was not prepared for the severity of the backlash.

In February, a South Korean court ordered Ms. Park’s book, “Comfort Women of the Empire,” redacted in 34 sections where it found her guilty of defaming former comfort women with false facts. Ms. Park is also on trial on the criminal charge of defaming the aging women, widely accepted here as an inviolable symbol of Korea’s suffering under colonial rule by Japan and its need for historical justice, and she is being sued for defamation by some of the women themselves.

The women have called for Ms. Park’s expulsion from Sejong University in Seoul, where she is a professor of Japanese literature. Other researchers say she is an apologist for Japan’s war crimes. On social media, she has been vilified as a “pro-Japanese traitor.”

“They do not want you to see other aspects of the comfort women,” the soft-spoken Ms. Park said during a recent interview at a quiet street-corner cafe run by one of her supporters. “If you do, they think you are diluting the issue, giving Japan indulgence.”

The issue of the comfort women has long been controversial, and it is difficult to determine if the version of events put forward by Ms. Park — who critics say is nothing more than a mouthpiece for Japan — is any more correct than many others that have been offered over the years. Yet, for decades, the common knowledge Ms. Park is challenging has remained as firm among Koreans as their animosity toward their island neighbor.

In the early 20th century, the official history holds, Japan forcibly took innocent girls from Korea and elsewhere to its military-run brothels. There, they were held as sex slaves and defiled by dozens of soldiers a day in the most hateful legacy of Japan’s 35-year colonial rule, which ended with its defeat in World War II.

AS she researched her book, combing through a rich archive in South Korea and Japan and interviewing surviving comfort women, Ms. Park, 58, said she came to realize that such a sanitized, uniform image of Korean comfort women did not fully explain who they were and only deepened this most emotional of the many disputes between South Korea and Japan.

In trying to give what she calls a more comprehensive view of the women’s lives, she made claims that some found refreshing but many considered outrageous and, in some cases, traitorous.

In her book, she emphasized that it was profiteering Korean collaborators, as well as private Japanese recruiters, who forced or lured women into the “comfort stations,” where life included both rape and prostitution. There is no evidence, she wrote, that the Japanese government was officially involved in, and therefore legally responsible for, coercing Korean women.

Although often brutalized in a “slavelike condition” in their brothels, Ms. Park added, the women from the Japanese colonies of Korea and Taiwan were also treated as citizens of the empire and were expected to consider their service patriotic. They forged a “comradelike relationship” with the Japanese soldiers and sometimes fell in love with them, she wrote. She cited cases where Japanese soldiers took loving care of sick women and even returned those who did not want to become prostitutes.

The book sold only a few thousand copies. But it set off an outsize controversy.

“Her case shows how difficult it has become in South Korea to challenge the conventional wisdom about comfort women,” said Kim Gyu-hang, a social critic.

Ms. Park’s book, published in Japan last year, won awards there. Last month, 54 intellectuals from Japan and the United States issued a statement criticizing South Korean prosecutors for “suppressing the freedom of scholarship and press.” Among them was a former chief cabinet secretary in Japan, Yohei Kono, who issued a landmark apology in 1993 admitting coercion in the recruitment of comfort women.

Japan’s Apologies for World War II

Here is a look at major statements on Japan’s war legacy by monarchs and senior officials since its defeat in 1945.

Even then, however, Mr. Kono noted that the recruiting had been conducted mainly by private agents working at the request of the Japanese military, and by administrative and military personnel. For outraged South Koreans, the caveats rendered the apology useless.

This month, 190 South Korean scholars and cultural figures issued a statement supporting what Ms. Park had tried to do in her book, if not everything written in it. They called her indictment an “anachronistic” attempt to “keep public opinion on comfort women under state control.”

But others said the talk of academic freedom missed the main point of the backlash. This month, 380 scholars and activists from South Korea, Japan and elsewhere accused Ms. Park of “exposing a serious neglect of legal understanding” and avoiding the “essence” of the issue: Japan’s state responsibility.

Their statement maintained that state agencies of Japan, like its military, were involved in the “hideous crime” of coercing tens of thousands of women into sexual slavery, a view shared by two United Nations special rapporteurs in the 1990s.

Yang Hyun-ah, a professor at the Seoul National University School of Law, said that Ms. Park’s most egregious mistake was to “generalize selectively chosen details from the women’s lives.”

“I wish her expelled from the country,” said Yoo Hee-nam, 87, one of the nine former comfort women who sued Ms. Park, shaking her walking stick during a news conference.

MS. PARK, who is divorced with a son, grew up in South Korea and graduated from high school there before moving to Japan with her family. She attended college in Japan and earned a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from Waseda University. She touched on the subject of the comfort women in an earlier book, “For Reconciliation,” which reflected her broader interest in healing the tortured relations between the two countries.

She began writing her latest book in 2011 to help narrow the gulf between deniers in Japan who dismissed comfort women as prostitutes and their image in South Korea. That gap appears to have broadened under President Park Geun-hye of South Korea and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, who have been accused of trying to impose their governments’ historical views on their people.

Last year, Mr. Abe’s political allies went so far as to advocate a reconsideration of Mr. Kono’s 1993 apology.

Ms. Park said she had tried to broaden discussions by investigating the roles that patriarchal societies, statism and poverty played in the recruitment of comfort women. She said that unlike women rounded up as spoils of battle in conquered territories like China, those from the Korean colony had been taken to the comfort stations in much the same way poor women today enter prostitution.

She also compared the Korean comfort women to more recent Korean prostitutes who followed American soldiers into their winter field exercises in South Korea in the 1960s through ’80s. (The “blanket corps,” so called because the women often carried blankets under their arms, followed pimps searching for American troops through snowy hills or built field brothels with tents as the Americans lined up outside, according to former prostitutes for the United States military.)

“Korean comfort women were victims, but they were also collaborators as people from a colony,” Ms. Park wrote in one of the redacted sentences in her book.

But she added that even if the Japanese government did not directly order the women’s forced recruitment and some Korean women joined comfort stations voluntarily, the government should still be held responsible for the “sin” of creating the colonial structure that allowed it to happen.

Ms. Park said she had no reason to defame comfort women.

After Korea’s liberation in 1945, she said, former comfort women erased much of their memories, like their hatred of “their own parents and Korean recruiters who sold them.” Instead, she wrote, they were expected to serve only as a “symbol of a victimized nation,” a role foisted on them by nationalist activists to incite anti-Japanese feelings and accepted by South Koreans in general.

“Whether the women volunteered or not, whether they did prostitution or not, our society needed them to remain pure, innocent girls,” she said in the interview. “If not, people think they cannot hold Japan responsible.”

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A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 19, 2015, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: A Korean Professor With a New Narrative on ‘Comfort Women’ . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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Marie commented December 18, 2015

Marie

Nebraska

Dec. 18, 2015

There are a couple issues here. One is that of freedom of speech of the author, which may not apply in South Korea the same way it would in the U.S. Certainly having one's text redacted because it doesn't meet with commonly understood narrative of your country is anathema in the U.S. and wouldn't be tolerated here, no matter how far-fetched the author's stated opinions.

The second issue, the one invoking such understandable rage in South Korea, is the author's alleged thesis: that the comfort women were complicit in their own situation. (I say "alleged thesis" because I haven't read the book myself.) I understand why South Koreans are upset about this. I think if anyone suggested that slaves in the U.S. were complicit in their own slavery because of the fact that African tribesmen lubricated the slave trade there would be outrage over here, too.

The highest form of democracy is when people give their informed consent. If either of these two is missing, either being informed, or giving consent, that democracy is corrupt. Were the comfort women fully informed of what they were being "asked" to do? After being informed, did they give their consent? I doubt both those conditions were in place.

Finally, the "fact" that some of the comfort women grew to have feelings for the men who used them is irrelevant. This is akin to bringing up the argument that some of the slaves in our country were treated well by their owners.

11 Replies359 RecommendShareFlag

Shaun Narine commented December 18, 2015

Shaun Narine

Fredericton, Canada

Dec. 18, 2015

This story underlines the problem of nationalist myths and the way in which countries refuse to face the ugly truths of their past. The story of the comfort women as told by Dr. Park seems credible and full of the nuance one would find in the real lives of people living and struggling to survive in a colonial system. How many women, in conditions of war, found themselves pulled into prostitution as a way to survive? It is understandable, though not excusable, that Koreans want to hold onto a simplified view of history that leaves things black and white.

This is not to excuse Japan. Japan has systematically refused to come to terms with the very real crimes it committed against its neighbours, the comfort women issue included. Again, however, it is not uncommon for states to deliberately avoid their historical atrocities unless forced to confront them. Look at the US - a state founded in slavery and genocide that can still somehow insist on itself as a bastion of freedom and enlightenment. If that is not historical delusion then nothing is.

9 Replies333 RecommendShareFlag

Hyung-Sung Kim commented December 19, 2015

Hyung-Sung Kim

Asia

Dec. 19, 2015

As a history student, I interviewed dozens of Koreans who were born in the 1920’s and 1930’s including my grandparents about comfort women. What they witnessed was Korean fathers selling their daughters, Korean comfort station owners deceiving Korean women. They never witnessed Japanese military coercing any Korean women.

Many of the Korean comfort women's fathers had debts and sold their daughters. The comfort station owners paid off their debts in advance, and depending on the amount of the debt, the woman's contract length was determined. Korean women were not allowed to leave until their debts were paid off. Any coercion, violence or confinement was exercised by the Korean owners. So if one wants to use the term "sex slaves" to describe former Korean comfort women, they were the sex slaves of Korean comfort station owners. They were not the sex slaves of the Japanese military. A diary written by a Korean comfort station worker discovered in 2013 confirms that fact.

I don't exonerate the Japanese military because its invasion into China and Southeast Asia did create the demand for comfort women. But the Korean narrative "The Japanese military showed up at the doors and abducted young Korean women" just didn't happen. The Korean comfort station owners capitalized on the demand, recruited Korean women, operated comfort stations and made lots of money. Japan has apologized for its part. South Korea should admit its complicity and stop demanding Japan for more apologies.

10 Replies249 RecommendShareFlag

Mark Shyres commented December 18, 2015

Mark Shyres

Laguna Beach, CA

Dec. 18, 2015

A slave cooperating and collaborating with the slave owner is still a slave. A non-cooperative, non-collaborating slave is dead slave.

248 RecommendShareFlag

elizabeth commented December 18, 2015

elizabeth

cambridge

Dec. 18, 2015

Yes, in the commonly recognized "Stockholm Syndrome" those held under coercive conditions depend on their captors for their survival, which can foster a desperate sense of loyalty and devotion from their victims. This is not "love", but subordination. The point Park seems to make is that Korean men, e.g. pimps and business men and various other male Korean collaborators helped procure these women to satisfy their Japanese invaders. We've seen similar situations in many other cases - collaboration between bitter enemies like the Albanians, Croatians and Serbians to traffick women forced into prostitution, the African "peace keeping" troops who used starving women in Cambodia, and U.S. troops all over the world from the Philippines to Vietnam, to Korea, to Bosnia, to Egypt, to Germany, to Columbia and so forth, who collaborated with their erstwhile enemies to procure unwilling women for sexual exploitation. Men just don't seem to get it: Women DON’T want to have sex or be impregnated by strange, brutal men unless they are under great pressure or compulsion to do so – often their survival, in such circumstances, depends on it.

7 Replies220 RecommendShareFlag

paul commented December 18, 2015

paul

princeton, NJ

Dec. 18, 2015

Having lived and working in Japan for some extended time, I find it extremely disturbing that the Japanese do not admit to any guilt - for anything regarding WWII.

They don't allow their children to learn about the invasions of China and Korea - let alone Vietnam, and many other areas.

Their text books in HS history rewrite history to make Japan look like a victim of history.

In the end, the sexual slavery of Korean women during WWII, and the denial by the Japanese is a cautious tale about how governments can rewrite history.

In the US, our sex slaves were literally black slaves - and legal at the time.

Jefferson was the sire of such - as were many other slave holders.

And in this country we still make "African" Americans second class citizens.

We aren't doing much better than the Japanese -

3 Replies179 RecommendShareFlag

Donald Seekins commented December 18, 2015

Donald Seekins

Waipahu HI

Dec. 18, 2015

In modern, western armies the issue of soldiers visiting prostitutes has generally been pushed into the shadows because of what some people might call "prudish" western public opinion. In the 19th century, the British army in India established something like a system of "comfort women" to lower rates of venereal disease among the men, but it was abolished after missionaries raised a big ruckus; thereafter, British and Indian soldiers had to rely on the private sector to run the colonial sex industry; "R & R" during the Vietnam War also seems to have been private enterprise, although the US military cooperated by giving the men leave and transportation to places like Bangkok and Manila (and Seoul).

The whole issue of Korean comfort women has metastasized into a symbol of Korea's victimization under Japanese rule. What makes many South Koreans furious over any questioning of this official line is the idea that Koreans might have collaborated with the Japanese in rounding the unfortunate women up. In fact, many Koreans cooperated with their colonial rulers and a few did very well, including Park Geun-hye's father, who was an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army.

South Korean nationalists want to create an image of pure Korean victimhood, which is very similar to Japanese conservatives' always going on about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In both countries (and China), history all too often serves political agendas, not enlightenment.

4 Replies159 RecommendShareFlag

erik commented December 18, 2015

erik

new york

Dec. 18, 2015

While more complex then acknowledged, the bulk of women where enslaved and raped repeatedly, often till death or illness put an end to their suffering. If you think Korean women where to confused or used to cultural servitude to remember all the details, ask any of the western women (e.g. Dutch from Indonesia) how they where brutalized. They will tell you the same story.

In the meantime, the able bodied men were worked to death.

The small acts of kindness that likely occurred can't change this sordid history for which Japan has never atoned.

There is a younger generation who will not let Japan forget.

1 Reply154 RecommendShareFlag

Krista commented December 19, 2015

Krista

Atlanta

Dec. 19, 2015

"That vicious and unscrupulous Korean businessmen were at the front of the sexual slavery supply chain does not negate the responsibility of the Japanese government/military."

By the same token, the complicity and therefore guilt of the viscious Korean businessmen is not negated by the responsibility of the Japanese government/military.

The ugly truth is that both societies were patriarchal and used young girls in abominable ways. It does not matter precisely how pure these women were and it never does. Only defenders of patriarchy care about a female's "purity." I cannot ever recall an argument being made that a male victim of violence is more or less worthy of our concern based on his sexual purity. That argument is reserved for females only.

154 RecommendShareFlag

Memi commented December 18, 2015

Memi

Canada

Dec. 18, 2015

"Korean comfort women were victims, but they were also collaborators as people from a colony."

When does a victim become a collaborator? What explains how women forced into sexual slavery sometimes develop affections for their rapists? Clients? Lovers?

Certainly the prostitutes who (followed?) the pimps searching for American troops through snowy fields and ended up servicing the Americans as they lined up outside tents didn't have time to develop affections. Ferrington from Boonville quips, "It worked pretty well for all concerned." Yup. That's one way to look at it.

To say we have an uneasy relationship with the concept of 'men's needs' in times of war, imprisonment, or military service is an understatement. We have no idea how to come to terms with any of it.

In Afghanistan the warlord's boy is chained to his bed and the American soldiers who hear his screams at night are told to say nothing and do nothing about it. ISIS soldiers capture Yasidi women and girls and pray to their God before brutally raping them. In Africa by Africans. In Vietnam by Americans. In Korea by Japanese and Americans. In Germany by the invading Russians. It never ends.

Women and boys are spoils of war. That we sometimes make the best of brutal situations by trying to humanize our oppressors does not mean we are collaborators.

Maybe the ancient Greeks did it best. They professed pure love for their boys and treated them well. Who gave comfort to the comfort women?

I don't know.

1 Reply142 RecommendShareFlag

Matt commented December 19, 2015

Matt

New York

Dec. 19, 2015

Amazing how some of the NYT readers seem to know more than this author, even though I am sure most haven't done any research of this topic on their own.

You don't have to agree with her proposed view. But I think an important thing to take away is the broader picture that these events are not as simple as South Koreans or the majority of Americans would like to believe. There are a number of factors and pieces of evidence to consider and some histories don't lend themselves to a clear cut narrative. This may be one of them. The important thing is to have these voices heard and not dismiss them (especially in academia), just as we won't dismiss the voices of former sex slaves.

2 Replies113 RecommendShareFlag

Paul from Oakland commented December 18, 2015

Paul from Oakland

SF Bay Area

Dec. 18, 2015

Park Yu-ha will next be defending good old American slavery. The "comfort women" were the product of Japanese fascism that put itself as the masters of all Asian peoples. That vicious and unscrupulous Korean businessmen were at the front of the sexual slavery supply chain does not negate the responsibility of the Japanese government/military. Expect more "reappraisals" for fascist acts as Abe's friends try to rewrite history.

2 Replies77 RecommendShareFlag

swm commented December 18, 2015

swm

providence

Dec. 18, 2015

Doubt it worked so well for the young women. Trafficking in and sexually enslaving women is not one of them things that anyone should get a pass on.

75 RecommendShareFlag

Web commented December 18, 2015

Web

Alaska

Dec. 18, 2015

University professors are supposed to research records and analyze them. The discussion that emerges, pro and con, helps sift out the truth from error. Suppressing speech and arguments for unpopular views ensures that the "official" truth will be the only information Korean citizens have. Officials are not always correct. They sometimes use their own beliefs and interpretations to deny others the right to speak and write freely. Korea would demonstrate strength and maturity to allow these issues to be debated freely. Censorship helps hide the truth.

