Her public testimony about the horrors of sexual slavery that Japan had engineered for its World War II military encouraged other survivors to step forward.
Kim Hak-soon, right, in 1992 at a weekly protest that she and others started in Seoul to demand that Japan apologize for brutalities toward women during World War II.Credit...Associated Press
By Choe Sang-Hun
Oct. 21, 2021
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
SEOUL — On Aug. 14, 1991, a woman who lived alone in a flophouse here faced television cameras and told the world her name: Kim Hak-soon. She then described in gruesome detail how, when she was barely 17, she was taken to a so-called comfort station in China during World War II and raped by several Japanese soldiers every day.
“It was horrifying when those monstrous soldiers forced themselves upon me,” she said during a news conference, wiping tears off her face. “When I tried to run away, they caught me and dragged me in again.”
Her powerful account, the first such public testimony by a former “comfort woman,” gave a human face to a history that many political leaders in Japan had denied for decades, and that many still do: From the 1930s until the end of the war, Japan coerced or lured an estimated 200,000 women into military-run rape centers in Asia and the Pacific, according to historians. It was one of history’s largest examples of state-sponsored sexual slavery.
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Kim died of a lung disease when she was 73, on Dec. 16, 1997, just six years after the testimony. But she left a long-lasting legacy and inspired other former sex slaves to come forward in Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Australia and the Netherlands.
“Nothing that I wrote could come close to the impact of the personal firsthand account given publicly by Kim Hak-soon 30 years ago,” Gay J. McDougall, a former United Nations special rapporteur whose 1998 report defined Japan’s wartime enslavement of comfort women as crimes against humanity, said this year at a conference about Kim’s legacy.
In South Korea, 238 former comfort women would eventually step forward. A protest started by Kim and others in 1992 is held outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul every Wednesday. Amid the uproar triggered by her testimony, Tokyo issued a landmark apology in 1993, admitting that the Japanese military was, “directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations,” and that “coaxing” and “coercion” were used in the recruitment of comfort women.
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Kim in 1991, when she gave the first public testimony of horrors experienced by comfort women. Her account inspired others around the world to break their silence.Credit...Yonhap News Agency
“She remains one of the bravest people of the 20th century,” said Alexis Dudden, a history professor at the University of Connecticut who specializes in Korea-Japan relations. “Kim Hak-soon’s initial statement propelled researchers to unearth documentary evidence to support her claims, which began the still-ongoing process of holding the Japanese government accountable for what the United Nations defines as a war crime and crime against humanity.”
Kim Hak-soon was born on Oct. 20, 1924, in Jilin, in northeastern China, where her parents had migrated during Japan’s colonial rule of Korea. Her father died shortly after her birth. She and her mother returned to Korea, where her mother remarried.
When Kim was 15, she was adopted by another family, which enrolled her in a school for kisaeng, female entertainers who learned to sing, dance, play musical instruments and write poems to entertain upper-class men. After her graduation in 1941, her adoptive father took her and another adopted daughter to China to find them jobs. But shortly after they arrived in Beijing, Japanese soldiers detained them.
The two girls were taken by truck to a military unit with a red brick house attached to it. Kim was raped by a Japanese officer on the first night in that house, she said in “The Korean Comfort Women Who Were Coercively Dragged Away for the Military, Vol. 1” (1993), a book of testimonies by former comfort women.
There were five Korean girls there, at least three of whom were teenagers. The soldiers guarded the house, supplied food and used the girls for sex, even when they had their periods. Once a week, a military doctor came to check them for venereal diseases. When Kim tried to run away or resist the soldiers, she was kicked and flogged.
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Kim on the phone in 1991 in the office of Korea Church Women United, where a hot line was opened to accept calls from former comfort women.Credit...War & Women's Human Rights Museum
“On days when the soldiers returned from expeditions, we each had to take as many as 10 to 15 men,” Kim said on South Korea’s KBS-TV in 1992. “They took us as if we were some kind of object, and used us however they wanted. When we broke down with problems like diseases, they abandoned us like objects or killed us.”
