4. Reframing the “Comfort Women” Issue: New Representations of an Old War Crime

Abstract

The end of 2016 marked several important anniversaries for the so-called “comfort women” issue – that is, the subject of Asian women who were used by the Imperial Japanese Army as military sex slaves. Twenty-five years earlier, in August 1991, what George Hicks later called “a turning point” occurred, when an elderly Korean woman, Kim Hak Sun (1924–1997), “announced her willingness to testify publicly about her experiences as a comfort woman, raising the issue to the level of formal legal action.” She told of being imprisoned in “comfort stations” for sexual exploitation during the Second World War and, with other girls, being shipped across China to be used by Japanese soldiers near the frontlines of battle. With her testimony, as well as that of other survivors who soon began to come forward, “groups in both Korea and Japan . . . prepared a lawsuit” against Japan, demanding compensation for the irreparable damage they suffered to their bodies and minds. As Bonnie B. C. Oh reports, this led to a formal request from the government of the Republic of Korea for Japan “to conduct an investigation into the ‘comfort women’ system.” But there is also another anniversary to consider. The end of 2016 marked one year since the surprise announcement of an agreement between the governments of President Park Geun-hye of the Republic of Korea – who would wind up being impeached in 2017 – and of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō of Japan that supposedly would put to rest a dispute between the two nations over what the Japanese military did in Asia more over seventy years ago, as well as what it still owes to those who were harmed by the “comfort system.” As revealed to the public on 28 December 2016 by the foreign ministers of both nations, this