1 Reply71 RecommendShareFlag

thx1138 commented December 18, 2015

thx1138

usa

Dec. 18, 2015

i can hardly believe th ignorance of some of th comments conflating japanese sexual slavery of hundreds of thousands of women during ww2 to th prostitution that surrounds military bases around d th world

in th latter case its voluntary prostitution and th women are paid

th sex slaves of th japanese had no choice and they were paid nothing

many died in slavery

6 Replies71 RecommendShareFlag

emma commented December 18, 2015

emma

Dec. 18, 2015

I do not know what the facts are, whether it was the Japanese government directly involved in recruiting Korean women to a sex trade or whether it was profit seeking Japanse and Korean business people. What is important here for me, without the war started by Japan, the opportunity to create comfort women would not be there. Japan is responsible for starting the war and creating the lawless environment where a sex trade was possible.

2 Replies70 RecommendShareFlag

thomas bishop commented December 18, 2015

thomas bishop

Dec. 18, 2015

"The issue of the comfort women has long been controversial..."

not really. the wars were bad for everyone, except those at the top. women were forced into prostitution. men--korean, japanese, american, chinese, russian--were conscripted and became cannon fodder, and never lived to write books about it. those who were not on the front lines were basically slaves in one way or another for the war effort.

let's never return to the world from 1930-1945, from 1945-1949 and from 1950-1953.

2 Replies63 RecommendShareFlag

Charles commented December 18, 2015

Charles

NY State

Dec. 18, 2015

I'm sure the reasons that Korean and other women ended up in comfort stations were as varied as any other human choice; although it must be noted that all this happened in countries which were the victims of Japanese military conquest, and whose citizens were unable to resist.

But for Ms. Park to argue that the Japanese government was not "officially" involved is disingenuous, because the Japanese military knew about the comfort stations and, during World War II, the Japanese military were the government.

63 RecommendShareFlag

Jerry commented December 18, 2015

Jerry

New York

Dec. 18, 2015

It is not simple. Suppose that someone raped one's sister several times a day for 10 years, killed her and denies what he did forever and tries to change the truth by telling you that she wanted it. If that is the truth, would there be anyone who could have any relationship with this guy?

61 RecommendShareFlag

Barbara Fu commented December 18, 2015

Barbara Fu

Pohang

Dec. 18, 2015

Defamation laws in Korea do not require that what you wrote was false, only unflattering. M's. Park has unusual courage to even print this.

1 Reply57 RecommendShareFlag

RoughinIt commented December 18, 2015

RoughinIt

Seoul, Korea

Dec. 18, 2015

What is important about Professor Park's book - and what makes it so volatile in South Korean society - is that it begins to tear apart the single-minded storyline purported by the Korean government and leaders since the Liberation that "the Japanese were the only evildoers" in the comfort women/sex slavery experience. While her comments are sure to be controversial, they will begin a more wide-angled discussion and debate over the myriad actors and players involved in and that profited from the recruitment of Korean women to serve Japanese soldiers.

2 Replies56 RecommendShareFlag

Walter Hamilton commented December 19, 2015

Walter Hamilton

Sydney, Australia

Dec. 19, 2015

It's complicated. But the competing sides in this drawn out debate want to impose a simple narrative onto the subject. Some, including readers commenting here, seem to take the view that any 'subject peoples' living under an occupying power (Korea under Japan between 1910 and 1945) cannot be regarded as having choices, cannot act except to reflect the power system of the state. I don't buy it. Many citizens of totalitarian systems, from Solzhenitsyn to Anne Frank, have provided us with proof that individual choices and personal moral responsibility are not switched off amid even the most oppressive circumstances. I applaud those who pursue a nuanced treatment of history. Sure, those with vested interest will rush to the barricades to wave their pamphlets, but it diminishes South Korean civil society if it cannot weigh up the evidence of its past free of vituperation and the recourse to litigation.

2 Replies56 RecommendShareFlag

DSM commented December 18, 2015

DSM

Westfield

Dec. 18, 2015

She is an apologist similar to those who claim slavery was good for the slaves.

3 Replies55 RecommendShareFlag

J. Cornelio commented December 18, 2015

J. Cornelio

Washington, Conn.

Dec. 18, 2015

Didn't the good professor know that victims are victims are victims especially when they are iconic victims used to prove my righteousness and your evilness.

Human nature, however, is not so simple. Our pathetically adolescent view of it, however, is beyond simplistic. And from such simplistically righteous views wars are waged and justified. And once won, it is the victor who writes the history and gets to prove to those who dare to think and to question and to wonder just how pathetically adolescent those "winners" can be.

54 RecommendShareFlag

Melissa Soto-Schwartz commented December 19, 2015

Melissa Soto-Schwartz

Cleveland

Dec. 19, 2015

As an American women's historian I can understand the complexities in this case. I think Professor Yu-ha has brought to light some fascinating, and clearly disturbing, truths. However, people do not always want to hear the "truth" and timing is everything. I am not suggesting Professor Yu-ha should not have come forward with her interesting findings, neither am I a supporter of government censorship. Rather, I am attempting to put the current "backlash" into context. The professor's scholarship appears to me (after reading solely this article) to be making a strong theoretical argument indicting a patriarchal system (in which women and girls are thrown away or sold callously), indicting local collaborators, and putting a distance between Korea and the traditional capital O oppressor Japan. Such a dramatic re-interpretation of Korea's wartime experience can be nothing but shocking for the local population. Usually, such theoretical understandings of the historical narrative are best accepted not decades after the event, but multiple generations after, maybe even 100 years or so. In the United States, the best scholarship on slavery has been done in the twenty-first century.

4 Replies51 RecommendShareFlag

E commented December 19, 2015

NYC

Dec. 19, 2015

@Mark in Brooklyn, below: Germany has been far more open than Japan in acknowledging what it did and reckoning with it publicly. In Germany there are reminders of the Holocaust everywhere, as if the country, collectively, does not want to forget the past. In Japan, on the other hand, there is almost no mention of it anywhere - no monuments, no museums, no plaques, etc. One get the sense that the country has never fully owned, processed, and apologized for the atrocities it committed (awful, read up on them if you want to); it just wants to forget the period entirely. There is also a sizable portion of Japanese - increasing nowadays - who actually deny what happened, which you don't find in Germany except on the very fringes.

1 Reply51 RecommendShareFlag

Adam commented December 18, 2015

Adam

Somerville, MA

Dec. 18, 2015

Comfort stations and comfort women were sanctioned at the highest level of the Japanese government. The government and military pretended that the comfort women were willing participants. This was arguably the case for prostitutes who were recruited to work in military brothels early in the war. This wasn't the case as the war progressed and women were coerced into sex slavery. The Japanese had plenty of time to destroy evidence of war crimes before the formal surrender was signed. This is why evidence of many war crimes has been lost to history. I recommend JAPAN'S GESTAPO: Murder, Mayhem and Torture in Wartime Asia by Mark Felton to anyone who is interested in learning more about wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese.

1 Reply40 RecommendShareFlag

trblmkr commented December 19, 2015

trblmkr

NYC

Dec. 19, 2015

It's so hard to know all the facts from >70 years ago but one thing is for sure, freedom of expression and speech are a sign of a democracy's maturation. Lack thereof is truly regrettable.

2 Replies37 RecommendShareFlag

Moon commented December 18, 2015

Moon

New York

Dec. 18, 2015

Thank you for your good points! I was disgusted by this Korea professor's writing which is really absurd. Because the "comfort women" who were aged from 8 to 14 were girls who thought they would get decent work for money that could support their family in poverty after Japan invaded Korea and killed our queen and applied the most egregious violence to koreans. Those comforts women was raped about 9 times a day by the Japanese soldiers and when they carried babies they got killed. I know these facts because I wrote a dissertation about this at the University of Nottingham. What those Japanese did to Koreans at that time is worse than what Nazis did to Jews. Japan has never said sorry for what they did during the WWII. But after reading this well rationalized comments I feel much better. Thank you!

33 RecommendShareFlag

Robin commented December 18, 2015

Robin

Portland, OR

Dec. 18, 2015

Many years ago I had the privilege of interviewing some of the surviving "comfort women", some of whom were speaking publicly for the first time. One woman said she was kidnapped on her way home from school. Another said her family had agreed to send her to Japan to work in a factory, but the "work" turned out to be servicing a dozen or more Japanese soldiers a day. The violence these women experienced was unimaginable. I'm sure there were Korean collaborators who duped the families of these young women. Perhaps some parents knew what was in store for their daughters. But what does that have to do with the horrors that followed? The women I met were survivors. Some married and had families. Many did not. All were traumatized. I have nothing to say to Park Yu-ha. Her book doesn't sound like the work of a scholar.

4 Replies33 RecommendShareFlag

Krista commented December 19, 2015

Krista

Atlanta

Dec. 19, 2015

Maybe I'm strange but the purity of the girls factors very little in my understanding of what happened to these women. Is a woman only worthy if she is "pure?" And who sets the standard? If a comfort woman had sex before being coerced into this horror is she less worthy than a virgin? Why?

No one deserves to be raped. It doesn't matter what you wear or if you have voluntarily had prior sexual contact. To me, from the perspective of the women it really doesn't matter how they came to be in the situation. If there were Korean collaborators, and there surely were, that is a harsh reality that must be faced. France had nazi collaborators as did Great Britain. Perhaps Ms. Park's book is reviled for pointing out Korean collaboration.

I have not read the book so perhaps I'm missing something but this all sounds awfully nationalistic and patriarchal.

33 RecommendShareFlag

DSM commented December 18, 2015

DSM

Westfield

Dec. 18, 2015

Korean women at that time were desperately poor and had very few options. American women--and those in every other country, such as France, Italy and Germany in 1945--in similar situations throughout history have also turned to prostitution.

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Hera commented December 18, 2015

Hera

New Jersey

Dec. 18, 2015

After reading this article, I find myself deeply disturbed. Ms. Park uses the example of some comfort women forging comrade-like and love relationships with Japanese soldiers as evidence of agency, making them collaborators. Yet, my immediate thought was those women were probably affected by Stockholm Syndrome. Categorically, an imbalance of power was built into these relationships. Her assertion that the comfort women were "collaborators as people from a colony" is offensive. These women were trying to survive under horrendous, life-threatening circumstances. Her investigation of the roles that patriarchal societies, statism and poverty played in the recruitment of comfort women may be a good methodological approach but did she look at their intersection with the role of war, occupation and colonization on the lives of these women? Does she personally believe that she cannot hold Japan responsible because some of the comfort women "volunteered", thus making them less pure and innocent? Does it matter that Japan had illegally annexed, occupied and colonized Korea, creating the circumstance in which these women made their "choices"? If the choices include being sent to Japan as a slave, a labor camp or going to a brothel, isn't choice really a fallacious term to use? I wonder what Ms. Park's true reason for writing this book is.

1 Reply30 RecommendShareFlag

S.D. Keith commented December 18, 2015

S.D. Keith

Birmingham, AL

Dec. 18, 2015

All this story really indicates is that once a historical figure or event becomes iconic and legendary in a way that binds the culture in the present, questioning the historical accuracy of the legend within the culture is verboten.

For instance, try saying something, anything, derogatory, or even just not overtly flattering, about Abraham Lincoln or George Washington in the US and you will be met with howls of derision, and put on the path like Ms. Park, of being ostracized.

Take a simple example. Abraham Lincoln didn't fight the Civil War to free the slaves. Lincoln himself explained that he was fighting the war to preserve the Union, slavery or no slavery. Furthermore, Lincoln was probably as racist in his views towards blacks as any Southern planter. Freeing the slaves was just a political ploy to weaken the South and inspire the North to continue the fight. These observations are all readily defensible. But Lincoln is an icon; his motives and actions can't be questioned. He fought the Civil War to end slavery and that's all there is to it.

6 Replies29 RecommendShareFlag

Jerry commented December 18, 2015

Jerry

New York

Dec. 18, 2015

I think you seriously manipulate facts with respect to Korea and Koreans. Quite scary to see what you are saying here is exactly the same as Japanese's ultra right wing's saying in their blog.

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Phil commented December 19, 2015

Phil

Brentwood

Dec. 19, 2015

In real life, stories are usually more complicated than the textbook version. I applaud Park Yu-ha for tackling a controversial story. She's running into rabid political correctness similar to what's rising on U.S college campuses.

2 Replies27 RecommendShareFlag

Joe G commented December 18, 2015

Joe G

Houston

Dec. 18, 2015

One of the reasons of cultivating a system of camp followers was that soldiers would be less brutal with the surrounding population. Why rape a woman if you could visit a prostitute? It's an old story. Boys cnfronted with inevitable death on the battle field sometimes have no qualms about raping a women. It happens more then you think. Morality never fitd nto a war zone.

9 Replies25 RecommendShareFlag

Jay commented December 19, 2015

Jay

Green Bay

Dec. 19, 2015

I have not read the book and would like to if an English translation was available. From what I gather from the excerpts in this article, it appears Ms. Park has looked at this from different angles when it comes to pinning accountability. She goes where most others have not gone before, digging into angles that South Korean society wishes to remain unexplored and oblivious to. I cannot help but compare this with the contention by some of my acquaintances that there were African tribes that captured and sold people of other tribes as slaves to Americans and Europeans, and thus the blame must be placed on those who captured and sold them. My take on that is that if the western world was as civilized as they wish to be seen as, then they should have declined to purchase these human beings as slaves. The same goes for Japan that had the power and moral obligation to decline. That said, the greed and inhumanity of the accomplices in South Korea or in Africa must be talked about as well. How do you learn valuable lessons from history if you are in denial? So, kudos to Ms. Park.

3 Replies25 RecommendShareFlag

RO commented December 18, 2015

Washington DC

Dec. 18, 2015

To a great extent, it's hard to believe at least some of what Ms. Park writes would not be true. There are some indisputable facts:

1) The military brothels that the Japanese run were profitable.

2) There was money to be made through prostitution.

3) There were impoverished women in Korea.

Yes, there is a matter of debate about how many women were coerced into prostitution through force, and others by economic circumstance. There is also a matter of responsibility in how the Japanese economically exploited Korea to create those conditions.

But the idea of the purity of all Korean comfort-women, that at least not some of them were economically pressed into such roles defies common sense and a simple sense of history. Diddo the idea that ONLY Japanese recruiters could have functioned in the system, and not that Korean collaborators might not also participate.

I have no read Ms. Park's book, so I cannot speak to the reliability of the evidence she presents. But nothing that she seems to be arguing for seems in any way out of hte ordinary, or incredulous--unlike say, Japanese deniers of the Rape of Nanking.

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Kelly Ace commented December 18, 2015

Kelly Ace

Wilmington, DE

Dec. 18, 2015

Hi, Ferrington.

Thank you for your Army service.

What factors are you considering when you conclude that it worked "pretty well" for all concerned?

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Nathan an Expat commented December 18, 2015

Nathan an Expat

China

Dec. 18, 2015

Another example of the US public diplomacy strategy to "rehabilitate" Japan's reputation in Asia and the wider world by rewriting/reinterpreting a horrific Japanese war record which annoyingly continues to act as a brake on US efforts to remilitarise a Japan troublingly still conflicted about its war record and position it as their "deputy Sheriff" in Asia. (Recent polls of Japanese citizens and protests over Abe's illegal rewriting of the Japanese constitution to allow the more aggressive military stances-- and consequent major weapon system purchases -- the US is encouraging amply demonstrated not just South Korean but even a majority of Japanese citizens oppose these moves. ) Well, no matter, South Korea will continue to be pressured to forget the past, the comfort women and all the deaths and get with the Pacific Pivot program. ( South Korea has shown an alarming openness to further development of ties to China and the two nations bond over their common experience of Japanese aggression including the comfort women. That simply will not do!) BTW expect more "Our friends the Japanese!", "the Japanese are just just like us!" style puff pieces art/popular culture articles in the NYT coupled with the usual daily or almost daily hammering and "othering" of China -- got to get the domestic audience on side with the program as well.

5 Replies23 RecommendShareFlag

QED commented December 18, 2015

QED

NYC

Dec. 18, 2015

Swm - please come out from under your sheltered existence. In many parts of the world, the easiest way for some women to make a quick buck is through selling sex. And there is a spectrum of sex work, ranging from the hard core trafficked prostitute through someone who sells themselves a few times a year to make ends meet. The Putitanical history of the US has created such a sex negative culture, however, that any transactional whiff to a sexual encounter starts fingers wagging. Of course, the little gold digging socialites chasing rich guys are exempt from such pompous judgement.

13 Replies23 RecommendShareFlag

Josh Hill commented December 18, 2015

Josh Hill

New London, Conn.

Dec. 18, 2015

"Look at the US - a state founded in slavery and genocide that can still somehow insist on itself as a bastion of freedom and enlightenment."

Oh, come on. The world's first modern democracy, and one of the freest societies on the planet, can certainly make such claims. Slavery was universally accepted and practiced at the time the United States was founded, as was imperial domination (not genocide, as you so dishonestly characterize the lamentable oppression of Native Americans).

The United States was founded by Europeans who, rather than following the conventional course and establishing a monarchy, began a process that over time led to a fairer and more equal, civil, and democratic society, here and around the world. No amount of revisionism can change that self-evident fact.

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JHP commented December 20, 2015

JHP

Manhattan/Honolulu

Dec. 20, 2015

There is an old trend where many radical right-wing Japanese citizens will pose as Korean or Chinese nationals online, writing under Korean or Chinese names while espousing radical, pro-Japan views. It seems as though some of these comments may be such. One commenter is linking to a Japanese blog that denies many of these women were forced into sex slavery, while posting under a Korean name. I am not saying I am certain this person is not Korean, but for the those reading these comments, please take everything with a grain of salt. Anyone can pose as anyone on the Internet. This is why modern history texts and journalism must try to be as free from bias as possible, so that people can learn the truth.