After two months, the soldiers moved to another location, taking the girls with them. Kim was there for more than a month when a Korean man entered her room for sex one day while the Japanese soldiers were away. The man helped her escape, and she tagged along as he moved across China delivering opium. The couple had a son and a daughter.
Life with him was not easy.
“When he was drunk and upset over something, he called me a dirty military prostitute,” Kim was quoted as saying in the book. “He said that even when our son could hear us.”
After Japan’s surrender in 1945, the family settled in Seoul. Both children died young, and Kim’s husband died during the Korean War.
Kim took odd jobs around South Korea and later worked as a housemaid in Seoul. She never remarried.
By 1987, Kim was living in a slum, subsisting on welfare handouts and working temporary jobs like sweeping parks. In 1991, she heard news that the Japanese government denied having recruited comfort women, and she contacted a women’s rights group.
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Kim in an undated photo at the weekly protest rally in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. Riot police were dispatched to block the protesters. Credit...War & Women's Human Rights Museum
At the time, in a culture in which female victims of sexual violence were expected to live in shame and silence rather than seek redress, most former comfort women concealed their past.
“I wanted to protest to the Japanese people, ‘You say nothing like that happened, but I survived all that and am living evidence that it did,’” she said in 1991.
Since 2018, South Korea has celebrated Aug. 14 — the day Kim made her first testimony — as a national memorial day for former comfort women.
For the rest of her life, Kim campaigned tirelessly, demanding that the Japanese government take legal responsibility for sexual slavery and offer compensation. But she died with her wish unfulfilled.
In her last interview, with the online newspaper Newstapa, Kim said she was trying to live on — “to be 110 or 120, if I have to.”
“I wanted to speak out before I died because no one else would on my behalf,” she said. “I have no desire left other than to hear them say they are truly sorry.”
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Kim played the janggu, a traditional Korean instrument, during a hunger strike in front of the Japanese parliament in Tokyo in 1994.Credit...War & Women's Human Rights Museum
Choe Sang-Hun is the Seoul bureau chief for The New York Times, focusing on news on North and South Korea.
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 25, 2021, Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Overlooked No More: Kim Hak-soon, Who Broke the Silence for ‘Comfort Women’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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emi igawa commented October 26
E
emi igawa
Japan
Oct. 26
I have read several sources about Kim Hak-sun. But it was her tragedy that she was sold by her stepfather. First, her mother intended to make her to work at kiseng, where girls entertain at men's drinking parties and sexual services. Second, her stepfather took her to China, intending to sell her at a brothel.
Japanese brothels required documents (official identification proof, parent's permission to work as a prostitute, etc). If her stepfather wanted her to work factory jobs, Korea under Japanese Occupation was a better place than China.
You should read "The New Korea" by Alleyne Ireland (originally published in 1926, but currently English-Japanese bilingual version is available), and "Anti-Japanese Tribalism" by Lee Young-hoon et al. (2019), published in Korean or in Japanese. The latter book logically refutes the Korean activists' lies, and the Koreans are adamantly demanding unreliable accusations without any evidences.
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Douglas commented October 26
D
Douglas
Seoul
Oct. 26
I am ashamed I didn't know more about her and the pain and and suffering she had to endure her whole life before she passed away. This is a story that just has to be told, again, again, and again, to whoever will listen so that the truth about Kim Hak-soon and other Korean women whose lives were cut into pieces by Japan never fades into obscurity. We lessen the pain, the humiliation, when we remember and honor the truth about our past. Yes, Japan, we can come closer, if you can learn to not forget and honor the truth about your past.
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Ilya commented October 25
I
Ilya
NYC
Oct. 25
These women endured the unendurable. They’re truly the bravest people ever.
Japan needs to acknowledge and atone for its past of atrocities, which include not only mass rape but the use of Chinese civilians for bayonet training, medical and chemical experiments (all on live prisoners), slavery and genocide.
