The Story "Our Grandmothers" Could Not Tell: Representation

of the Comfort Women and the Physical Manifestation of

Memory

Heo Yoon, Jamie Chang

Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature & Culture, Volume 14, 2021, pp.
311-334 (Article)

Published by University of Hawai'i Press

DOI: [Link]

For additional information about this article

[Link]

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 The Story “Our Grandmothers”
Could Not Tell: Representation of
the Comfort Women and the
Physical Manifestation of Memory 1

By Heo Yoon
Translated by Jamie Chang

1.1Remembering the Japanese comfort women2

O n August 14, 2018, the 1st Japanese Military Sexual Slavery

Remembrance Day was observed. The date chosen in
commemoration of Kim Hak-sun’s press conference on August
14, 1991, this occasion marked the moment when the movement
supporting Japanese military “comfort women,” which refers
to women who were sent to battlefields in the course of Japan’s
invasion of the Asia Pacific region and forced to live as sexual
[[Link]] Project MUSE (2025-09-27 15:15 GMT) University of Sydney Library

slaves in the Japanese military, became an official part of Korean

history. The Moon Jae-in administration specified the Japanese
military comfort women issues as one of the hundred tasks
to be resolved within Moon’s term, established the Research
Institute on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery, and carried
1. This article is based on two papers: Heo Yoon, “Uri halmunideurui iyagiwa
gieogui mulhwa: Ilbongun wianbu pyosanggwa simindaumui jeongchihak [The
story of ‘Halmoni (my grandmother)’ and the materialization of memories:
The representation of Japanese military sexual slavery and politics of the good
citizen],” Gubohakhoe (The Korean Association of Kubo Studies) 27 (2021);
Heo Yoon, “Ilbongun ‘wianbu’ jaehyeongwa jinjeongseongui gongyeong:
Sonyeowa halmeoni pyosangeul jungsimeuro [Japanese military sexual slavery’
of public reproduction and the plight of authenticity: Focused on the Girl and
Grandmother image],” Yeoseonggwa yeoksa (Women and History) 29 (2018).
2. Comfort women, a name given by Japanese imperialism, refers to women
who give sexual “comfort” to soldiers. In order to fight against this idea,
South Korea and various international organizations prefer to use “Japanese
military sexual slavery.” In this article, I use the term, “comfort women,” to help
American readers understand more easily.

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 out recovery and archiving of data, pledging to resolve the
matter on the state level. However, for a long time, the comfort
women issue had been a civilian social movement and an
Azalea expression of transnational solidarity. This was not a problem
resolved through diplomacy between Korea and Japan (the final
The Story “Our agreement between Korea and Japan had occurred in 2015),
Grandmothers” but a movement with a history of citizens from Korea, Japan,
Could Not Tell and all over Asia have fought to build. The comfort woman is a
by Heo Yoon historical phenomenon that has arisen from the intersection of
colonialism, nationalism, and sexism and is currently the most
active civil movement supported by the Korean people.
Although Japan was defeated and the colony was liberated
in 1945, the comfort women were not able to return to Korea
until Kim Hak-sun’s testimony in 1991. In negotiations between
the United States and Japan, or in the diplomatic relations
between Korea and Japan, the issue of comfort women in the
Japanese military was never actively discussed. While the
student soldiers who returned from the war testified to the
horrors of the Japanese army and returned as “sons of the
nation” and achieved a turning point in Korean literature,
women drafted to the “chŏngsindae [Women’s Labor Corps]”
did not have proper re-emergence. A few novels during the
liberation period briefly mentioned women in the “labor
corps,” but it was not enough to achieve visibility for these
women. Yun Chŏng-ok, the founder of the Chŏngsindae
Problem Countermeasures Council (hereinafter referred to
as “Chŏngdaehyŏp,” present-day “Korean Council for Justice
and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by
Japan”), had become aware of the Japanese imperial “virgin
delivery” at the end of the colonial period through rumors
circulating among adults, and she was a female college student
trying to avoid it. She thought someone would track down the
“women who were taken away” after the Korean War when
society settled down, but when no one was talking about the