Sidenote: I am not a Japan hater; I also have Japanese blood in me, but I think many Westerners are not familiar with the convoluted relations among the East Asian countries, both in the past and present. Both Korea and Japan have their problems, and yes, both countries can be extremely xenophobic, especially outside of the cities. Some commenters are writing that Korea should "get over it," but it's not so simple when Koreans are still openly discriminated against in Japan (even when they have been living there for generations), and when the Japanese government itself obfuscates the truth. Korea is still divided into two; this is a direct result of the war. How can one "get over" something when North Koreans are still dying, 70 years later?

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808Pants commented December 19, 2015

808Pants

Honolulu

Dec. 19, 2015

It's common for South Koreans to voraciously defend social dogma that, to broad-minded westerners, is absurd and untenable. Unless you're up for a fight, you smile, maybe roll your eyes privately, and move on. There ARE no homosexuals in Korea - that's one. Another is that there IS no pregnancy out of wedlock. So it's not hard to believe that the same kind of homogenized and absolutist purely-victim narrative is widely but irrationally revered in the case of comfort women. Of course there were atrocious examples of Japanese behavior, but to paint this portrait entirely in the official black and white seems naive in the extreme about human nature and doing what it takes to survive under horrific conditions.

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Charles commented December 19, 2015

Charles

Cambridge, UK

Dec. 19, 2015

The troublesome aspect here, isn't Korea's agonies in acknowledging or denying the fine details of Japanese occupation. Many previously occupied countries have similar issues. The problem is that this book - in an unabridged Japanese version - has been hailed as further evidence in the ongoing Japanese revision of it's Imperial history. So while Ms Park's work may have some minor effect to broaden and diversify Korean history, it simultaneously serves a more sinister purpose of obliterating uncomfortable parts of Japanese history.

3 Replies21 RecommendShareFlag

thx1138 commented December 18, 2015

thx1138

usa

Dec. 18, 2015

japan conquered korea in 1910 and korea was not liberated till japan surrendered

it was not just during ww2

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jorge commented December 18, 2015

jorge

San Diego

Dec. 18, 2015

This issue seems obscured by both Korean and Japanese nationalism; it's black or white. Did these women have a choice in the matter? If they did not, then all else is secondary-- how they were treated, having feelings for their lovers, etc. If Koreans collaborated and made a profit (not shocking) that still doesn't change things, except to change the Korean nationalistic narrative of "purity." Even the professor may be conflicted, a Korean who lived and studied in Japan and teaches Japanese literature. I can see how some may see her as an apologist. It's not so much whether something is true as it is what is chosen to be portrayed, what is not, and why.

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Amy Haible commented December 19, 2015

Amy Haible

Harpswell, Maine

Dec. 19, 2015

God I'm sick of women's bodies being used by other people, judged by other people, controlled by other people.

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pje commented December 19, 2015

pje

NYC

Dec. 19, 2015

To me-"There is no evidence, she wrote, that the Japanese government was officially involved in, and therefore legally responsible for, coercing Korean women" defies logic. To Imperial Japan these women-the conquered- would have been considered sub-human, just as captured Allied soldiers forced into slave labor were considered sub-human. And while there may not have been an "official" policy of starving and working many of these prisoners to death that was in fact the outcome. None of this would have "officially" mattered because it was all to serve the Empire and it's living deity-the Emperor. A railroad must be built through the jungle...Japanese soldiers must have their sexual needs met; all at any cost.

To absolve the Japanese government because there were Korean profiteers, Japanese pimps and perhaps some prostitutes involved is revisionist history at it best. Some volunteered?-go without food for a few weeks and see what you might "volunteer" to do.

I'm sure that Ms. Kim will enjoy her retirement in Japan no matter the outcome.

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thx1138 commented December 18, 2015

thx1138

usa

Dec. 18, 2015

very similar to Japanese conservatives' always going on about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

yeah, i cant believe what whingers those folks are

two lousy atom bombs and now well never hear th end of it

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Memi commented December 18, 2015

Memi

Canada

Dec. 18, 2015

I wonder how many women would consider prostitution a rewarding occupation if they weren't forced into it by circumstances beyond their control. Enforced slavery practiced as overtly as it was by the Japanese is heinous, but the degradation of women who take up prostitution as a means to survive, many of whom are sold to pimps as young girls by their own parents, cannot be dismissed simply because "th women are paid"

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JCB commented December 19, 2015

JCB

NYS

Dec. 19, 2015

"The ten most attractive, including Jan O’Herne... were taken to an old Dutch colonial house at Selarang, some 47 kilometres from their camp. This house, which became known to the Japanese as ”The House of the Seven Seas“, was used as a military brothel, and its inmates were to become ”comfort women“.

On their first morning at the house, photographs of the girls were taken, and displayed on the front verandah which served as a reception area. Visiting Japanese personnel would then select from these photographs. Over the following four months, the girls, all virgins, were repeatedly raped and beaten, day and night. Those who became pregnant were forced to have miscarriages... the Japanese warned the inmates that if anyone told what had happened to them, they and their family members would be killed. Several months later the O’Hernes were transferred to a camp at Batavia, which was liberated on 15 August 1945."

https://www.awm.gov.au/exhibitions/alliesinadversity/prisoners/women/

1 Reply18 RecommendShareFlag

Barbara commented December 19, 2015

Barbara

Los Angeles

Dec. 19, 2015

Prostitution is not simple because it involved people. Comfort women were bought and sold, not just kidnapped. This should not be so surprising. It appears the women were still mostly powerless. Stories of prostitutes and prostitution have often included love stories and kindnesses from Johns and Pimps to prostitutes. The world of sex slaves and sex for sale is a human story. How would the story of the comfort women be any different? The fact that there were Koreans involved in getting women for the Japanese simply says that there was corruption and the power differential was about the men taking the money and the women being used. In the world of prostitution, young girls are the premier commodity. That has not changed.

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CityBumpkin commented December 18, 2015

CityBumpkin

Earth

Dec. 18, 2015

The Korean courts' and mainstream society's rather heavy-minded response will probably hamper efforts to make the Japanese government more forthcoming and honest about the issue. When Korea is coercing its intellectuals from presenting anything other than the prevalent viewpoint, it will only lend legitimacy to Japanese ultra-nationalists, who will say it is the other side that is suppressing an objective study of historical events.

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swm commented December 18, 2015

swm

providence

Dec. 18, 2015

QED - Trafficking in women is to consensual acts what trafficking in insults is to rational discourse.

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Kalidan commented December 19, 2015

Kalidan

Dec. 19, 2015

Ms. Park's narrative does disservice to everyone occupied by the Japanese, or held prisoner by the Japanese. To the extent her work is an attempt to absolve the Japanese government of the 1930-1945, with the narrative that "the locals also colluded" I can see why this book is producing the outrage. I am sure there were Japanese soldiers with hearts of gold. I am sure some of the Kamakazi pilots were real nice guys. Does their story deserve telling?

Park seems to think so, to the utter chagrin of S. Koreans.

A narrative about slavery in the US would be incomplete without the narrative that local thuggery of West Africa colluded; that they sent a delegation to Lincoln's white house begging him to keep slavery going (because it was in their economic interest). But any attempt to absolve slave traders, or the people who participated and profited, would spark similar outrage. I am sure there were slave owners in the south who were misunderstood, were real nice guys, and went to church every day. The treacle and smarm in Southern Baptist churches today make for an interesting data point (they preach kindness despite being on the wrong side of every issue then and now). But I am not sure I really want hear their story. I can seen why S. Koreans don't want to hear what Ms. Park has to say. I sure don't.

Kalidan

1 Reply16 RecommendShareFlag

ACW commented December 19, 2015

ACW

New Jersey

Dec. 19, 2015

These women were trafficked by a conquering army for their own use, as conquering armies have done through time. Whatever their individual stories, they were all trying to save their own lives. We should have no less sympathy for them than for any other victims of war.

Imperial Japan committed quite enough other atrocities in its conquest of the far East - notably but not solely the Rape of Nanking - and its prison camps - notably but not solely Unit 731, the equivalent of Mengele's human experimentation.

American liberals are prone to give Japan a pass and think of WW II as being specifically against Hitler. Reasons for this, I think, include that the A-bomb won more sympathy for Japan than Japan deserved, simply by way of being terrifyingly unprecedented, as opposed to garden-variety bombing. Also, frankly, racism; there are more Americans descended from the Europeans and Jews oppressed by Germany than the from the Asians invaded by Japan. Combine this ignorance with our rending our sackcloth and ashes for the Japanese-American internment camps. (Which is why this comment probably won't make the cut.)

Imperial Japan was like Nazi Germany - an entire nation gripped by an absolutist ideology bent on conquest. Germany's was quasi-religious; Japan's was explicitly religious, as the emperor was revered as a literal god. Japan, unlike Germany, has never fully faced up to its war guilt. Tokyo Rose's new book should not be allowed to obscure these facts.

2 Replies16 RecommendShareFlag

Carol lee commented December 19, 2015

Carol lee

Minnesota

Dec. 19, 2015

The Japanese engaged in a brutal invasion of the mainland of Asia and the Pacific Islands. Their vicious behavior in China is well known. So what if some collaborator Korean businessmen became involved with them? Young Korean girls were used and abused. They sure didn't have a choice. Maybe they knew what had happened to women in Nanking. The main point is when there is war, or police action, or whatever, the most vulnerable are used up.

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roger commented December 18, 2015

roger

boston

Dec. 18, 2015

It's hard to separate the truth and manipulation on this issue. Clearly, there were many terrible things done during the war by people on all sides. A lot of innocent men, women, and children were harmed by all sides. Neither Japan, nor China, nor Korea, nor other countries engaged in the war and occupations have clean hands. In many case, innocent people were abused by their fellow countrymen. So why is this particular issue raised to such a level of distinction by advocates? While I sympathize with the women, this on-going campaign can sound shrill -- as if orchestrated on behalf of a larger agenda of transnational politics.

1 Reply15 RecommendShareFlag

newageblues commented December 19, 2015

newageblues

Maryland

Dec. 19, 2015

There is no evidence, she wrote, that the Japanese government was officially involved in, and therefore legally responsible for, coercing Korean women.

If you're going to write something like that you have to expect to be vilified. Of course Japan is legally responsible. It's a shame she said something so inflammatory, because her attempt to understand the role that Koreans apparently sometimes took in this abuse could make it a little easier for Japan to accept that the overwhelming and overriding responsibility is theirs.

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boji3 commented December 18, 2015

boji3

new york

Dec. 18, 2015

It's nice to see that the PC culture is alive and well in the East as well as the West! As for these women themselves, it appears the waters are murkier than the simplistic manner in which the majority of the Korean culture want it to appear. As in all aspects of decision making there are many shades of grey. Some of the women were undoubtedly coerced, but others probably did choose this lifestyle as a way to manage difficult times. The same can be said of individuals- women or men who participate in a marginal lifestyle when they perceive it is their best alternative at a particular time. (Most people working at the lower end of the totem pole fall into this category whether in times of war or not.) There were even Jewish women who had relationships with Nazi guards and fell in love with them. Helena Citronova was one of them. So human relationships are more complicated than the powers that be (and write history) want us to believe and accept.

1 Reply14 RecommendShareFlag

Lauren commented December 18, 2015

Lauren

NYC

Dec. 18, 2015

I'd just like to point out that most modern-day prostitutes are also trafficked. Are some voluntary? Sure, but it's the minority, based on studies.

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JHP commented December 19, 2015

JHP

Manhattan/Honolulu

Dec. 19, 2015

My Korean grandmother, who had lived in Japan all her life (my great-grandfather had a business there, so that was where she was raised), had Japanese soldiers come to her house during the war to take her to Korea to work as a "comfort woman." They let her go because they were so impressed by her Japanese and her demeanor; she begged them not to take her.

Just because some Koreans may have been complicit in procuring said women doesn't change the fact that many, many women were taken by force and/or deceived into working as sex slaves. The debate over freedom of speech shouldn't be conflated with, or used to question the fact that these women were slaves. Not only were they not paid, but they were treated brutally.

There were many sex slaves who suffered under the Japanese; they were not only Korean. For example, there were also Dutch sex slaves who suffered under the Japanese as well when they occupied the Dutch East Indies. NO woman wants to lie on her back all day to have sex with dozens of strange men. Let's be real.

2 Replies14 RecommendShareFlag

Michael commented December 19, 2015

Michael

Los Angeles

Dec. 19, 2015

Wow. Talk about a whole minefield of contentious issues.

1. Korea needs to grow up and stop censoring books and ordering people to espouse the "national doctrine".

2. It is true that the comfort women issue has become a symbol and an easy narrative for Korea's victimization. Before, Koreans shunned the comfort women as defiled. Now, they've been raised to sainthood.

3. The reason Koreans have invested so much meaning to the comfort women issue is because it is the most direct and visceral way to symbolize Japan's aggression in the first half of 20th cen. Koreans feel they must do this because Japan as a country has never really felt remorse or accepted responsibility for its actions.

4. Of course there were Korean collaborators and middle men!

5. Japan wanted Koreans to be second class Japanese citizens because it needed more manpower for the war machine. Japanese thought they were honoring Korea by doing this but to Koreans it just meant serfdom.

6. On a micro level, the story becomes more nuanced with the addition of Korean war profiteers and love unfolding between Japanese soldiers and Korean girls. It would make a nice movie. But on a macro level, is there any doubt in anyone's mind that Japan unleashed a tsunami of horror and suffering all across Asia when it invaded those countries? Ms. Park's book may affect legal arguments in the case for reparations from Japan to the comfort women. But it does not affect Japan's moral responsibility.

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paul commented December 18, 2015

paul

princeton, NJ

Dec. 18, 2015

I suppose you paid for the sex?

The Japanese just made Korean women sex slaves.

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Frank McNeil commented December 19, 2015

Frank McNeil

Boca Raton, Florida

Dec. 19, 2015

I wonder how guys commenting can think women made a "choice" or a business decision to get into this line of work. The Japanese occupation of Korea, beginning in 1910 was extremely harsh, relying on force and Korean collaborators, just as the Nazi's did in France. Some collaborators worked as contractors for Japan's military, "recruiting" comfort women.

Poor Korean families, and their Japanese counterparts, sometimes sold daughters into the sex trade, which remained legal in Japan until 1955. Those girls had no choice; nor obviously, did those recruited by force into the comfort women brigades.

Incidentally, in the late 1950s when I first lived in Japan, this history was widely understood by the emerging post-war generation. Only later did elites make a concentrated effort to airbrush Japan's wartime record.

I haven't read Dr. Park's book yet but likely the most objective account of the comfort women is that of the UN Rapporteurs. What's most troubling about this episode, aside from the awful history involved, is the intolerance in Korea and Japan towards views differing from the "official story".

3 Replies13 RecommendShareFlag

Mark commented December 19, 2015

Mark

Brooklyn

Dec. 19, 2015

I know nothing about the comfort women and I won't claim to. However, considering that Germany's crimes were arguably worse, I do find it odd that Germany today lives in relative peace with it's victimized neighbors while the Chinese and Koreans get hysterical over the mere mention of Japan.

It seems to me the Europeans were collectively more honest with themselves about the events while the Chinese and Koreans, never satisfied with Japan's endless apologies, maintain a somewhat histrionic view of Japan's crimes.

9 Replies13 RecommendShareFlag

jay65 commented December 19, 2015

jay65

new york, new york

Dec. 19, 2015

The comfort women enterprise in Japanese-occupied East Asia was certainly not the only example of organized prostitution during wartime, but it probably was the most organized and institutionalized. By analogy, the fact that slavery had existed for millennial does not prevent us from saying that in the American south, it had been codified and institutionalized to the nth degree. What I learned from the article is that the practice dated back to pre-war Japanese occupation of Korea. It seems deplorable to us. It doesn't excuse the Japanese Army authorities, just because quasi-official or locally sponsored brothels flourished in other war zones. Even in Japan itself, recall that Lieutenant Pinkerton's little menage with Butterfly could not have happened without a Japanese broker preying on a young woman in poor straights (the play and opera are based on a true story and not a singular one). I have long wondered why the American press never mentioned the steam baths operating on every large base in Vietnam during the war -- by Vietnamese, employing women who were probably not kidnapped, but who knows. Yet, one doesn't have to harbor a purist Korean view to believe that the Imperial Army was especially cruel to conquered peoples and ruthlessly efficient in getting the comfort women to its troops. That is no excuse to persecute Ms. Park, even if she appears to have been quite Nipponized by her education and residency.

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rjd commented December 18, 2015

rjd

nyc

Dec. 18, 2015

While there was undoubtedly a high degree of female atrocities during the invasion and occupation of Korea by the Japanese during WWII it is hard to believe that there wasn't at least some complicity by the Korean Nationals involved.

I can assure you that 20 years after the end of the Korean War, as US troops manned border outposts along the DMZ, there was still plenty of extracurricular entertainment available to the "assisting" foreign troops. Fortunately, since that time, the practice has been severely curtailed and punishable for US military personnel under the UCMJ.

However, the fact that the Japanese were an invading force as opposed to a welcome ally, helps to explain why this topic generates such an emotionally charged reaction.

4 Replies12 RecommendShareFlag

Brandon commented December 19, 2015

Brandon

new york, ny

Dec. 19, 2015

From reading the comments, it seems that many people have trouble with the idea that even horrible events can be mired in complexity and nuance. I can't believe how quickly many people jump to the conclusion that Park Yu-ha is somehow condoning or justifying the events she is writing about simply by choosing to explore their depth.

Many years ago I faced a similar situation (although within a much smaller circle of notoriety) when I included - as one small section of a dissertation I wrote - the story of a wealthy slaveowner in the United States who owned over 100 slaves and who happened to be black. Simply by writing about the facts of his story using historical documents (with no interpretation attached), I was condemned for condoning slavery. It saddens me how easily people who take pride in their intelligence and depth of thinking can so easily sink to these shallow diatribes.

