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VOICES OF THE KOREAN COMFORT WOMEN An innumerable number of young women were taken from Korea during the Pacific War to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers. These women, including teenagers, euphemistically referred to in Japanese documents as Comfort Women, were shipped to the vastly expanded battlefronts throughout the Japan-occupied territories covering Northern China to Myanmar and to the South Pacific Islands. Many of these girls died, were killed or abandoned during and after the war, but a small percentage of them returned only to face yet another devastating war at home and lasting social stigma. In Voices of the Korean Comfort Women, nine survivors tell their traumatic life stories as to how they were taken, how they had been treated with atrocities at the Comfort Stations, and how they had survived through not only the Pacific War but also the Korean War and beyond. These often-harrowing personal testimonies are each expanded by the interviewer’s observational notes, thereby providing poignant contextual information. This English translation of vital oral history, underpinned with theoretically informed guides, will be invaluable to students and scholars of Asian history, the Pacific War and wartime sexual violence against women as well as those interested in historical trauma and human rights. Chungmoo Choi is Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, USA, where she teaches cultural studies, critical theory, gender, literature, film and religion of Korea. She is the author of Healing Historical Trauma in South Korean Film and Literature and co-editor of Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism. Hyunah Yang is Professor of Law at Seoul National University, Republic of Korea, where she teaches gender, law, and sociology. She edited Law and Society in Korea, and wrote many articles on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery and family law in Korea. VOICES OF THE KOREAN COMFORT WOMEN History Rewritten from Memories Edited and Translated by Chungmoo Choi and Hyunah Yang Designed cover image: Portrait of Kap-sun Ch’oe. (Image courtesy of The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan) Portraits of each testifier inside of book © Youngsook Park First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Chungmoo Choi and Hyunah Yang Korean Original: Forcibly Taken Korean Comfort Women 4: History Rewritten from Memories (Seoul: Pulbit, 2001; 2011). This English translation is based on the second edition in 2011 Korean Original © 2011 The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan Korean Original © 2011 The Testimony Team for the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal 2000 The right of The Testimony Team for the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal 2000 and The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Choi, Chungmoo, editor. | Yang, Hyŏn-a, editor. Title: Voices of the Korean comfort women : history rewritten from memories / edited and translated by Chungmoo Choi & Hyunah Yang. Other titles: Kiŏk ŭro tasi ssŭnŭn yŏksa. English Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022035314 (print) | LCCN 2022035315 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032230566 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032230573 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003275473 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Comfort women—Korea—Interviews. | Comfort women— Korea—Biography. | World War, 1939–1945—Personal narratives, Korean. | World War, 1939–1945—Women—Korea. | World War, 1939–1945— Women—Abuse of—East Asia. | Service, Compulsory non-military—Korea. Classification: LCC D810.C698 K5813 2023 (print) | LCC D810.C698 (ebook) | DDC 940.53/519082—dc23/eng/20220928 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035314 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035315 ISBN: 978-1-032-23056-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-23057-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-27547-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003275473 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Chungmoo Choi and Hyunah Yang Preface to the English Translation xi Chungmoo Choi Preface to the English Translation: “Now Halmŏni (Grandmother) Talks to Us in English” - Method of Translation and Its Significance xvii Hyunah Yang Introduction to Korean Compilation: How to Read this Collection of Testimonies xxiv The Testimony Team Glossary xxxvii Guide to Typographical Symbols xl Testimonies of Comfort Women 1 Hwa-sŏn Kim (김화선) 3 Ch’ang-yŏn Kim (김창연, Pseudonym) 17 Ok-sŏn Han (한옥선) 33 Yŏng-ja Kim (김영자) 53 Kap-sun Ch’oe (최갑순) 69 Yun-hong An (안윤홍, Pseudonym) 93 vi Contents Sun-man Na (나순만, Pseudonym) 107 Pok-tong Kim (김복동) 135 Pŏp-sun An (안법순) 149 Appendix I. Comfort Women and the Japanese Military Sexual Slavery System 169 Appendix II. Discussion Group Guide 172 Appendix III. [Map] Places Where the Victims Were Stationed as Comfort Women 175 Testimony Team for the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal 2000 for the Trial of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery by Japan 176 List of Contributors 177 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This English translation of nine testimonies of former Korean Comfort Women is a product of true collaboration across the Pacific and across the continental US, spanning over nearly a four-year period. We are most grateful to the nine halmonis who agreed to tell the carefully guarded stories of their painful past some twenty years ago. Some of these women did not share the stories even with their own mothers. They opened their hearts to the sympathetic ears of the interviewers to whom we are also thankful. The interviewers’ time-consuming multiple visits to remote locations to gain the trust of the suspicious interviewees, their painstaking notetaking, the many hours they spent transcribing the interview tapes, listening to them repeatedly and carefully editing them to reflectively represent the women’s testimonies the best way they could, brought these stories to light. Publishing this book was only possible thanks to the support of so many scholars, activists and organizations. First and foremost, we deeply appreciate the members of the Testimony Team—Ka Chung Boo, Kija Choi, Sur Ah Hahn, Sooah Kim, Soojin Kim, Yeonhee Kim, Sun Hyoung Lee and Jin Nye Na. Their dedication to the original testimony work created the foundation of this book. The initial translation was possible thanks to the support of the Research Institute on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery Issue that belongs to the Korean Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan as the co-author and its Chair of the Board, Na-Young Lee have long supported this book project. We are grateful to Chang Rok Kim, professor at Kyungpook National University Law School, for guiding us in the funding process and Kyung Hyun Kim, professor at the Univer- sity