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1 REPLY
emi igawa commented October 26
E
emi igawa
Japan
Oct. 26
@Ilya
Japanese officials interviewed many Koreans who identified themselves as former comfort women around 1991. However, the reality is 'Korean poor parents sold daughters to brothels to pay off debts'. Japan showed remorse, but in the past 30 years, there has been found no single evidence to support the allegation 'Japanese Military forcibly abducted girls to brothels'. Japanese Military brothels seems better managed than the US Military (after 1945) or the South Korean Military (after 1950), in terms of wages and health check-ups.
The Japanese has been supportive to the Koreans in the past century. The details are found in The New Korea by Alleyne Ireland (originally in 1026).
The Koreans belonged to the Anti-Japanese guerillas stayed in China were cruel, and you may not understand the Japanese in the World War II without knowing the reality of the guerillas.
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Jane commented October 25
J
Jane
Seattle
Oct. 25
This lady is so brave for speaking the truth at a time when sexual violence was often met with victim blaming. These teenage girls experienced sexual violence and often violent death. I remember watching a documentary about 'Comfort Women' during college and crying my eyes out for these women. After find out about this, we thought the term 'Comfort Women' isn't right. Most of them lived through unimaginable pain and life wasn't kind to them afterwards. They suffered mentally and physically from this trauma and most of them never carried on to have a 'normal life'. They deserve a heartfelt apology at the least, but are often met with denial by the Japanese government. It is insulting and infuriating. I hope Japanese government will atone for the sins of their ancestors (Germany is a great example) and offer sincere apologies to the few victims now left. The survivors are now passing away due to old age. They deserve justice and peace before they pass. Such a heartbreaking history.
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Corkcampbell commented October 25
C
Corkcampbell
Seattle
Oct. 25
Are there still the weekly protests regarding this in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul? I used to attend occasionally when I lived there up to about four years ago. The statues of the empty chair and the woman were impressive and moving. Before moving to South Korea, I lived in China for a decade and some of my friends/students had much older relatives (or family histories) with similar memories of the Japanese occupation, which also included related actions such as Unit 731.
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Lee commented October 25
L
Lee
SF &Seoul
Oct. 25
She is a true hero. and still, there are Japanese who deny this happened.
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Jira commented October 25
J
Jira
Samson
Oct. 25
Such bravery.
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Mary M commented October 25
M
Mary M
GIVE US BACK OUR NORTHEAST TAX DOLLARS
Oct. 25
what a heroic person!
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cds333 commented October 25
C
cds333
Washington, D.C.
Oct. 25
I want to thank Mr. Choe for writing this and the Times for running this series. Kim Hak-soon was a stunningly courageous woman. I will remember her name and her bravery for the rest of my life.
The truth matters. It matters greatly. There has never been a time in American history when we needed to be reminded of that more than we do now.
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? commented October 25
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?
?
Oct. 25
Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman
is a resource for victims of sexual violence. It covers many kinds of trauma (including combat veteran ptsd). Thank you nyt for highlighting this story. I was not aware of Kim Hak- soon but I’m grateful for her work.
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Leona Bloom commented October 25
L
Leona Bloom
Raleigh NC
Oct. 25
oh, so very sad what we humans are capable of doing to each other. I'm so sorry for these women. I'm so proud of them for speaking up. More of us need to do that, men and women.
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Ale commented October 25
A
Ale
The river
Oct. 25
Wow, what an amazingly strong woman. She deserves to be remembered!
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Suburban mom commented October 25
S
Suburban mom
Boston
Oct. 25
Kim Hak-soon survived and persisted through a life of unspeakable atrocity and hardship. She had the courage to speak up and demand justice. Rest in peace Kim Hak-soon.
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MS commented October 25
M
MS
NYC
Oct. 25
I am not Korean, but my daughter is. Somehow that fact has made the experiences of the "comfort women" seem closer than many other horrifying instances of human evil. If my daughter had been born 80 years earlier that could have been her. Thank you, Kim Hak-soon. And, thank you to the Times for belatedly catching up with her.
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