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Frank commented December 19, 2015

Frank

Dec. 19, 2015

I agree that Japan continues to seek to erase the unpleasant parts of its history. During a recent trip to Japan, the topic of the Imperial Army's railway construction in Burma in WW2 came up in the midst of a dinner conversation with friends. Every one of them said they were taught in school that only IA personnel built the railway and that no Allied prisoners of war were used in its construction. When I showed them photos of British and Australian soldiers clearly working on the railway, they simply did not believe them. It's rather stunning how deep their denial runs.

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Bob Aceti commented December 19, 2015

Bob Aceti

Oakville Ontario

Dec. 19, 2015

The article presents a story of a Korean academic who authored a book on a controversial topic that questions the accuracy of the Korean narrative on the culpability of the Japanese government for the involvement and acquiescence in the trafficking of Korean "comfort women" to engage in captive sex. The author's thesis contradicts the Korean state, and most Koreans, position on the Japanese government's active involvement in procurement of Korean comfort women. Although the issue of sex trafficking is a real and present danger that includes sale of girls and boys in the Middle East, the article's subject was deprecated by comments that seem to presume a secondary patriarchal theory in the subjugation of women as victims of men. The articles strong message about freedom of expression and suppression of researched information that contradicts the state's "position" was usurped by speculative discussion of the merits of the book's thesis by subjecting the author's conclusion with a counter offensive against all men. Some comments went off-topic. Some people seem to wait for article bait to work-in misogyny theory on what otherwise is concise well-written article about state sponsored censorship: the author, Ms. Park, is being vilified because her book's subject contradicts Korea's long-standing historic interpretation in dispute with Japan for its role in the procurement of comfort women for use by Japanese military men during the colonial period.

1 Reply12 RecommendShareFlag

Lee Hsin Wen commented December 19, 2015

Lee Hsin Wen

Hong Kong

Dec. 19, 2015

Given that consent is given by individuals, not groups, it is not clear why Professor Park cannot make her claim. Still, one needs to consider the context in which the consent was given. Some Taiwanese changed their Chinese names into Japanese ones during the colonial period. Some say that they voluntarily gave up their family name and consented to becoming Japanese. This description ignores the fact that they did not agree to be yield to Japan in the first place. Some changed their names only because this is the only way they can be treated as equal citizens and become qualified for public offices. Here you have "informed consent", but I think sane people won't consider them valid. I suspect that, given the similarity of historical context between Taiwan and Korea, the comfort women did not give valid consent.

In recent decades, there are also scholars in Taiwan making similar claims. The press would ask the surviving comfort women for their views, and it seems to me that they are deeply hurt by these claims. The idea is that if the Japanese government is not at fault, then it is the fault of comfort women. This is quite an unbearable attribution of responsibility.

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S. C. commented December 19, 2015

S. C.

Mclean, VA

Dec. 19, 2015

Does it matter some rapists have moment of true love when they committed crime? Professor Park's book no doubt helps Japanese Government who has been denying the atrocities all along.

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Truth Teller commented December 19, 2015

Truth Teller

The Heartland

Dec. 19, 2015

I am not sure how "endless" Japan's apologies have been. You only need to review a little history to conclude how begrudging those statements have been, how qualified, and how little they changed the narrative within Japan. A brief survey of the history curriculum in Japan's school system reveals how Japan-as-victim continues to be the WWII narrative to this day. A short statement of the national self-delusion of Japanese society is revealed in the concluding pages of Laura Hillenbrand's "Unbroken." Japan embodies a culture with an amazing history, a cultural oneness that has produced genuine greatness. It has also produced a xenophobic monstrosity that deems those outside it as inferior beings easily trod upon.

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bob rivers commented December 19, 2015

bob rivers

nyc

Dec. 19, 2015

Just like with Israel who had to endure the so-called "new historians," a group of second-rate, bottom-feeding "academics" like ilan pappe and benny morris who tried to make a name for themselves by artificially manufacturing "narratives" about well-understood historical events, South Korea has its share of them as well.

This woman author sounds like a Japan apologist, having lived there for so long, and while I have spent many years studying Japanese culture and history and speak the language, find her take to be ludicrous at best and obscene at worst.

Given this dreadful "publication's" lunatic editorial yesterday whitewashing islamic radical terrorist filth, it is not surprising it has chosen another extremist, fringe "academic's" writing to "highlight" (or more accurately, distort) Japan's official role in the vast enslavement of thousands of Korean women.

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June commented December 20, 2015

June

Dec. 20, 2015

Comfort women existed not only in Korea but also China and other Asian countries. In fact, China had the largest population of comfort women, about 200,000 per historians. In Korea, there may or may not have been Korean collaborators who brokered women sexual slavery; In China, however, most of the 200,000 comfort women were abducted or rounded up as spoils of war. Many were raped to death in the so-called "comfort stations'; those who survived often suffered life-time stigma. To this day, the Japanese government has refused to compensate or even acknowledge the atrocities committed against these women. Read this article from FT: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b44ae604-cdc1-11e4-8760-00144feab7de.html; also check out Prof. Peipei Qiu's book on Chinese comfort women.

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Ferrington commented December 18, 2015

Ferrington

Boonville

Dec. 18, 2015

I spent a year, 1960, in the U.S. Army in Korea. The U.S. military cooperated, in a way, with the Korean prostitute industry. It worked pretty well for all concerned.

There are plenty of things which Koreans and Chinese, among others, can indict Japan for. I suspect the 'comfort women' was not always one of them.

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Carey commented December 18, 2015

Carey

Brooklyn NY

Dec. 18, 2015

How is this different from the policy of arresting prostitutes and not prosecuting "Johns". The core of the issue is the cultural relationship of women in a society, Male dominated nations in the middle and far east historically have not offered equal treatment to women. Thankfully the roles of woman in Japan, China and other far eastern nations have changed in the last 50 years.

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chris commented December 19, 2015

chris

Dec. 19, 2015

"I spent a year, 1960, in the U.S. Army in Korea. The U.S. military cooperated, in a way, with the Korean prostitute industry. It worked pretty well for all concerned."

Mother of god.

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Charles commented December 19, 2015

Charles

Cambridge, UK

Dec. 19, 2015

"... sometimes fell in love with them ..."

Yes, that's what young people do, regardless of the conditions that brought them together, because it's a fundamental human behaviour. While understandable at an individual level, it's thoughtless to use it to prove anything positive whatsoever.

There are countless examples of the same thing in all occupations. The occupying force has full, undivided, moral responsibility to not take advantage of the occupied country's young people, since the occupiers have an unfair advantage in force and initiative. It doesn't matter one bit which role the young girls or collaborators themselves has in this. Obviously young Norwegian girls will voluntarily fall in love with young German soldiers, when their own young men are sent away for years to labour camps. While this may sound like cute love stories, on a larger scale it's not much different from large scale rape.

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Whynot commented December 19, 2015

Whynot

Italy

Dec. 19, 2015

Apparently all conquered nations need, when finally liberated, to build up a narrative as comforting as possible to deflect from themselves any responsability.

In Italy we had something similar after WWII: the Italians who had been, for the great part supporters of fascism, after the war discovered themselves to have been anti-fascists. So, to younger people like me at the time, it was quite puzzling: if everybody had been an anti-fascist who had been supporting the regime?

Obviously things are not as black and white as we are led to believe and as hideous as the comfort women suffering was, it is quite possible that there might have been some variety of grey in the matter.

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Alierias commented December 19, 2015

Alierias

Airville PA

Dec. 19, 2015

QED,

It is one thing, as a rational adult, to chose that for yourself; it is entirely another to be forced as a child, adolescent or even as an adult, into something you did not chose, that you find to be degrading, an assault upon your body, your self image, your autonomy.

Do you actually think that the vast majority of sex workers have the freedom to walk away from such work?

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Virgens Kamikazes commented December 19, 2015

Virgens Kamikazes

São Paulo - Brazil

Dec. 19, 2015

Of course the reality is much more complex than the simplified anecdotes the average citizen talks about in their everyday - not everybody is a specialist historian in every subject.

But the overload of evidence shows that it was not for the military occupation and genocide by the Japanese Imperial Army in East Asia, there would not be that huge level of prostitution (forced or not) by indentured Asian women, that lost everything, including their dignity, and had to resource to prostitution to survive (in the most immediate, literal sense of the word).

Therefore, the fact that the Japanese bent the socio-economic reality of East Asia so that prostitution levels went to the roof is undisputed; had the Japanese fought a just, clean war, they would not have massacred innocent villagers, comfort women would not have been a widespread issue. Erwin Rommel fought a fair war in North Africa, did only what he needed to do to defeat the British and we do not have evidence of any African or Middle Eastern "comfort women" there.

That being said, this is a hot topic in Korea, China and Japan. Americans have the bad habit of accusing the Chinese of censorship (probably for ideological reasons, since Americans abhor socialism or communism), but both Korea and Japan also have a long history of censorship, even about historical facts that happened between them more than 1,000 years ago.

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Bob Tube commented December 19, 2015

Bob Tube

Los Angeles

Dec. 19, 2015

I cannot speak to conditions that brought women into "comfort' service during the Japanese occupation of Korea but I would not be surprised if it were similar to conditions I saw when I served in Korea in 1968-69. Korea then was obviously still impoverished by the war. There were plenty of "comfort women" to service American servicemen. I was too shy to frequent the working girls but guys told me a quickie cost about $12 in today's dollars, an overnight twice that amount. You could "rent" a girl and her living place by the month. The guys told me the girls were often working to support their family, even though they were reviled by the family because of their occupation. It was a sad life for the girls, one they had not chosen for themselves but I had the sense it was dire economic necessity that put them there. I've always bought into the official Korean narrative that Korean women were virtually kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery. Now I wonder if the cause was more like the conditions I saw in the late 1960s.

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Bert Floryanzia commented December 19, 2015

Bert Floryanzia

Sanford, NC

Dec. 19, 2015

Somebody could also write a book wherein a claim

could be made that the US Air Force was, at least

tangentially, complicit in the prostitution of

Korean women.

In 1978 I was a buck sergeant stationed at Osan Air Base,

Republic of Korea. The on-base medical facility included

a very much in-demand subsection that we called

the "VD Clinic." They dispensed "Silver Bullets",

penicillin shots for various venereal diseases acquired

off-base in "The Ville."

In order to prevent the spread of these social diseases

among the troops, the women in these relationships had

to be identified, but quick. So they maintained lots of

loose leaf binders with the names of the clubs that the GIs

frequented. Each club's binder had Polaroid pictures of the

"Business Women" who worked there.

When the woman was identified the base would contact

the club Korean authorities, and the unlucky female

would be sent to Pyeongtaek for treatment and probable

return to the club.

Such is the strange situation you get when you send thousands

of healthy young males to exotic lands full of beautiful women.

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Richard Frauenglass commented December 19, 2015

Richard Frauenglass

New York

Dec. 19, 2015

I do not know the truth, and undoubtedly never will. Why? Because the victors write history, a history which glorifies their cause and demeans the vanquished. True in many cases, so don't get all bent out of shape, there are hidden unpleasant truths, and it is those truths which are the subject here. In the end, everyone deserves a voice, and to silence "non-believers" is not the way to legitimate inquiry. It is the intolerant way of the dictator who knows no truth but its own.

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Someone commented December 19, 2015

Someone

Northeast

Dec. 19, 2015

I'm a historian. Not of this period and this issue, but a historian. It's pretty much ALWAYS safe in professional history circles to argue that something was nuanced. Most things in human life are. And people have often collaborated with invading foreign powers to benefit themselves economically and in other ways. So this doesn't sound far-fetched or scandalous to me at all. The fact that she's getting so much grief for saying something like this suggests to me that she's right and that wall of national narrative needs some cracking.

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M.R. Khan commented December 20, 2015

M.R. Khan

Chicago

Dec. 20, 2015

I dont think American's are so different than South Koreans in their political correctness regarding their own sacred myths. Recall how Ward Churchill was drummed out of a tenured faculty position for writing that Americans were not attacked on 9/11 for their "freedoms" but in direct retaliation for their own wars of aggression and terror in the Muslim world which had killed far more civilians.

The same applies to the case of millions of Vietnamese civilians massacred and raped by American soldiers with impunity as documented by Nick Turse and others.

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Hyung-Sung Kim commented December 19, 2015

Hyung-Sung Kim

Seoul

Dec. 19, 2015

For those who haven't read Professor Park Yuha's book, here is the summary English translation. You be the judge.

http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.jp/2014/10/summary-of-professor-park-y...

San Francisco State University Professor Chunghee Sarah Soh agrees with Professor Park Yuha. Like Professor Park, Professor Soh has looked into dozens of primary source & interviewed dozens of former Korean comfort women.

http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.jp/2014/10/the-comfort-women-by-chungh...

As a history student, I interviewed dozens of Koreans who were born and raised in the Korean Peninsula in the 1920’s and 1930’s including my grandparents about comfort women.

What they witnessed was Korean fathers and brothers selling their daughters and sisters, Korean comfort station owners deceiving Korean women. They never witnessed Japanese military coercing any Korean women.

I don't exonerate the Japanese military because its invasion into China and Southeast Asia did create the demand for comfort women. But the Korean narrative "The Japanese military showed up at the doors and abducted young Korean women" just didn't happen. The Korean businessmen (comfort station owners) capitalized on the demand, recruited Korean women, operated comfort stations and made lots of money. Japan has apologized for its part. South Korea should admit its complicity and stop demanding Japan for more apologies.

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Luke commented December 19, 2015

Luke

Yonkers, NY

Dec. 19, 2015

Numerous courts, tribunals and extensive research projects have concluded that the Japanese government was directly involved in all 4 phases of the comfort women system: recruitment, transport, establishment/maintenance of the so-called "comfort stations", and brutal control of the girls (some as young as 11) once on site.

"They cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in the military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance." –Kaneko Yasuji, former Imperial Japanese Army soldier, as told to The Washington Post, March 6, 2007.

That deception by quislings was used in some cases (as contrasted with many thousands of girls directly kidnapped off the streets by IJA personnel in China and elsewhere) makes absolutely no difference in the suffering of the victims and the horrific nature of this crime against humanity. Let us not rape them all over again with this kind of revisionism.

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jpduffy3 commented December 19, 2015

jpduffy3

New York, NY

Dec. 19, 2015

The article states that "190 South Korean scholars and cultural figures issued a statement supporting what Ms. Park had tried to do in her book, if not everything written in it." This sounds to me as if there is a reasonable basis for much of, if not everything in, the book. This then raises serious freedom of speech issues. The ideas in the book may be unpopular to many, but they should be protected as should Ms. Park's right to say them.

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Sivaram Pochiraju commented December 19, 2015

Sivaram Pochiraju

Hyderabad, India

Dec. 19, 2015

This is the same off repeated story of the poor hapless women everywhere in the globe since ages. Many poor Muslim girls from India were given in marriage to old Arabs only to be used as slaves and prostitutes there. Many poor Hindu women were offered jobs as domestic helps, nurses etc in Middle East by the agents only to be trapped badly as slaves and prostitutes.

Everyone knows how the soldiers get served by these hapless women, only thing is that nationality, language and religion changes nothing else changes. The fact is that women are all the time exploited by men only to make ridiculous jokes and then laugh at them.

Unless and until a revolution takes place in the form of education, awareness, moral responsibilities, employment and also the void between the poor and the rich is drastically reduced, nothing will change and some other story of this type gets written, published and commented about.

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Rahul commented December 19, 2015

Rahul

Wilmington, Del.

Dec. 19, 2015

It is often said that the victors write the history. Koreans and the Chinese won the war with the help of the Americans so naturally their version of history prevailed. The Koreans, Chinese and the Americans most likely have as many Skeletons in their cupboards as the Japanese. At least Prof. Yu-ha is trying to start a conversation these nations are unwilling to have.

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desertwaterlily commented December 19, 2015

desertwaterlily

Marlborough, CT

Dec. 19, 2015

Ask any remaining comfort women just one question. Could they leave if they wanted to? That's the distinction between her facts and theirs.

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Herbert commented December 19, 2015

Herbert

Dec. 19, 2015

Comfort women were readily available in South Korea, where I served in the Army in the late 1950s. I still remember the many army trucks that would bring prostitutes from Seoul to our soldiers stationed near the DMZ. Comfort women were known locally as 'business women", as they were the more affluent in what was still a war ravaged country.

And, although discouraged by the Army, many young GIs married these women and brought them home.

Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose.

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BK commented December 19, 2015

New York

Dec. 19, 2015

Ms. Park appears to try to use nuances and individual actions to temper the horror of an overall system created, supported and encouraged by the Wartime Japanese regime. Japan was wholly and solely responsible for creating th horrible scenario in which they women became objects of sexual slabery. The fact that there may have been willing local recruiters or other participants, or that some of these women were treated with kindness, is of no value in assessing the overall responsibility. It seems her view has been colored with her longtime association with Japan and the claims of her critics are justified.

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javierg commented December 19, 2015

javierg

Miami, Florida

Dec. 19, 2015

This shows that revisionism of history is alive and well. Many Korean so called comfort women were sold by profiteers taking advantage of the parents, brothers and sisters. This happened all over the world, in England (see Foyle's War), Germany and even France and Italy.

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Steve Fankuchen commented December 19, 2015

Steve Fankuchen

Oakland, CA

Dec. 19, 2015

Clarity makes everyone happy. Nuance leads to ambiguity and unhappiness. It's much easier to go through life with certainty. As to truth, perspective, context, proportional responsibility, and other such disturbing concepts, well, better they remain behind ivy covered walls.

Try discussing Black and Arab African participation in the slave trade or the Holocaust as equally affecting Roma as Jews. You're likely to get real backlash there also. This is absolutely not to shift any responsibility for slavery from Americans and Europeans or the clear evilness of what happened. Nor is it meant to give the slightest credence to Holocaust deniers or victim blamers. Rather, it is simply to note that political correctness is intellectually easy, the sign of a lazy mind. Japan, Korea and the "comfort women: I know practically nothing of the details but what I do know is that, sadly, the backlash against the author should have been expected.