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“women who disappeared” even after Yun returned to Korea
from studying in the United States, she set out to find them.3
As Yun Chŏng-ok testifies, Korean society did not make the
“comfort woman issue” public for a long time. An Independence
Day special feature in 1960 mourned the deaths of women drafted
to “Labor Corps” never to return, and comfort women were
mentioned in the context of decrying Japan’s war crimes, but no
one wondered about the comfort women who returned and where
they were now.4 The comfort women system, rather, became an
everyday part of Korean society. After liberation, as camp towns
were established around the U.S. and U.N. military bases, the
image of comfort women in the 1950s shifted to U.S. military
comfort women who were considered “voluntary” prostitutes.
Called by many derogatory names such as “yanggongju [Western
princess],” and “Yuen madam [United Nations’ Madam],” these
comfort women were depicted as gold-digging carriers of STDs
who were sullying the good name of an innocent nation.5
Postcolonial South Korea exchanged the bodies of
comfort women for the protection of the U.S. military under
an American regime in East Asia. The U.S. military abolished
licensed prostitution in 1948, and the Korean government
passed the Prostitution Prevention Act in 1961 to crack down
on brothels but continued to tolerate comfort women under the

3. Yun Chŏng-ok and Kim Su-jin, “Yaedŭl, ŏttŏtke twaenna? Nae nai sŭmul,
ttak ko nairago: Chŏngsindae munje taech’aek hyŏpuihoe chŏn gongdong
taep’yo Yun Chŏng-ok [What happened to those girls? I was twenty, exactly
their age: Former co-chair of Chŏngsindae Problem Countermeasures Council
Yun Chŏng-ok],” Yŏsŏng kwa sahoe (Women and Society) 13 (2001): 104–137. Film
director Pak Su-nam, who made documentaries on comfort women such as Song
of Arirang: Voices from Okinawa (1991) and The Silence (2016), is also said to have
followed the comfort women issue, thinking, “This could happen to me.”
4. From the early 1960s on, Chŏngsindae has been a recurring topic for
Independence Day special features or op-eds that decried Japan’s colonial rule,
many of which exposed the horrors of Japan’s cruelty by meeting and hearing the
stories of Chŏngsindae who could not return to Korea. This paradoxically reveals
a lack of interest and research on comfort women who did in fact return to Korea.
5. Heo Yoon, “Naengjŏn asiajŏk chilsŏ wa 1950 yŏndae hanguk ŭi
yŏsŏnghyŏmo [Asian order during the Cold War and misogyny in 1950s Korea],”
Yŏksa munje yŏn’gu (Critical studies on modern Korean history) 20 (2016): 79–115.

313
 name of “specialized comfort.” South Korean women were traded
for brotherhood with the United States, constructing healthy
male citizens to build the Republic of Korea through the female
Azalea antithesis.6 In this process, comfort women appeared in public
discourse uniquely as sexually objectified beings.
The Story “Our

Grandmothers” 2. The Birth of the Girl Statue

Could Not Tell The social interest and popular representation of the Japanese
by Heo Yoon military comfort women remained empty before Kim Hak-sun. At the
same time, however, popular culture that consumed comfort women
as sexual objects often appeared, including in comfort women-themed
films made in the 1960s and 1970s. Analyzing the representation of
comfort women in 1960–1970s films, Kim Chung-kang points out
that these films depict comfort women as sexual objects, as had the
U.S. military. Kim points out that, contrary to preexisting views
that comfort women did not enter public discourse until the 1990s,
they had in fact been widely distributed and consumed in sadistic,
male-centered popular narratives.7 In these narratives, the absolute
domination and obedience characteristic of the military comfort-
women dynamics manifested as violent sex and control and were
consumed as fetishistic symbols.
Similar representations appear in literature that claim to be
a testimony in order not to forget the “painful past” of the nation.
Novels such as Kim Sŏng-chong’s Eyes of the Dawn (1977, Daily
Sports Serials) and Yun Chŏng-mo’s Your Ma’s Name Was Chosŏn
Whore (1982) dealt with comfort women by putting women’s bodies
in the position of the nation-state, with the Japanese imperial
invasion of weak, small nations represented through their abuse.

6. Katharine H. S. Moon, Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.–

Korea Relations, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Maria Hohn and
Seungsook Moon, Over There: Living with the U.S. Military Empire from World
War Two to the Present (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).
7. Kim Chung-kang, “Wianbunŭn ŏttŏtke itch’ŏjŏtna? 1990 yŏndae ijŏn
taejung yŏngwha sok wianbu chaehyŏn [How were the comfort women forgotten?
Representations of comfort women in popular film before 1990s],” Tongasia
munhwa yŏngu (Journal of East Asian cultures) 71 (2017): 149–193.