of California, Irvine, for participating in the process of negotiation and later in the review of the preliminary draft of the translation, which is beyond the call of duty during his sabbatical leave in Korea. viii Acknowledgments Our six translators, all of whom were doctoral students at the time in the East Asian Studies Department at the University of California, Irvine (hereafter UCI) did a miracle in that they completed the first draft within a mere two-month period. Driven by a sense of justice and solidarity with the women who had suffered atrocities nearly eighty years ago, the six women sacrificed their precious winter break and busy schedule. All worked day and night, and all suffered one or another medical symptom under enormous pressure to meet the set deadline. More importantly, each translator contributed their expertise and research skills to infinitely elevate the quality of translation. Since all nine women were taken to a wide range of locations from North to South Asia, during the interviews, they remembered some phrases in local languages or sang songs they had learned, which were transcribed in the testimonies. Our translators traced the original sources for accurate translation and for historical and contextual information. For instance, Tian Li researched the Chinese dialect used only in a remote northern region that is not easily understood in standard Mandarin Chinese and provided translation. Eun Young Seong’s expertise on Japanese popular culture of the 1930s and 40s helped identify the lyrics of a Japanese popular song and the title of the movie of the period. All of this supplementary information is meticulously provided in the footnotes. The name of the award- winning Korean novelist Ch’oe Yun should also be mentioned here. Having won translation awards herself, she graciously agreed to hold two sessions of a translation workshop for our translators, sharing what she considers to be the core elements of translation during her short visit to UCI. The rigorous and indefatigable work of the review team in Seoul truly is the jewel on the crown. We are especially indebted to Kija Choi and Sooah Kim at Seoul National University (hereafter SNU). As members of the Comfort Women testimony research team, the two scholars meticulously went over the translation and myriad revisions that followed more than a dozen times checking all the details of the facts and nuances based upon original Korean text and their research. From the very beginning to the end of this project, their efforts have been critical. Far beyond the scope of reviewers, they participated in almost every aspect of this work, such as administrative work, communication all across the people involved in this project, creating image data and some editorial decisions. We express our gratitude to them. We also remember the contribution of Zury Lee, who briefly joined the review team at the beginning and offered her artistic insights into polishing the translation of the colloquial expressions. For our deeper and contextualized understanding, as well as for public education of the issues, we held a multifaceted public event at UCI in 2019 concurrent with this translation project: an international conference, US premiere exhibit of the Comfort Women documents and photos, exhibit of book and films on Comfort Women, and a US premier screening of the film Her Story (2018), followed by a conversation with its director, Min Kyu-dong, who graciously traveled from Korea for this occasion. The theme of the conference was War and Women’s Human Rights: Comfort Women Testimonies. This conference brought the UCI translators and the SNU review team Acknowledgments ix together, and we exchanged face to face some practical matters of the translation and worked out whatever differences each team might have had regarding approaches and methodologies. We were fortunate to have a special guest, Sung Hyun Kang from Sungkonghoe University, at the conference. Not only did he enlighten us with his research and analysis of the US Army photography of the Japanese military Comfort Women that he discovered at the US National Archive and Record Admin- istration (NARA), but he also generously shared copies of some of the documents and photos that are particularly relevant to the women whose stories are included in this volume. We thank the Center for Critical Korean Studies (CCKS) at UCI for the financial and administrative support that made these events possible. We also appreciate Kyung Hyun Kim for his involvement in various capacities as the founding director of CCKS. We are also deeply grateful to Lorelei Tanji, the Uni- versity Librarian at UCI, for her support to exhibit these materials at the spacious UCI Science Library for six months for public viewing. We very much appreciate the UCI libraries exhibit team for putting together a superb exhibit titled Comfort Women and the US Discoveries and the Research Librarian for Asian Studies, Ying Zhang, and her team for creating a website with comprehensive bibliographic and filmographic information on the subject of Comfort Women. Hyun Hee Park, the CCKS postdoctoral scholar during 2018–2019 merits a special mention. As a film historian of the Japanese colonial period, not only did she edit the film clips for this exhibit, but more importantly, she managed the translation project, overseeing the progress of the translation and communicated between the translation team at UCI and the review team in Korea. Without her scrupulous management of the schedule and assistance, it would have been a near impossibility to submit the finished product on time. During the lengthy period of editing and revising of the manuscript, we had an opportunity to explore various ways to communicate the Comfort Women testimonies with a wider English-speaking public. Since the state of California decided to include Comfort Women History in its tenth-grade history curriculum starting in 2019, we organized a two-day workshop with California high school history teachers. The workshop was held in November 2020 at UCI as part of an international collaborative project between CCKS and SNU’s Human Rights Center. The goal of the workshop was to produce a set of group discussion ques- tions, which is a useful tool to help readers examine the issues of the Comfort Women system and reflect on the lives of those victim-survivors. For the teachers and the researchers, it was an excellent opportunity to explore together how best to teach the material in the classroom. In order to help maximize the effect of teaching, we also created a short radio drama based on the testimonies and performed it as part of the workshop. Hye Kyoung Kwon, a scholar of drama and postdoctoral researcher at CCKS during 2019–2020 wrote a short scenario and directed the play in which four UCI drama students—Crystal, Sonya, Shule and Caroline—performed virtually. We would like to make a note that generous funds from SNU and the International Center for Writing and Translation (ICWT) at UCI enabled these rich programs.