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Northstar5 commented December 19, 2015

Northstar5

Los Angeles

Dec. 19, 2015

How would Americans feel if someone argued that slaves developed affection for their masters, and even "love," and that the American government wasn't really responsible because African slave traders were at the helm of "recruiting" (a euphemism for abduction) slaves?

Both of these things contain some truth, as some slaves — particularly if they were house-maids and nannies rather than field hands — probably developed bonds with the owners, but that is a matter of self-preservation, not real love! Humans have an incredible knack for making the best of things, and adjusting to things that seem unchangeable.

I don't think choice is a useful concept when you have a fundamentally coercive master/servant dynamic. A few people will continue to resist, like famous Soviet defectors resisted the horrors of their state, but we can't judge or evaluate on the basis of what a few select people do. We have to evaluate on the basis of what MOST people are likely to do. And most women forced into sexual servitude will probably grin and bear it and try to make the best of things, hoping for a better life down the line.

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Anne ONeill commented December 19, 2015

Anne ONeill

Portland

Dec. 19, 2015

If the spoils of war in the 1700s in West Africa enabled the complicity of Africans in selling their brothers into the Atlantic slave trade, surely Koreans can be suspected of complicity in the use of their own people own for personal profit.

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Michael commented December 19, 2015

Michael

Tristate

Dec. 19, 2015

There are two separate issues.

1) Freedom of speech: As much as I hate the current Park regime for the reasons the NYtimes editorial scathingly rebuked, there really isn't much of an issue with freedom of speech strangled by the Gov't. The reason that her book is being "censored" is that she lost the defamation suit from the "comfort women." The court judged as long as she redacts the defamatory phrases, she can continue to sell the book. But Park refused and thus her book cannot be sold in Korea. Americans should understand other than the US, most other countries have much stronger defamation protection laws.

2) The Book: Park should've been more tactful when she was dealing with such sensitive issue in a country. Although she did expose some unknown stories that provide nuance to the whole "comfort women" issue, she went too far when instead of saying there's another story to the system, she claimed her story is THE STORY. Not only that she makes very flimsy argument that because the Jap. Gov't commissioned a private entity to con little girls into prostitution, the private entity should be liable not the Gov't. Not only that, she almost dehumanize those comfort women who were practically sex slaves that they were somehow "dongji" or comrades to the Japanese army. There are more issues at stake, but not enough space here.

This is what happens when academics decide to ignore the real sufferings and try to spotlight the rare "bright spots" to justify horrendous acts.

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ericcnsf commented December 19, 2015

ericcnsf

San Francisco

Dec. 19, 2015

Very interesting. I have no idea what the facts are, but if what Ms. Park's research holds true, then she is very courageous. It's always difficult to speak out against the common held beliefs of one's country. Just look at journalists who have exposed the atrocities of US soldiers in Vietnam. It wouldn't surprise me that some Koreans, looking out for their own interests, were implicit in facilitating exchange of these women. And it also wouldn't surprise me that some of these women may have engaged in this arrangement somewhat willingly in order to survive or sacrifice for their families. This is the type of issue that politicians will exploit to further their own agendas.

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j. von hettlingen commented December 19, 2015

j. von hettlingen

switzerland

Dec. 19, 2015

It is most unfortunate that both Japan and South Korea haven't resolved this issue, which at times comes in handy, when diplomatic relations turn sour.

It is hard for outsiders to judge Park Yu-ha's account. It is possible that these sex slaves had been procured by private contractors both in Japan and Korea. Yet the Japanese government must have known and turned a blind eye to these brothels.

In July 2007 the House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution calling on the Japanese government to formally acknowledge, apologise and accept "historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner" for the sexual enslavement of as many as 200,000 "comfort women" in the 30s and 40s. Abe and his conservative lawmakers insisted there was no evidence of coercion, saying private individuals were involved in trafficking these women to Japanese garrisons.

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D.H.Lee commented December 20, 2015

D.H.Lee

Seoul, South Korea

Dec. 20, 2015

After the end of WWII, the anti-Japanese brainwashing began in South Korea. Our first president (the military dictator) Syngman Rhee massacred millions of us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre

In order to cover up his atrocities and maintain legitimacy, he needed a common enemy, and Japan was an easy target. So he started the anti-Japanese brainwashing in schools and in the media. And every successive president after him has continued the anti-Japanism.

The generations who were born before 1945 (like my grandparents) are generally very sympathetic to the Japanese because they experienced the annexation. The reason why the Korea-Japan relation has deteriorated so badly in the last 20 years is because most of them have died, and the generations who were raised with anti-Japanese brainwashing at schools after the war have come into power.

Let me show you how crazy our anti-Japanism has become in South Korea. Believe it or not we hold an annual event in which kids shoot water pistols at men dressed in Japanese military uniforms to incite hatred against the Japanese.

http://goo.gl/AGZ09l

Professor Park is not the only scholar persecuted. Professor Lee Yong-hoon of Seoul University has written a book in which he said the Korean comfort women were not coerced by the Japanese, and he was punched & kicked at a symposium.

https://goo.gl/nqykBZ

South Korea is a democracy except in one area. Being anti-Japanese has become an obligation for every Korean.

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Peter Park commented December 20, 2015

Peter Park

Zurich

Dec. 20, 2015

It is not academic freedom that is at stake when one is discouraged by the academic society to mention about other versions of tragedies like mobilizing comfort women in WWII. She may not deserve to be sued but still deserves to be criticized and condemned by other scholars. Yet, NYT treats this group as equivalent to other groups who want to legally enforce her to stop raising her voice. Then it gets so easy to depict her as a lone scholar who was gagged out of freedom of speech. She can raise her voice on her controversial viewpoint, but other scholars also deserve to raise their voice to discourage her, especially when comparing the sex slaves to collaborators is practically no different from comparing any other war victims to collaborators of their tormentors. Her view should be allowed but only not welcomed.

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rocket7777 commented December 18, 2015

rocket7777

earth

Dec. 18, 2015

Korean Professor Park Yuha will become Korean hero within few years. She researched and have courage to write the truth even though she knew it was dangers physically and likely damaging to her career.

Koreans are taught false history but slowly beginning to learning the truth.

Japan give us$500 million(us$50 billion today.) in 1965 and technology transfer. Korean say not enough lol.

Japan apologize many times because today's sentiment considers paid prostitution tragic. Korean say it was insincere.

Google "real7777 Annexation" "real7777 apology" "real7777 comfort" "real7777 Korean Professor"

Comfort prostitute were paid about 1 week of wage by solders and there is NO evidence Japan forced/abducted. Korean brothel owners/managers/recruiters(some tricked) were used. 1944 USA war report "prostitute ate good...buy luxury items." Korea always had large amount of prostitution. S Korea is in G20 today but still have like 100,000 Korean prostitutes in foreign countries. S Korea have 14 times rapes rate of Japan.

In 1919 League of Nation, Japan "Racial Equality Proposal" and ends in colonialism but USA blocked. Annexation made Korea/Taiwan/Manchu part of Japan which IMPROVED LIVES with citizenship, educated, DEMOCRACY, modernized with huge investment LOSS(1000 school, road, dam, water, sewage, rail, hospital, 590 million plants) and provided law; population 13 million to 26 million; literacy 4% to 60%; life expectancy 24 to 56; abolish slavery; opportunity for a good jobs

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Lawrence commented December 18, 2015

Lawrence

Wash D.C.

Dec. 18, 2015

At this point in time, the essence of the situation is that the South Korean government wants to continue to hold the Japanese government directly and principally responsible for the provision of "comfort women" to Japanese military forces. Any lessening of this perceived direct responsibility by the Japanese government is not welcomed by either the South Korean government nor by most of South Korean society.

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Mark Shyres commented December 18, 2015

Mark Shyres

Laguna Beach, CA

Dec. 18, 2015

Sorry, we are already back there. The future is not what it used to be.

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Yuri Asian commented December 19, 2015

Yuri Asian

Bay Area

Dec. 19, 2015

Koreans have deep historic grievances with both China and Japan stemming from ancient conquest and extended periods of colonial occupation and imperial rule. The fierce intensity and sensitivity Koreans have about national identity, origin mythology, and periodic revisionist history reflect a national character formed in a crucible of subjugation, resistance, and defiance of both Japanese and Chinese hegemony over hundreds of years. The enmity between Korea and Japan runs deeper than the Marianas Trench, and was most recently revived by Japan's brutalization of Korea during WW2. The feeling is mutual. Japanese generally loathe Koreans as much as Koreans loathe Japanese. Ancient and historic hatred animated Japan's brutal conquest of Korea during WW2. Koreans were enslaved to build war planes and to sexually "comfort" Japanese soldiers. The abject humiliation of Korea remains a live trauma because of Japan's hesitant apology along with regular denials of war atrocities or reparation for Japan's victims, notably Korean sex slaves near the end of their lives. Park Yu-ha can't be oblivious to the inflammatory effect of her book, elevating trivial elements to the same status as the main atrocity. Tantamount to a Jewish academic asserting that Auschwitz was as much suicide for some as it was genocide for most. Not an issue of academic freedom. But instead incompetence or egregiously bad judgment to even hint that one charred tree tells the truth about a forest fire.

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Historic Home Plans commented December 19, 2015

Historic Home Plans

Oregon

Dec. 19, 2015

In trying to understand our world we very often over-simplify. Life is rarely black and white.

The story of the comfort women lends itself to this over-simplification very easily because much (most? 99%?) of the story is truly horrifying.

Nonetheless, it is not wrong to try to look with a deeper, more critical eye, at historic events.

The value of her observations is another matter. What disturbs me in this story is not what she has to say, though I doubt its value as a reflection of reality. What disturbs me is the type of response she has received.

One of the great aspects of Free Speech is that it brings ideas out into the open, especially, bad, destructive ideas. When people are free to speak it is far easier to address and counter the destructive ideas. This should be done by shining the light of reason, the power of logic, the cold, hard facts of scientific investigation ...

NOT by vilifying people, engaging in character assassination or even imprisonment.

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Nancy commented December 19, 2015

Nancy

Corinth, Kentucky

Dec. 19, 2015

Haven't read the book (yet) and only a few orthodox accounts. Whatever the full story, however, I agree with Ms Park in one respect. "Need[ing] them to remain pure, innocent girls" to support the narrative is characteristic of persistent attitudes toward rape all over the world, even today.

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Dadof2 commented December 19, 2015

Dadof2

New Jersey

Dec. 19, 2015

“You murder a wife, it isn’t nearly as bad as murdering an old wives’ tale." --from the film "Inherit The Wind".

"Revisonist History" is often used to imply falsifying evidence and reductionism. When correctly done, it is merely challenging the usual narrative inferred from the facts. New facts that may contradict the narrative cannot be ignored and, if those facts are verified, then the narrative must be changed. If Dr. Park is doing this then she truly is being persecuted. If she is honestly wrong, that's one thing. But unless she is deliberately suppressing or falsifying facts, what is happening to her is distressing.

Much has been written about the history of the African slave trade. It may be uncomfortable to know that many slaves were captured and sold to the traders by their fellow Africans or that many of the kingdoms on the Indian Ocean sold people they enslaved to the Europeans. Fogel and Engerman's "Time On The Cross", the first serious study of the economics of slavery, was vilified when it was published because it challenged the long-held narrative that slavery was unprofitable. F&E didn't seek to justify slavery, they merely sought to find what the real economics of it was.

So, as Dr. Park reveals that many either excessively poor or greedy Koreans collaborated by selling women into sex work. And Korea doesn't like this.

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ConAmore commented December 19, 2015

ConAmore

Dec. 19, 2015

I often reflect on the our First Amendment and the almost absolute protection it affords opinion, even those tantamount to lies. If there's one Constitutional provision which the Supreme Court has uniformly and almost unanimously protected it's the freedom of speech, the foundation of democratic institutions.

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Sam commented December 19, 2015

Sam

Houston

Dec. 19, 2015

Many upper class Koreans who cooperated with Japan were indeed treated very weil and even got richer doing so. They were in the forefront persuading other Koreans, especially the young to volunteer in war effort. They asked to join Japanese military, go to underground mines, working in the weapons factory or become comfort women. Almost all well known industrialists, historians, professors, writers and even Buddhist monks and Christian priests cooperated with Japan to preserve their privileged status. Japan cleverly controlled the upper class Koreans to do the dirty work for them. After the war they remained as Korean leaders and tried to cover up their actions during the Japanese rule by denying the existence of Japanese policy. If you interview them now they still say the Japan did not act too badly. As they had done during the Japanese rule they are now cooperating with Abe government to rewrite Japanese history during that era.

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Carol lee commented December 19, 2015

Carol lee

Minnesota

Dec. 19, 2015

There is a big difference between the Japanese invasion and occupation of Asia, and the American police action in Korea. I don't think that American soldiers set up concentration camps for South Koreans and other Asians, sacked cities, batoneted civilians or did medical experiments, for example. I think that everybody needs a refresher course on WWII in the Pacific.

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sjs commented December 19, 2015

sjs

Bridgeport, ct

Dec. 19, 2015

This reminds me of the reactions of African American when the role of Africans in the slave trade started to become widely known. The same violent denial; the same "kill the messenger". They really wanted it to be all like Roots (white guys sneaking into the jungle kidnapping people). Eventually there was too much evidence showing that slavery was a major industry in Africa (before, during, and after the Atlantic slave trade years) to argue against. I'm wondering if it will be the same in Korea.

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Jim commented December 19, 2015

Jim

Odenton, MD

Dec. 19, 2015

It's nice to know that academic freedom is respected so much more here in the United States. In the United States we don't make academicians suffer anxiety from the possibility of being fired, we are more merciful and simply fire them. I'm thinking of Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science at Wheaton College.

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MJ commented December 19, 2015

Dec. 19, 2015

I expect it's pretty much like Barbara Bush saying about Hurricane Katrina evacuees "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."

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EBurgett commented December 19, 2015

EBurgett

US/Asia

Dec. 19, 2015

A professional historian must always explain why complexity matters, but, at the same time, be politically sensitive, esp. when it comes to victims who are still alive. I have not read the book, but, from the article, it seems that it is rhetorically unfortunate. Park should have made a strong statement that the Japanese were responsible for setting up an inhumane system of sex slavery, and only then pointed out that there were many Korean collaborators - and that there is a very ugly history of military prostitution in Korea that goes beyond the Japanese occupation.

Maybe the result would have been something like Gross' 'Neighbours' who made definitely no attempt to whitewash the Germans for their role in the Holocaust, but pointed out that they had a lot of local help in Poland and that this should not be forgotten either.

That said, academic freedom should be inviolable, no matter how distasteful or offensive some academic books may be to some. At the end of the day, these books don't have a huge readership and spur debate, which is what academic life is all about.

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Ronnie Peterson commented December 19, 2015

Ronnie Peterson

Oalo

Dec. 19, 2015

The following excerpt is the well-known interrogation report on Korean prostitutes by the US Psychological Warfare Team attached to U.S. Army Forces

http://www.exordio.com/1939-1945/codex/Documentos/report-49-USA-orig.html

I quote again, 'They lived well because their food and material was not heavily rationed and they had plenty of money with which to purchase desired articles. They were able to buy cloth, shoes, cigarettes, and cosmetics to supplement the many gifts given to them by soldiers who had received "comfort bags" from home. While in Burma they amused themselves by participating in sports events with both officers and men, and attended picnics, entertainments, and social dinners. They had a phonograph and in the towns they were allowed to go shopping. Is this life of sex slaves?

It is true that Japanese imperial army used Korean prostitutes, but not Korean sex slaves. The sex slave issue is fabricated by politically motivated South Korean government supported by the US states Dept. and US media.

Under Clinton and Bush administration, IWG spent seven years to scrutinize the more than 8.5 million pages of confidential documents prepared by US clandestine agents and failed to find an evidence that Japan systematically involved in abduction of Korean women and forced them to into prostitution. We all know that the burden of proof has not been fulfilled and is still on your side.

The bottom line is that Professor Park wrote it based on the facts.

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Justice Holmes commented December 19, 2015

Justice Holmes

Charleston

Dec. 19, 2015

Not big on suppression but wow what did this women expect. Has she no idea about the way in which captives must cope and at times submit in order to survive. Does she not realize that hostages who are subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment but nevertheless totally defendant upon their captors for survival sometimes begin to identify with them. She seems ill suited to offer any opinions on the tragedy of the comfort women. However, incompetence and lack of qualifications should not trump free speech. There are plenty of experts who could and I'm sure have torn her arguments to shreds.

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rosa commented December 19, 2015

rosa

Dec. 19, 2015

I invite Ms. Park to read the historian Livy's account of the rape of the Sabine women and any of the present-day newspapers on the kidnapping and rapes done by the Boko Haram. She can then top it all off by informing herself on the slave markets set up by ISIS where a middle-aged woman goes for $5, and yet a female under the age of 9 goes for $150.

If that is too complex for her then she can read the light fiction of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaiden's Tale".

To top off her education on this, she may then consult Webster's Dictionary for the definitions of the words "sin" and "crime". These are crimes, but she's not alone with her confusion: the Catholic Church has that same "definition" problem.

Does she consider all these victims of crimes to be "collaborators", too?

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PaleMale commented December 19, 2015

PaleMale

Hanover, NH

Dec. 19, 2015

This sound like the African slavery issue. It is important to many African Americans to believe that slaves were rounded up by European and American whites. That most slaves were captured and sold by indigenous Africans is often troubling. That complexity hardly absolves the non-African purchasers of slaves, but it does make it less of a black and white morality play.