314
 These novels depict intense violence against comfort women.
For example, the 36-episode TV show, Eyes of Dawn (1991–1992),
created by MBC (with a production cost of seven billion won) in
the immediate aftermath of the testimony of the comfort woman
survivor Kim Hak-sun, includes a comfort woman in Chosŏn
clothes being raped in the first episode. This rape scene comes
from the very same that appears in the first chapter of the novel,
Eyes of the Dawn. The movie, Your Ma’s Name Was Chosŏn Whore
(Ji Yŏng-ho, 1991), received one-line reviews such as “turned
heavy material into something like porn” or “a masterpiece that
depicts the sorrowful life of the ‘Chosenpi [Chosŏn whore]’ in an
erotic way.” These comments suggest that this movie invokes the
conventions of pornography or erotica. In other words, sexual
violence, depicted in an erotically stimulating way, was being
justified under the guise of denouncing Japanese exploitation.
Oppression created by the empire was thus reproduced through the
female body, and the woman functioned as a national allegory.
This problem came to a head in February 2004 when actor
Lee Seung-yŏn officially announced the “Woman” project, a
video collection that depicted comfort women. This project
[[Link]] Project MUSE (2025-09-27 15:15 GMT) University of Sydney Library

revealed its intention to recognize the history by going directly

to areas where comfort stations were located, such as Palau,
Fukuoka, and Nepal, and taking photographs and videos related
to Japanese military comfort women for public viewing. Lee
Seung-yŏn, an actor and beauty pageant winner who was once
a pin-up model, also said that she wished to put an end to the
commercialization of sex and use part of the profits to help
“comfort woman grandmothers.” However, after hearing this
news, Chŏngdaehyŏp and Korea Womenlink submitted an
application for temporary injunction for banning the photo
and video service of the comfort women’s video project, and
Chŏngdaehyŏp held a protest in front of Netian Entertainment’s
headquarters. Based on the fact that mobile “pictorials” at the
time were nothing more than collections of nude photos of

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 female celebrities, these protestors viewed the selling of the
sexualized image of comfort women as an insult to Japanese
military comfort woman survivors. Lee Seung-yŏn received
Azalea criticism from across the social spectrum. She apologized by
visiting the House of Sharing, Chŏngdaehyŏp, and “Pacific War
The Story “Our Victims’ Association,” and the agency brought the affair to an
Grandmothers” end by discarding and incinerating the original film. Because of
Could Not Tell this incident, Lee Seung-yŏn had to refrain from media activities
by Heo Yoon so much so that she was considered “temporarily retired.”
The comfort women photobook project shows that the
work of their representation inevitably runs into the problem
of sexualization. At a time when cell-phone accessible nude
photo collections (“nudies”) of female celebrities were popular,
video collections of comfort women could hardly expect to
avoid accusations of commercializing tragic history. In one
photoshoot video, Lee Seung-yŏn wore a hanbok with the rising
sun flag in the background, revealing her body. Lee Hye-Ryoung
points out that this incident “astonished the public because it
was utterly casual about connecting male sexual fantasy with
nationalism [in representing comfort women].” Considering
the preponderance of films or novels that had already been
sexualizing the comfort women, the project could not have
foreseen such enormous backlash.8
This incident strongly conveyed the notion that representation
of comfort women through female bodies needs to be reassessed,
starting with the question of whether comfort women can be
imagined without violence against women in general. This change
is in line with the social trends that have been contemplating the
representation of women’s sexuality in “cine feminism” as well as
in criticism of women’s literature throughout the 1990s. The image
of a girl who appeared in the midst of this discussion seemed
a solution to all these concerns. The Japanese military comfort

8. “Wianbuga p’yohyŏnhoenŭn pangsik [Depictions of comfort women],”

Nocut News, February 17, 2017.