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Peter commented December 19, 2015

Peter

LI, NY

Dec. 19, 2015

Nothing happens from the blue sky and no country that conquers and reigns over other countries can maintain control and abuses without cooperation of the local population. Neither the Japanese nor the Nazis could commit all the known crimes without tacit or active cooperation of some locals.

But history is ultimately written by the victors and some aspects of collaboration with the loosers (Colonial Japan and Nazi Germany) are better left out or minimized for domestic consumption. War crimes and abuses should not be condoned and the responsibility lies on the oppressors. However, white-washing the collaboration and financial profiteering that was an integral part of the crimes and abuses is a distortion of history.

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bodhi commented December 19, 2015

bodhi

NYC

Dec. 19, 2015

The Germans have undergone a thorough examination of its wartime past, and have conscientiously gone about owning up to its dark past. The Japanese have done NO similar soul searching about its collective guilt. Here's an example. The Yasukuni Shrine, a Japanese Shinto shrine to war dead who served the Emperor of Japan during wars from 1867–1951, has been visited regularly by both Japanese Diet cabinet members and Prime Ministers. It has a book of names and is said to house the spirits of the war dead. Enshrinement typically carries absolution of earthly deeds even for those convicted of war crimes, and the book contains many individuals convicted by the International Military Tribunal as war criminals, including Hideki Tojo, Japan's wartime Prime Minister. To Asian cultures, the concept of "face" is important, and the fact that Japan has not admitted guilt is seen as a grave insult.

It would behoove you to learn something about Asian history and culture before making comments about peoples who have never received any sort of unequivocal apology from Japan for its crimes against humanity.

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Ivan Light commented December 19, 2015

Ivan Light

Inverness CA

Dec. 19, 2015

Co-responsibility is invariably a difficult issue. West African chiefs raided their neighbors and sold captives to the white slavers in exchange for rifles. Jewish Sonderkommanodos collaborated with Nazis in concentration camps. I am inclined to believe that Koreans sold Korean women into sex slavery to the Japanese army for profit. That said, even if so, the Japanese government had an obligation to prohibit and suppress the commercial sex traffic as it prohibited slavery and child labor.

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Observer commented December 19, 2015

Observer

Canada

Dec. 19, 2015

Women always bear the blunt of war atrocities. Has time changed? During the Vietnam war there are swamps of American soldiers and sailors in Hong Kong's Wanchai bar district - "The World of Suzy Wong". There were similar favorite ports of call in the Philippines & other places to provide a change of scenery from Miss Saigon. How did the Pentagon deals with pent-up aggression and sexual desires during invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan where Muslims in those regions makes it much more inconvenient to provide R&R? Sociologists should write a book on the impact of warp military sexual comfort policies on morale and local communities.

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Onbeyondzen commented December 18, 2015

Onbeyondzen

Berkeley

Dec. 18, 2015

So Koreans themselves and Americans who engaged in these activities are not equally to blame? This is about stupid politics looking backwards and constant relitigation of issues that will never be resolved by trying to regurgitate the various accusations rooted in a past that will never be resolved.

We need to look to the future. South Korea and Japan have so much common interest it is pathetic to see this outdated controversy actually chilling their relations. Time to move on.

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W Smith commented December 19, 2015

W Smith

NYC

Dec. 19, 2015

Professor Park is incredibly brave in bringing nuance and messy grey to one of the most highly emotional third rails within her culture. She has my utmost respect and admiration for speaking inconvenient truths that her compatriots do not want to hear. I salute her as a true hero in a world full of lazy adherence to black/white absolutes.

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Allen Manzano commented December 19, 2015

Allen Manzano

Carlsbad, CA

Dec. 19, 2015

As a 14 year old boy living in the prosperous Malate district of Manila just two blocks from the bay side promenade, my friends and I would pass a group of identical houses which had been taken over by the Japanese occupation forces. Only later, when the subject became a matter of controversial reports, did I surmise that the women who occupied them and called to us in a language we did not know, teasing and waving at us as we passed, where very likely what are now called 'comfort women'. They were not Filipinas but North Asian, not young girls, and dressed in what I remember as loose robes. We were all naive and innocent youths and they laughed at us in amusement. I have no other data but I did not have an impression that they were tormented or imprisoned. Some ten years later when i was a young officer on Navy Ships in the Far East, I realized they were very like the prostitutes of various types that were readily available to our military in every port, notably in struggling Japan then still in recovery from the war. I now think those women were likely brought to Manila to provide sexual services to the Japanese Army. I wondered what happened to them. Where they taken back to Japan, perhaps Korea? Did they stay in the area and share in the suffering amid the terrible destruction of the battle for the city in which 100,000 people of every nation and condition were killed? They are now a forgotten part of the complex history of that tragic war.

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Concerned Citizen commented December 19, 2015

Concerned Citizen

Anywheresville

Dec. 19, 2015

I have some bad news for you, Shaun, about the founding of Canada and your "first nations" people. You didn't treat them any better than Americans treated natives here.

The facts are also that the US has not had slavery anywhere for 150 years, and even at the time of the Civil War, half of the nation had rejected slavery. Or is nobody ever forgiven for anything, ever? That kind of search for "moral purity" -- I wonder where you think it ends? Please tell me about all the nations, cultures, and societies that have never, ever done anything wrong.

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Krista commented December 19, 2015

Krista

Atlanta

Dec. 19, 2015

QED, it's also a quick way for a man, a pimp, to make a quick buck off the bodies of women. That's the usual way. Perhaps yours is the sheltered existence if you truly believe prostitutes are all willing participants looking for a quick buck. As for socialites , we are not discussing consensual relations here. Socialites are free to sleep with whomever they wish, rich or poor.

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Jon Harrison commented December 19, 2015

Jon Harrison

Poultney, VT

Dec. 19, 2015

Historical truth, or the pursuit of it, is important. Obviously there was some gray lurking in the background of the "comfort girls" story. And of course the person who has revealed the gray is vilified for doing so -- that's the really important thing to note here. To an extent we see in the Korean reaction the psychological flaws that each human being, to a greater or lesser extent, carries around. And to an extent we see revealed the shallowness of South Korea's support for free inquiry and democratic norms.

What's a "false fact," by the way? What an Orwellian term.

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Harry commented December 19, 2015

Harry

Michigan

Dec. 19, 2015

Men acting like animals during war, who could imagine! And it goes on and on. I apologize for all crimes committed by all men in every war that men have started. I also apologize for every man who has payed for sex for all of human existence,

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stonecutter commented December 19, 2015

stonecutter

Broward County, FL

Dec. 19, 2015

From what I've read, sex slavery and trafficking is a global industry, marked not only by the exchange of very large sums of money but by vicious coercion and brutality toward its victims, almost all young women either forcibly taken, or "purchased" from destitute families, conditioned into the "work" the way you'd train young boxers in the ring, or dogs to do tricks, and then "sold" to "retail" outlets around the world. On the other hand, there's a sizable number of women who voluntarily enter prostitution and/or porn on their own dime, seeking out the possibility of sex for money out of a warped sense of excitement, or as a means of survival, or escape from some horrific living condition. No matter the motive or circumstances of recruitment, the inhuman aspect of this proliferated business is the virtual slavery, the fear induced in the women, the threats perpetrated on them to keep them in line, but also in many cases the false sense of security they receive from being treated as a prized possession by some pimp, or criminal organization. Any way you slice it, it's the darkest side of human nature at work, forcing any woman of any culture into sexual slavery, and therefore ripe for rationalization, historical parsing, delusion (hence the label "comfort" women?), denial, and perhaps most contemptible, justification.

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Paul Mohrbacher commented December 19, 2015

Paul Mohrbacher

Milwaukee

Dec. 19, 2015

Dear Koreans: since a guy from Brooklyn who admits knowing nothing about comfort women thinks that Japan was not nearly as evil at Nazi Germany, you should chill out.

Odd that details of Japan's treatment of its Asian neighbors, which included mass executions and 'medical experiments' in addition to forcing women into military brothels, didn't reach Brooklyn. How about the Bataan Death March?

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Copse commented December 19, 2015

Copse

Boston, MA

Dec. 19, 2015

History is truth but it is hard to find. A narrative is a story, sometimes fiction, sometimes non-fiction, often a hybrid. A story shaped to support a political agenda is propaganda. Dr. Park appears to be a truth seeker, but her "truths" complicate well established national narratives that support the political/social establishment in Korea and support elements of the right wing narrative in Japan. Too bad.

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ejzim commented December 19, 2015

ejzim

21620

Dec. 19, 2015

We already know about the extreme cruelty of the Japanese during WWII. Why is is so difficult to believe these facts? I'm sorry, it doesn't work to repeat lies enough times to make them true.

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dathinker commented December 19, 2015

dathinker

new york

Dec. 19, 2015

It should be kept in mind that as stigmatized as prostitutes are in Korea now, at that time, having sex outside of marriage even once followed you for life, leaving such women outside respectability all their lives. They were branded with a metaphorical scarlett letter and could never marry. Even being raped did not exonerate a "spoiled" woman. No one would have chosen this path willingly, though perhaps someone with no other choice might have. It would have been like choosing death.

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mark commented December 19, 2015

mark

Iowa

Dec. 19, 2015

Look at the reports of Japanese cruelty in the Philippines throwing babies up in the air and stabbing/catching them with bayonets was commonplace. They raped countless women there. I don't understand this kind of debate about Korean women that endured the same. Where does this comes from? Is it racism or denial? Historical revisionists? Seems there are always those that choose to see the past in their own perspective that they feel the most comfortable. I have a feeling if these people were actually there they would change their story. Because of the suffering of so many we can never forget that they paid in blood for us to have what we do today.

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pepperman33 commented December 19, 2015

pepperman33

Philadelphia, Pa.

Dec. 19, 2015

Korea needs to get over their with Japan. Taking out full page ads in the NY Times to change the name of the Japan Sea is senseless, as most Americans could care less. Perhaps they should focus on their northern neighbor Mr. Kim, who threatens to destroy their entire country on a daily basis.

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Eric Corsini commented December 19, 2015

Eric Corsini

Arroyo Grande

Dec. 19, 2015

Ms Park's courage to convey and present history with its true colors and nuances is commendable. The black and white, idealized version of this painful part of history, as endorsed by the South Korean State is shameful in the sense that it does not acknowledge the complex nature and nuances inherent to human kind.

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Mike commented December 19, 2015

Mike

Dec. 19, 2015

Whenever there are opposing views, even in the historical understanding of Korea's "comfort women," there are always two sides to every story and the truth lies somewhere in between the two.

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Anthony commented December 19, 2015

Anthony

Weiner

Dec. 19, 2015

She called comfort women "collaborators". Seems ridiculously inflammatory to me...

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Anthony commented December 19, 2015

Anthony

Mississippi

Dec. 19, 2015

That is very easy for you to say. I think you'd have very different opinions about any country that occupied America for half a century and subjected its citizens to exploitation and slavery. You are unable to empathize with their anger because you have never experienced their dishonor, so you minimize and whine "why can't we all just get along?"

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mhuepfel commented December 19, 2015

mhuepfel

Wisconsin

Dec. 19, 2015

The Japanese mistreatment of allied POW's and all they occupied is well documented in World War Two except in Japan. Ms Park is doing a disservice to all who suffered under their brutal treatment by alibiing for the Imperial Japanese Army and it's government. I am sure her next essay will be on how the victims of the Holocaust grew to love the Germans.

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JHP commented December 20, 2015

JHP

Manhattan/Honolulu

Dec. 20, 2015

I did not mean to type "to Korea"; that was a typo. The fact is that this is something that happened to my grandmother, and I am very grateful she was able to talk her way out of it, as I might not be here today if otherwise. Even if there were only "a small number" of women who were forced into sex slavery by "lower ranked Japanese soldiers" (although this narrative is false, because the fact is that there WERE tens of thousands of Korean and Chinese women who were also forced into sex slavery), this doesn't excuse the fact that it was WRONG. How dare you try to minimize their suffering.

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boji3 commented December 18, 2015

boji3

new york

Dec. 18, 2015

You're assuming these women (all of them) did not give their informed consent. And then you are conflating the issue of slavery with prostitution, the former being illegal in all countries of the world, the latter in about 70 countries. Neither of us will ever know what percentage of women gave - as you call it- informed consent- so we have to take the word of the women who were there. Some did and some didn't.

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CityTrucker commented December 18, 2015

CityTrucker

San Francisco

Dec. 18, 2015

I wasn't there, I don't know the details. But it at least seems that the Japanese occupiers formalized and organized the prostitution that has always accompanied large military installations.

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Hyung-Sung Kim commented December 18, 2015

Hyung-Sung Kim

Seoul

Dec. 18, 2015

I can hardly believe your ignorance. Many of the Korean comfort women's fathers had debts and sold their daughters. The comfort station owners paid off their debts in advance, and depending on the amount of the debt, the woman's contract length was determined. Korean women were not allowed to leave until their debts were paid off. Any coercion, violence or confinement was exercised by the Korean owners. So if one wants to use the term "sex slaves" to describe former Korean comfort women, they were the sex slaves of Korean comfort station owners. They were not the sex slaves of the Japanese military. The Japanese military personnels visited comfort stations as customers. A diary written by a Korean comfort station worker was discovered in 2013, and it makes it clear that Korean men not only recruited Korean women but also owned and operated comfort stations employing them. And Korean women were treated badly by the Korean comfort station owners according to the memoir written by a former Korean comfort woman. Japanese and Taiwanese women worked at comfort stations owned and operated by Japanese men and were treated much better. That is why we hear little or no complaint from former Japanese and Taiwanese comfort women. So if Korean comfort station owners treated Korean women better, we wouldn't be discussing this issue right now. Again, the common perception in the West that the Japanese military operated comfort stations is incorrect.

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Tom Sage commented December 19, 2015

Tom Sage

Mill Creek, Washington

Dec. 19, 2015

One must also consider how these women were broken in for service. Outrage from her peers is more than justified. That Japan should award such a whitewash speaks volumes. Ion a not unrelated matter, it seems Japanese women are heavily trafficked in today's modern slave/flesh trade, to judge from online porn sites and the prostitution racket in Vancouver, B.C. For today's comfort women, its business as usual in Japan.

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Sarah commented December 19, 2015

Sarah

Seoul, South Korea

Dec. 19, 2015

It's quite amazing how people can distort facts so significantly, entirely neglecting the results that such measures under Japanese imperialism actually brought about. Although it is true that Japan modernized Korea by implementing railroads and others but the real intention of such was to effectively export rice produced in Korea into Japan at a highly exploited price in order to meet the deficient supplies of their own country due to sudden concentration in the industrial sector, not to mention the fact that they also stole any metal of some sort to make bullets out of them.

The claim that there are lots of Korean prostitutes illegally selling sex in foreign countries is completely irrelevant, unless you're trying to make a generalization that it is Korean women's inherent characteristic to sell sex -- which is very disrespectful and ridiculous.

Also not really sure if people would agree on your point that forcing Koreans to change their names into Japanese ones, allowing Japanese cops to torture citizens at whim without trials or any legal procedures, and punishing children at school for speaking their mother language were all means to improve lives and implement democracy in Korea.

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Hyung-Sung Kim commented December 19, 2015

Hyung-Sung Kim

Seoul

Dec. 19, 2015

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KarlosTJ commented December 19, 2015

KarlosTJ

Bostonia

Dec. 19, 2015

Ms. Park writes that some Korean women were treated - what? Nicely? Well? Does Ms. Park reveal the complete statistics? Or does she simply provide anecdotal evidence and neglect to do any math?

It would be helpful if the article's author brought this information into the article, but apparently that wasn't important enough.

The real story: The nation of Japan forcibly conquered Korea, and some number of Korean women were forced into sexual slavery with the approval, connivance, and assistance of the Japanese military and thus also the Japanese government. Japanese-Americans received an apology from the US government for their forcible incarceration during WW2; apparently, the Japanese government today is unwilling to admit its culpability in the forcible rape it engendered in Korea. Ms. Park is a Japanese apologist.

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A. Stanton commented December 19, 2015

A. Stanton

Dallas, TX

Dec. 19, 2015

There were Jews too who were forced to aid Hitler. That didn't make them guilty of anything, or Hitler any less guilty of everything.

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LR commented December 19, 2015

Oklahoma

Dec. 19, 2015

Well said. There appears to be a grand delusion in many of the comments here that prostitution is a "choice," especially if begun out of economic desperation. But that it could be seen as a real choice under military occupation is beyond belief.

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Aki commented December 19, 2015

Aki

Sapporo, Japan

Dec. 19, 2015

There are many crimes the imperial military and the Japanese government committed during WWII; one of them was destroying the documents and records which could be used against them later when decided to surrender. (Since one of the agendas of the cabinet meeting prior to the US occupation was setting up brothels for American soldiers soon to come I am sure there must have been.) So why not accuse Japan for having been unfaithful to History, which is the most serious crime. (The Japanese government still do not keep inconvenient documents; the secret memorandums exchanged with USA disappear in Japan forever and surface in USA after 30 years or so.)

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Bos commented December 19, 2015

Bos

Boston

Dec. 19, 2015

There are two distinct issues here.

First, suppressing Prof. Park's minority view with extreme prejudice may be counterproductive to the supporters of the orthodoxy.

Second, perhaps Prof. Park is splitting hair here. Rape and pillage of the Japanese army did not confine in Korea. There were plenty of documented evidence in China and the rest of the conquered regions. So they weren't isolated incidents. Even if it was not the official Japanese government's mandate, saying it had no knowledge doesn't wash.

In the end, does two wrongs make one right for Ms. Park?

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R M Gopa1 commented December 19, 2015

R M Gopa1

Hartford, CT

Dec. 19, 2015

The old-fashioned notion of keeping women out of military service had the virtue of declaring half the human population beyond the grasp of national war machines. It also used to be that "comfort women" were part of the spoil the victors in the battle routinely claimed.

In future wars will there be comfort men for the women soldiers?

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Wolfcreek Farms commented December 19, 2015

Wolfcreek Farms

Dec. 19, 2015

It is wonderful to be alive in this time of rewriting the history of WWII to suit the survivors and politicians.

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edwinpark commented December 19, 2015

edwinpark

seoul

Dec. 19, 2015

As a 58 years old of Korean living in Korea. Professor Park expressed little bit minor opinion in her book based on the situation at the time of 1930~1940th. There were few hundreds or thousands women recruited, but now about 8-9 of them are remained. Can these 8-9 survivors represent all of them? I of course do expect an apology from Mr. Abe but can I coerce him? How long do we have to cling to our past? Give me better answers.

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thx1138 commented December 19, 2015

thx1138

usa

Dec. 19, 2015

while not directly related to cw, try reading iris changs rape of nanking, or unit 731, th story of medical experimentation on th Manchurians

it might give you some insight on how japan treated its conquered

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Hamish commented December 19, 2015

Hamish

California

Dec. 19, 2015

Can the question not be clarified, as usual, by simply following the money? If any Koreans made money from this repugnant trade, they're complicit.

That doesn't mean they're the only complicit ones of course. Surely in this situation, there's plenty blame to go around, including the soldiers themselves who made personal choices to participate in these activities.

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Chris commented December 19, 2015

Chris

10013

Dec. 19, 2015

By her account, black slavery in the western hemisphere was a function of tribal disputes and profiteering among Africans as they shipped off their own people.

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Danny commented December 19, 2015

Danny

South Korea

Dec. 19, 2015

I can’t help but get the impression that with this book Ms. Park was simply trying to write an account of this sad part of history that acknowledges that it wasn’t completely black and white. She wrote that Koreans sent their own women to be sex slaves for profit. This sounds terrible. But if doing this was profitable, and if it provided food, safety, and a good standing with the new colonial government leaders, isn’t it possible that the average person, regardless of nationality, would consider doing it? Others have been afraid to approach this topic, I’m sure, because they feared doing so would result in precisely this mob reaction.

In American, there’s similar taboo topics. Slavery and discrimination of black people is the biggest. It was the worst part of America’s history. No one disputes that. But when people publicly bring up nuances of the saga and the policies still in place because of it – when people, say, suggest that affirmative action which gives preference to black students when entering college is no longer necessary and actually discriminatory itself – they’re immediately termed racists. The difference between that situation and this one in South Korea is that most people in America, at least at the moment, understand that, in a true democracy, a person’s opinion should never be censored. That South Korea’s court is actually doing this censoring to me shows that South Korea is really not a true democracy yet.

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Seung K Choi commented December 19, 2015

Seung K Choi

Dec. 19, 2015

Jay from Green Bay nor Mrs. Park Yu-Ha experienced the desperate Japanese Colonial Master of Korea at the End of the World War II. Born in 1932 I saw Japanese policemen arresting Korean young women and men in streets to send them to the Japanese slave labor markets. My aunt's daughter was married off at 13 for fear of being kidnapped as a comport woman. Not only that, One morning a Japanese police kidnapped our house worker from our rice field. Fortunately, my father was able to hid him in a man's room while hundred Korean young men were pushed into the departing train while the Korean families were screaming and crying distracting Japanese policemen. The Japanese slavery of the Korean and other Asian Comfort Women is a fact not a fiction.

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Colorado Lily commented December 19, 2015

Colorado Lily

Grand Junction, CO

Dec. 19, 2015

Your writing sounds convoluted and confusing. Where is your stance here? Communication is just that, communicating effectively is even better.

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Colorado Lily commented December 19, 2015

Colorado Lily

Grand Junction, CO

Dec. 19, 2015

@ Mark in Brooklyn: Sounds like the United States (Japan's denials) except we continue to maintain monuments of the nation's slave owners.

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mr isaac commented December 19, 2015

mr isaac

los angeles

Dec. 19, 2015

Korea's legalized racism is the root of the backlash Ms. Park is experiencing. It is legal to discriminate against 'non-pure Koreans' in employment and government services. In claiming to support the 'honor' of comfort women, Ms. Park's harassment is really an effort to legitimize the discrimination against the mixed raced children they bore.

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D.H.Lee commented December 19, 2015

D.H.Lee

Seoul, South Korea

Dec. 19, 2015

Read Professor Park's book first before you criticize her. Here is the summary English translation of it.

http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.jp/

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J H L commented December 19, 2015

J H L

DE>

Dec. 19, 2015

I love this nonsense. Japan had diplomats in Washington to discus peace with the USA, while their military was planning, while their military was planning, and then carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbor, and please don't forget Manchukuo. Yes, their military had to appease their own soldiers who were far from home. One way of making young men happy was to provide them with captured Korean women, who served as 'comfort women'. Now, 70 year's later there is still a problem concerning those 'comfort women'. Maybe, I'm crazy, BUT TIME IS SUPPOSED TO HEAL ALL WOUNDS. Won this ever stop?t

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timothy commented December 18, 2015

timothy

texas

Dec. 18, 2015

Thank You Ms Park for speaking the truth.

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Adam commented December 18, 2015

Adam

Somerville, MA

Dec. 18, 2015

The Korean government wants the Japanese government to apologize for war crimes. The Japanese government continues to deny that these war crimes even occurred. There are numerous nations that have the same issue with the Japanese government.

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Lauren commented December 19, 2015

Lauren

NYC

Dec. 19, 2015

I'm sure sex traffickers in the present day also tell themselves the girls and women they coerce are willing. Disgusting.

4 RecommendShareFlag

MoreRadishesPlease commented December 18, 2015

MoreRadishesPlease

upstate ny

Dec. 18, 2015

@Jerry

Thanks for showing how a story, that drives vengeance and hate, can cause one to be mired forever in the past. Beyond doubt that some moral monsters ("this guy") were enabled by the Japanese government, as they are by every government, especially in war. Do you know of any government that is innocent of this?

Should relations between countries and peoples be ruled forever by such stories and emotions?

Seems Ms Park's work is about "how many moral monsters were there?" What are the details? That it angers so many proves how valuable it is.

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Sue commented December 19, 2015

Sue

Dec. 19, 2015

I'm sorry you find American women so frigid. Why would that be?

I assure you American women would have pretty much the same lookout on sex as the Korean women, if they were put in the same circumstances. They'd regard it as one more tool of survival for themselves and their families.

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Sue commented December 19, 2015

Sue

Dec. 19, 2015

At last, a comment that discusses prostitutes and sex slaves, women and children, as human beings.

4 RecommendShareFlag

Marie commented December 19, 2015

Marie

Nebraska

Dec. 19, 2015

After reading many of the comments here I'm amazed by one thing: the apparent misunderstanding of the difference between prostitution and sexual slavery. In the former, women (and sometimes men as well), will enter into a bargain with a "client" to be paid for sex. Even if there is a middle man, i.e. a pimp, the prostitute willingly enters into this bargain and gets paid an agreed upon sum of money.

In the case of sexual slavery, the women and girls have absolutely no say in what happens to their bodies. They are taken from their homes, made to perform sex against their will and are given no remuneration. The fact that they may be cared for in the way of feeding or medical care is beside the point. If I owned dogs I used for dogfighting, I would fed them and get them medical care too. After all, the health of their bodies goes directly to my bottom line.

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Joanne commented December 19, 2015

Joanne

Boston

Dec. 19, 2015

How would a GI, or you, Mr. Underwood, possibly know how Korean women felt about sex 70+ years ago? Do you really think that women working as prostitutes or cleaners, as you mention, would reveal their true feelings to American soldiers? This statement reminds me of how, during the Vietnam War, some white Americans claimed that Vietnamese people didn't value life the way "we" do. This is a classic way to rationalize exploitative behavior towards members of another race or culture, by suggesting the harm is less because "they" don't have the same delicacy of feeling that "we" do, and it is shameful.

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NeverLift commented December 19, 2015

NeverLift

Austin, TX

Dec. 19, 2015

I have very mixed emotions from reading this article.

On the one hand, one can view Ms. Park’s book as a dispassionate analysis of what actually occurred, a work of scholarship devoid of emotion. I’m not sure how I, as a Jew, would react to an analytical history of the Holocaust that suggested others Jews helped, or attempted to humanize the perpetrators – even if that were possible.

On the other hand, the description of the comfort women being provided to the invading forces by Koreans who sought to benefit from such cooperation should trigger acknowledgement of a reality that perhaps many Americans of all races are unaware of, or consciously suppress because of its implications: The slave ships that docked in Africa did not come with large armies that hunted down Africans. The slavers bought the Africans – from other Africans. Slavery resulting from inter-tribal warfare was very common then – not just in Africa – and the realization that slaves had value to others and trafficking in that “commodity” could be profitable was what resulted in Africans being shipped to the New World enslaved. It is that concept that the white slavers brought to Africa.

The issue then becomes: Do we acknowledge the active participation of a very small (I presume) part of the victimized society in the evils that resulted for their own kind, or do we sanitize that part of history to avoid offense?

A scholarly work must be direct and accurate. Otherwise it is worthless.

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Hyung-Sung Kim commented December 19, 2015

Hyung-Sung Kim

Seoul

Dec. 19, 2015

For those who haven't read Professor Park Yuha's book, you can google search "English Translation of Comfort Women Articles by Scholars" for a summary English translation. You be the judge.

As a history student, I interviewed dozens of Koreans who were born and raised in the Korean Peninsula in the 1920’s and 1930’s including my grandparents about comfort women. What they witnessed was Korean fathers selling their daughters, Korean comfort station owners deceiving Korean women. They never witnessed Japanese military coercing any Korean women. They all agreed with Professor Park Yuha.

San Francisco State University Professor Chunghee Sarah Soh has also looked into dozens of primary sources and interviewed dozens of former Korean comfort women, and she agrees with Professor Park.

Professor Soh's book concludes, "South Korean society must repudiate victimization, admit its complicity and accept that the system was not criminal. The Korean comfort women were recruited and employed by the korean comfort station owners."

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Marie commented December 19, 2015

Marie

Luxembourg

Dec. 19, 2015

The content of this article upsets me and i can only imagine how upset the Korean women must be. Will it make a difference to them if japanese state agencies or private recruiting agencies forced them into sexual slavery? Does it matter if some of them hadz a "relationship" with one of their rapists?

Does it make the crime less bad that the women who were living in "slavelike conditions" were treated as citizens and expected to consider their service patriotic?

Further, the comparison with prostitutes who followed American soldiers (i hope voluntarily!) just doesn't keep up with the misery the Korean women endured.

Maybe the self-declared experts on prostitution at Amnesty International should have a look at the issue? Better not, Nicholas Kristof is much better suited to comment on this book.

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Jerry commented December 19, 2015

Jerry

New York

Dec. 19, 2015

Hi Kit, thanks for your point, but this guy did not die many years ago. He still lives in East Asia in the name of Japan. This is because Japan still pays a great respect to the war criminals.

Germany (Nazis) committed war crimes. But, Germany and its government are respected in many ways because the government has never distorted what they did to Jews. They admitted their faults and tried hard to remember their wrongness. (If you go to Berlin, you will see many historic site where you can see what Nazis did).

But Japan is different. They have hidden and distorted facts and even in their history books they said such things never happened.

So, this guy has never died. This is so sad because long long time ago in Asian history, Korea was a country which transferred knowledge and many things to Japan for Japanese development. Even the King of Japan was originally from Korea--as Japanese current King admitted several years ago. I really wish Korea could restore its good relationship with Japan. But, it seems unlikely today as still Japan keeps denying the truth.

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Nathan Pate commented December 19, 2015

Nathan Pate

Paoli

Dec. 19, 2015

This is an illustration of an interesting phenomena; nature abhors a social vacuum. If there is an unlikely viewpoint, by a seemingly contradictory proponent, someone will arise to proclaim that viewpoint.

See Clarence Thomas' railing against affirmative action. See 3% of real scientists' deny AGW. See my claim that even the Republican presidential candidates will occasionally say something true.

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thx1138 commented December 19, 2015

thx1138

usa

Dec. 19, 2015

agree 100 %

japan will never apologize for anything, th rape of nanking, th dr mengele type experiments on Manchurians by th infamous unit 731

their history books even say America started th war by limiting japans supply of oil and scrap metals

pearl harbor ?

never heard of it

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tml commented December 19, 2015

tml

cambridge

Dec. 19, 2015

Comparing ethnic offenses in the 2 regions is comparing apples to oranges, since Germany's worst offenses were on Jews - who remain understandably horrified by their actions - and not other non-Jewish Europeans; for instance, they did not systematically execute every French civilian they met during war.

In Asia, the Japanese performed other atrocities with the slaughters in China; they still consider themselves, apologies or not, superior to their Asian neighbors, which makes their 'apologies' hollow (some of which come with caveats as noted in this article). You admit to not knowing about comfort women - maybe next time you should be better informed before making such comments. Had one of your family members been bayonetted or raped in the same way you wouldn't be referring to reactions as 'histrionic'.

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LuckyToBe commented December 19, 2015

LuckyToBe

Dec. 19, 2015

What you call Japan's "endless apologies" were late in coming, incomplete and not comparable to Germany's acceptance of their historic responsibilites. If Japan had accepted its responsibility in the same way as Germany, the reaction in Asia would have been different.

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WSF commented December 19, 2015

WSF

Ann Arbor

Dec. 19, 2015

War is horrible, to use a word that may have lost its true meaning over the millennia. The use of comfort women regardless of the way they are obtained has been one of the necessary "requisitions" for military leaders to keep their armies in the best fighting morale. Has anyone ever looked behind the song from "South Pacific", "There ain"t nothing like a Dame"? Those sailors made it sound like a joke but there was real down-to-earth practical matters being put into song.

Were there "Camp Followers" at Valley Forge that were tolerated by General George Washington? You can bet there were even though he did not requisition them. It is sad that such "comforts" need to be available for soldiers that are separated from normal family life for long periods but this is a reality of millennia of warfare.

War is the bane of civilization!

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Rudolf commented December 19, 2015

Rudolf

New York

Dec. 19, 2015

Today same problem in Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium) were East European women are promised nice jobs, are given one way tickets to Amsterdam or Frankfurt and then thrown into brothels.

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k pichon commented December 19, 2015

k pichon

florida

Dec. 19, 2015

As a very old person, and one who has participated actively in war, and been an observer of such wars several times, I am reminded once again of how porous are many of our so-called "common" beliefs - the "common knowledge" demons are still with us. And probably will be for an unending amount of time, once again..........

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Hyung-Sung Kim commented December 19, 2015

Hyung-Sung Kim

Seoul

Dec. 19, 2015

ACW, Read the summary of Professor Park Yuha's book before you criticize.

http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.jp/2014/10/summary-of-professor-park-y...

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JY Lee commented December 19, 2015

JY Lee

New York

Dec. 19, 2015

It is well known that Korea was colonized by Japan for 36 years until Japan was surrendered in 1945. During the period Korean were driven under Japanese like caged animals, which entailed unspeakable human tragedies in our modern history, such as comfort women suffrage.

As far as I can tell, Park is nothing but an ignorant traitor of Korea. But her motive of such irrational speculation could be purposeful. Now Korean society is flooded with Japanese money so is their influence. Secondly there are numerous second-hand educators such as ‘professor’ Park flooded in Korean society who try to cling on like drowning men catch straws.

We really don’t need to pay too much attention to her argument.

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DAC commented December 19, 2015

DAC

Bangkok

Dec. 19, 2015

"Willing local Recruiters" most certainly share some guilt - it is self evident, and does not diminish Japanese responsibility.

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pepperman33 commented December 19, 2015

pepperman33

Philadelphia, Pa.

Dec. 19, 2015

It is very difficult for Koreans to face their history during the time of Japanese colonization Many were collaborators that sold out to the Japanese. The Japanese were brutal in their treatment of the Korean people. This was a dark period for both countries. It is time to stop the constant nationalist fever from Korea toward the Japanese to stop. No god will come from it.

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TK Sung commented December 19, 2015

TK Sung

Dec. 19, 2015

It sounds as if Park is making out the "comfort women" to be essentially sames as what's going on around the US bases in Korea and other countries. (Korean ohmynews.com has been running a series about the horrendous lives of women of gijichon, a version of comfort station serving the US soldiers). Be assured that Japanese will point to them and claim that what they did was no different than what the US has been doing.

The academic freedom and the freedom of speech is important in search of the truth, no doubt. Problem is that the truth largely doesn't matter, and academics and politics inseparable, in that part of the world, Park's work may contain some interesting truths, and Koreans themselves ought to take a large part of the responsibility I agree, but her conclusion and generalization extrapolated from that part will mostly serve as a tool in ongoing Japanese attempt at the revisionism when the sex slavery has been rather well documented already, whether she intended or not.

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Dan Mabbutt commented December 19, 2015

Dan Mabbutt

Utah

Dec. 19, 2015

There are a number of issues here, not the least being freedom of speech and scholarly investigation. But I would like to ask the question:

Hasn't virtually every army in history been accompanied by a substantial camp of prostitutes? The origin of the term "hooker" is generally credited to the substantial camp that followed Civil War general Joe Hooker around. Is there an argument for the point of view that if Japan is guilty of anything, it is providing structure and order to something that has usually been far more disorderly?

--------------------------

Note: I posted this question in a forum focused exclusively on history and discovered that there are quite a few amateur and professional historians who think that the Korean position is exaggerated.

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ugh commented December 19, 2015

ugh

Dec. 19, 2015

Your comment says much more about you than about any of the other people you mentioned. You clearly don't see women as people, since enslavement and repeated rape (that's what using a comfort woman is, since she has no choice in the matter) "worked pretty well for all concerned." By "all" you mean the men, of course, the only people who are really people. The women aren't included in that "all" at all. So there's no reason to concern yourself with them. Right?

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Peter L Ruden commented December 19, 2015

Peter L Ruden

Savannah, GA

Dec. 19, 2015

Truth is often complicated and seldom are most human interactions capable of black and white categorization. I have not researched the issue so I cannot disputes or support the author's claims. But, when infused with nationalism or the settlement of old scores, it is not unusual for official or widely accepted versions of historical events to lose parts of the story along the way. I would not be surprised that their were some collaborators among Koreans during the Japanese colonial period. Such occupations often drive people to collaborate in order to survive or to achieve comfortable lives.

It does not lessen the sins of Japan to acknowledge that such things occurred if they did occur. The silencing and prosecution of the professor seems outrageous and spiteful.

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Daniel commented December 19, 2015

Daniel

San Francisco, CA

Dec. 19, 2015

Each culture wants to idealize its past, so this story is of interest for several issues for all parties involved, as well as any country.

1) Ability for a society to acknowledge its past to improve its future behavior

2) Press/academic freedom that will assist in creating a conversation that assists in acknowledgement.

3) Having a good fact-based discourse, and avoiding rallying around a some idealized myth, and not censoring the debate

Any country where there's hardship may encounter very distasteful behavior by its own people, especially under stress of an invasion but the facts need to discussed in the open. By coincidence, the court acquittal of a journalist reporter accused of defaming the South Korean president shows that a country can make judgement for press freedom and that shows progress.

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YJ Yang commented December 19, 2015

YJ Yang

Munich

Dec. 19, 2015

I would like to add some point of view for this:

1. The accuser is not the state and the government, but comfort women who are still alive. Plese do no make this case an oppression by the nation and the state. And I agree the state must not oppress any scholarships.

2. Their existence of Korean collaborator during colonial era, so-called Chinilpa, is not the new story. Most Korean people react against these collaborators far more seriously than Japan.

3. Their might be some collaborating comfort women who might feel love with Japanese military. However, it cannot deny the existence of another comfort women who were victims of Japanese imperialism. These women, mainly born in 1920s accused Park.

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Phil commented December 19, 2015

Phil

Brentwood

Dec. 19, 2015

"I think if anyone suggested that slaves in the U.S. were complicit in their own slavery because of the fact that African tribesmen lubricated the slave trade there would be outrage over here, too."

In fact, there were African tribes that captured members of other tribes and sold them to white men as slaves. This is a topic that's off limits for any scholar who wants to remain employed by a university.

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Keith commented December 19, 2015

Keith

USA

Dec. 19, 2015

Korea is not alone in utilizing and possibly even heightening a sense of humiliation by the Japanese empire in order to maintain nationalistic fervor in its citizens. China has a national Humiliation Day. In the case of China this is not limited to encouraging grievances Japan but also the United States. Their leaders constantly help suppress and confuse domestic grievances by promoting fear and the sense of being besieged by dangerous foreigners. Note the recent belligerency over the latest B-52 incursion. Yes, this is a bit of self-serving nonsense on the part of the Chinese Communists. They should consider themselves lucky they aren't under siege by an Islamic caliphate and millions of Hispanic rapists and murderers.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0918/China-marks-N...

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Kali commented December 19, 2015

Kali

San Jose

Dec. 19, 2015

The moral of this story should be the importance of free speech and of tenure for professors. Without either, free exchange of controversial ideas is impossible. In a free and dynamic exchange of ideas yesterday's controversial ideas become tomorrow's truths and yesterday's truths become myths but in a society without freedom of thought and speech (especially at the university level), there is no progress.

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MS commented December 18, 2015

Dec. 18, 2015

Even before the Vietnam War, there were connections between the US military and prostitution:

http://www.stripes.com/blogs/the-rumor-doctor/the-rumor-doctor-1.104348/...

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David Underwood commented December 18, 2015

David Underwood

Citrus Heights

Dec. 18, 2015

Korean and Japanese women did not have the same outlook on sex as American women do.

Just ask any GI who was stationed there during the 'Korean Police Action." The currency of choice was cigarettes. One choice job was cleaning woman in the barracks.

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Rich commented December 19, 2015

Rich

Dec. 19, 2015

I'm a Korean history specialist at Columbia University, and I have to say that Ms. Park is offering a troubling narrative here. It seems that she has attempted to place motivation on people whose motives she can never know. That's speculative -- even with evidence -- and I completely reject that aspect. However, for it's part, Korea mishandled, and continues to mishandle, the memory of comfort women to this day. Park Chung-Hee (current President Park's father) went for a one-time monetary settlement with Japan in 1965, promising to bury all past wrongs. Korea did bury their story and did call the women shameful and collaborators themselves until the early 1990's when, ironically, Japanese scholars came forward with information about the women (information that Korea incidentally had as well, but hid). That original "shameful/collaborator" narrative may have produced a false representation of comfort women within oral histories and documents; and that is Korea's fault. Only after 1992 did comfort women become a Korean symbol of collective suffering that has increasingly gained more nationalist support.

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Connecticut Yankee commented December 19, 2015

Connecticut Yankee

Middlesex County, CT

Dec. 19, 2015

We need to all be careful here. Even today, attractive young Korean women can be found patrolling the outskirts of U.S. bases, lured by the prospect of hooking an American as a husband. That they are there of their own volition is true. But it is also true that other Koreans prey on their naiveté for commercial purposes. And it is the HEIGHT of naiveté to assume that the U.S. military is an unwitting or unwilling bystander to this scheme, a scheme with so many human parts.

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Vincent Amato commented December 19, 2015

Vincent Amato

Jackson Heights, NY

Dec. 19, 2015

Although no nation on Earth does not have an accepted and somewhat cleansed version of its history for public consumption, the history of Korea, particularly because so many transitions occurred in such a concentrated period of time, is particularly complex. To some extent, the U.S. is implicated in this history. One need only recall that Teddy Roosevelt was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for having brokered the deal with Japan, following its victory in the 1905 war with Russia, that essentially gave Korea and the island of Formosa (Taiwan) to the Japanese. From 1905 until forty years later, with the defeat of Japan in WWII, Japan treated Korea not merely as a colony but as a province. With the division of the nation following WWII and what became in a sense a proxy war between the U.S. and the USSR just a few years later, the "land of morning calm," once a tributary state of China, gave us the two very different state entities we have today--a lingering quasi- soviet dictatorship and one of the world's economic "tigers." Against this background, the issue of the comfort women is particularly volatile since it elicits so many issues beyond the exploitation of the women affected and reopens old wounds.

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chris commented December 19, 2015

chris

Dec. 19, 2015

"extracurricular entertainment"

What a grotesque description of sexual slavery.

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Eduard commented December 19, 2015

Eduard

South Korea

Dec. 19, 2015

Living in South Korea gave me some good insight about this current issue. Democracy in South Korea is still new and not perfect and while the author has the right of speech, the damage done by the Japanese ignoring their war crimes and their pressing issue of dismissing that this certain historical event never occurred has the entire Korean peninsula enraged.

While in war there are crimes, Japan fails to be a mature superpower in Asia by ignoring their history and the consequences are felt throughout the pillaged and looted countries of its past Empire.

Dr. Park's book being best selling in Japan further demonstrates the Japanese people lack of humanity in simply admitting to its mistakes and while the Japanese Self Defense Force can once again deploy fears throughout Asia echo in a shadow of doubt.

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DMutchler commented December 19, 2015

DMutchler

Dec. 19, 2015

I truly believe it is the case where people more often than not would prefer to not know the Truth because their 'truth' is more palatable. Put another way, rarely is the Truth such a simplistic, black and white issue.

And of course, when mixed with politics, Truth flies out the window.

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Sivaram Pochiraju commented December 19, 2015

Sivaram Pochiraju

Hyderabad, India

Dec. 19, 2015

Marie : Prostitution is not that simple. If a woman or a man willingly sells his or her body, without any outside pressure, for money is called a prostitute but there are numerous instances wherein the children mostly of poor are either kidnapped or bought and later then compelled to undergo prostitution by certain hooligans. So this type of so called prostitution is in fact sexual slavery.

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YJ Yang commented December 19, 2015

YJ Yang

Munich

Dec. 19, 2015

What she has missed are: 1. A issue of "place" - Like Holocaust, "sex slavery" by Imperial Japan was not only a problem of individual victims, but also which agent constructed the place in which women had to serve as sex slaves. Comfort womens might be various, as Park insisted on, however, she did not grasp a mechanism of the place and which agent constructed and managed it; 2. By doing so, she makes a conctrete subject who has the resposibility for the place an abstract ideology using subtle word like "sin". Comfort women are realities and concrete. How can these women stand against the abstract thing?

3. I would just like to say to Park, please stop that victimisation of yourself.

3 Replies3 RecommendShareFlag

ACJ commented December 19, 2015

ACJ

Chicago, IL

Dec. 19, 2015

When you read an article like this, alongside, other articles about other wars now going on and now being planned, you yearn for peace --- which is the only answer for the inevitable collapse of all morality that all wars bring on.

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Nick Metrowsky commented December 19, 2015

Nick Metrowsky

Longmont, Colorado

Dec. 19, 2015

South Korea, is not like North Korea; or its it? From the end of the Korean War until the early 1990s, South Korea was a military dictatorship. Since then it is more "democratic". But, unlike the United States where a person may get scorned; they are not arrested and jailed for not having a popular opinion. In North Korea, Ms. Park would be in a labor camp or worse. In South Korea, she is going to prison. Either way, the authorities are putting her out of public view because they agree with her opinion.

By the way, both Koreas feel that the "comfort woman" story is a fact. They also still have great hostility to Japan. From the days they were conquered, by American trained armies, for the Emperor, until the end of WWI. It is true, the United States helped the Japanese train their army in modern warfare. Little did they know, that they will be fighting WWII against them nearly 50 years later.

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ecco commented December 19, 2015

ecco

conncecticut

Dec. 19, 2015

absolve no one, indict everyone who had a hand in the procurement and sale/delivery of human beings anywhere for any reason.

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Sage commented December 19, 2015

Sage

Santa Cruz

Dec. 19, 2015

Historical truth is rarely black or white. If this new account relies on historically incorrect intermediate shades, or draws untenable conclusions from its source basis, the proper remedy is more and better historical research to revise this revision, not to condemn it ipso facto and wholesale for being nuanced and multi-sided.

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Jerry commented December 19, 2015

Jerry

New York

Dec. 19, 2015

No mark. It is the opposite. Germany did its best to find facts and justice for jews

japan distorted facts and still in denial

please get info about it by google ☺

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Barbara commented December 19, 2015

Barbara

Los Angeles

Dec. 19, 2015

What remains is the fact that rape in war is common and that there are always those who profit from providing prostitutes. For anyone interested who has not already read it, I recommend the book by Susan Brownmiller: "Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape." It contains a detailed history of rape during many wars. Brownmiller is not an apologist but rather a chronicler.

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Aruna commented December 19, 2015

Aruna

New York

Dec. 19, 2015

Men, in their relationship with women, have three sides.

A) Men are the gender which discriminates against women, does not give them opportunities, even treats them with violence and sexual outrage. ALL these things are true.

B) But there is a second side to the male female relationship, namely men as comforters and protectors of women. It is not particularly surprising that when the Titanic was sinking, the men in charge gave a priority to women for the lifeboats. Even though a majority of the passengers were male, a majority of the survivors were female. Indeed women on the Titanic had a higher rate of survival than even children.

C) And then there is the third aspect of the picture, namely women as carers and protectors of men. Even though I have been divorced for 21 years, my ex-wife is constantly giving me medical advice (most of which is good) and some of my best sweaters are presents from her. The people that Florence Nightingale took care of were of course male soldiers.

I am grateful to Ms. Park for pointing to the complex nature of male female relationship. Indeed it was a Japanese American colleague of mine who said in one of her books, "The fundamental fact about men and women is that every man's first love is a woman - his mother."

CAN we bring love back?

It is of course there in reality. But it seems not to be there in the media which is thrilled to write about cases where women are mistreated.

1 Reply3 RecommendShareFlag

Barbara commented December 19, 2015

Barbara

Los Angeles

Dec. 19, 2015

Thanks, Harry.

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Hyung-Sung Kim commented December 19, 2015

Hyung-Sung Kim

Seoul

Dec. 19, 2015

YJ Yang,

3 RecommendShareFlag

JCB commented December 19, 2015

JCB

NYS

Dec. 19, 2015

So, the Japanese military didn't actually enslave the girls, they let the Koreans handle that part. The soldiers just enjoyed the 11-year old girls like Kim Sun-ok (from your linked story)?

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Eric Rentschler commented December 19, 2015

Eric Rentschler

Columbus, OH

Dec. 19, 2015

It is very difficult to keep digging for truth on these topics as those who are the source of first-hand accounts pass away, or they forget, and their accounts are steeped in their own bias. I see merit in tackling this as non-fiction, and so that leaves Ms. Park as prey for political censors who look for one-liners to redact. Fictional accounts on the other hand, can rescue some of the truth, but neglect other facts for the sake of story. I faced very similar challenges when I wrote Itoh's Ghost, a crime story on the Japanese camp in Manchuria during WWII.

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Greenpa commented December 19, 2015

Greenpa

Dec. 19, 2015

As a scientist, "The Truth" is the closest thing I have to a religion.

Here is a Truth: When people don't want to hear a Truth; they do not hear it.

We're experiencing this personally in the US right now. Insisting that My Truth is truer than Your Truth can fracture communities. As our Founders recognized; there can be times when it is best to just leave a disagreement alone. Community - can be more important.

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Jerry commented December 19, 2015

Jerry

New York

Dec. 19, 2015

What you should know is what she said is not new views. She represents what Japan has been made up to distort its history for ages

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Bric commented December 19, 2015

Bric

Georgia, USA

Dec. 19, 2015

"The fact that there may have been willing local recruiters or other participants, or that some of these women were treated with kindness, is of no value in assessing the overall responsibility." This comment is the exact mentality that Ms. Park's book attempts to address. When one's historical view is shaped and vehemently protected under the name of patriotism, objectivity goes out the window and all that's left is the need to place blame because if "we" can blame "them" then that exonerates "us" of any responsibility and it sounds like her research has shown a bigger picture that doesn't play well with Korean pride. I didn't see anyone disputing her facts...they just don't like what they say about Koreans' roles in this tragedy. In war, there will always be people on both sides ready to exploit others for personal gain. It's the dark side of our human nature. But to say responsibility lies solely with Japan for creating this problem through colonial action...then history dictates the blame also go to those who allowed the colonization in the first place...and that would be the good, ole U.S. Of A.! Check your history...it was our president who signed documents allowing Japan to "take its little brother Korea under its wing"-nice way to say "Colonize and exploit"! So if you're really looking to assess OVERALL responsibility...there's plenty of blame to go around. Why attack this woman for showing (shock to no one really) that there were Koreans to blame as well?

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mbloom commented December 19, 2015

mbloom

menlo park, ca

Dec. 19, 2015

I seems war brings out latent cruel subcultures that openly defy the norms of peace times. When killing is legitimized by the state many forms of immorality from torture to profiteering appear and thrive.

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west-of-the-river commented December 19, 2015

west-of-the-river

Massachusetts

Dec. 19, 2015

I had no idea that South Korea has such a repressive government.

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Californian commented December 19, 2015

Californian

California

Dec. 19, 2015

Regarding "Men just don't seem to get it": the book under discussion was written by a woman. So "men just don't get it" doesn't seem to address the article.

Also, my understanding is that women often ran brothels. I have read that women help procure girls. Some although males create the demand, that doesn't mean that women aren't part of running the system.

Joe G's comment, "Boys cnfronted with inevitable death on the battle field sometimes have no qualms about raping a women. It happens more then you think. Morality never fit into a war zone" sadly seems to be the most relevant.

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thx1138 commented December 19, 2015

thx1138

usa

Dec. 19, 2015

This was a dark period for both countries

darker for th japanese , wouldn t you say

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Boomer commented December 19, 2015

Boomer

Middletown, Pennsylvania

Dec. 19, 2015

This is chilling. My mother, now deceased four years, was a dutch POW in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Ironically she believes she was saved from this fate because she was emaciated, not good looking and married ( "the ten most attractive... were taken"). I will continue to read all these comments to increase my understanding of my parents experience as they were captured by Japanese in 1942 while teaching in Indonesia. The Dutch in Indonesia suffered. Those of mixed relationships Dutch and Javanese suffered when they went to Holland to live after the war (see Inez Hollander who wrote Silenced Voices and the blog the Indo Project on facebook). There was a holocaust perpetrated by the Japanese but not much is said about it.

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Elizabeth commented December 19, 2015

Elizabeth

West palm beach

Dec. 19, 2015

Here in the land of Florida, we had a nutty professor at Florida Atlantic University who claimed the Newton, Mass. massacre was a hoax and that the parents of the slain didn't really lose those children - he claimed it was made up so the parents could collect money. Thankfully FAU decided that was worth termination.

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Cheng commented December 19, 2015

Cheng

San Francisco

Dec. 19, 2015

Ms. Park seems to say that the Japanese government was not responsible for

the horrors of comfort women, because it was not directly involved in it. That is astonishing statement. Was the Japanese government not responsible for the killing of millions of innocent civilians in Korea, China, and other parts of Asia during the WWII, because it did issue direct order for its soldiers to kill?

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Jim commented December 19, 2015

Jim

Odenton, MD

Dec. 19, 2015

This comment might be interesting if the quoted language were coherent. Is this supposed to say, "The 6th U.S. Marine Division captured over 150 Japanese soldiers at a certain place and time. Before being captured, the Japanese soldiers' officers bowed politely to the Japanese soldiers, handed their swords over to them (the Japanese soldiers), shot the women that were with the Japanese, and then committed suicide by shooting themselves."?

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