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 Figure 1. Film Still from Your Ma’s Name Was Chosŏn Whore. KMDB

woman soon came to be represented as a girl in a hanbok wearing

her hair in a bob, and its physical representation came to be the
Sonyŏsang (Girl Statue of Peace).
Ever since the first Statue of Peace was erected across the
street from the Japanese embassy in Korea in 2011, similar statues
sprung up all across the country. The Statue of Peace had been
established as a means to call for reflection on Japanese colonial
rule and had an explicit political meaning. This statue of a girl
in a white jacket, black skirt, and bob hair, sitting on a chair
with clenched fists quickly became an internationally recognized
symbol of Japanese military comfort women. It was effective
representation that highlighted women as victims and provoked

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 public anger for failing to protect a young girl from sexual violence.
Across the country, citizens today will dress these statues or
leave hot packs when the seasons change. However, even now, ten
Azalea years since the first statue was erected, the Statue of Peace has not
successfully diversified semantic or political discourse. Siren eun-
The Story “Our young Jung said:
Grandmothers”

Could Not Tell Many of the Statues of Peace have not been able to move past
by Heo Yoon its initial symbolic system: the combination of “bronze statue”
and “girl” and “peace.” Semantic variations of the statue may
have emerged, but not semantic expansions.9

It is clear that the Statue of Peace is an effective representation

decrying the Japanese military’s war crimes, but the discourses that
it obscures should also be noted. For example, when the Japanese
government requested the removal of the Statue of Peace in the 2015
agreement, the statue’s political power soared. California withdrew
from the sisterhood agreement with the city of Osaka over the
matter of installing a Statue of Peace. In 2020, civic groups, local
authorities, and South Korea and Japan were in conflict over the
removal of a Statue of Peace in Berlin. By demanding the removal
of the statue, the power of the statue was bolstered as a new type of
Occupy movement.
In the poster of the documentary film My Name is Kim Bok-
dong released in 2019, the “fourteen-year-old girl” sits side by side
with Kim Bok-dong, an old woman. Kim Bok-dong and the girl’s
statue appear as each other’s double. The movie opens with audio of
questions and answers, subtitled in black and white. Questions like
“Did you go knowing what kind of work it was?” and “Did anyone
resist?” and their answers end with “I came back when I was
twenty-three.” The video comes on, revealing Kim Bok-dong’s face
as an old woman. Kim Bok-dong, a women’s human rights activist

9. “Pŏsŭe tan sonyŏsang ŭ l ŏ ttŏ t ke pwayahalka? [What to make of the Statue

of Peace on the bus?],” Kyunghyang Shinmun, November 30, 2017.

318
[[Link]] Project MUSE (2025-09-27 15:15 GMT) University of Sydney Library

Figure 2. Film Poster of My Name is Kim Bok-dong. KMDB

at a Wednesday Demonstration, is instantly transported from

twenty-three to an old woman. This sequence reveals nothing about
Kim’s life since the age of twenty-three, a lacuna that happens to
be characteristic of the representation of comfort women in Korea.
How much does Korean society know about Kim Bok-dong or Kim
Hak-sun’s life after returning to Korea?

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 3. The Im/Possibility of Trans national Solidarity
with Japan as the Perpetrator
Girls often appear on feature film posters about Japanese
Azalea military comfort women released in the 2010s. The movie Spirits’
Homecoming, which sold 3.85 million tickets, is an example of
The Story “Our the effective use of the girl image. As Sohn Hee-jeong points
Grandmothers” out, interest in Spirits’ Homecoming is linked to the events
Could Not Tell surrounding the book, The Comfort Women of the Empire,
by Heo Yoon and the events leading to the final agreement between Korea
and Japan on December 28, 2015.10 In Spirits’ Homecoming, the
camera looks down from a bird’s eye view at the bodies of girls
who have become comfort women. It exhibits female victims to
portray the viciousness of the Japanese soldiers. The image of
the Japanese military abusing a girl reveals that even if the girl is
the protagonist of the story, the eroticization of comfort women
must be consciously avoided, precisely because the vulnerability
of girlhood exposes her to sexual violence. The man who posted a
picture of himself kissing the Statue of Peace is one example.
Problematic representations of comfort women reached
another level with the popularization of feminism in 2015. Women,
as major consumers of culture and arts, began to actively raise
questions about the “custom” of victimizing women’s bodies. This
trend led to feature films set in court battles of “grandmothers”
such as I Can Speak (Kim Hyŏn-sŏk, 2017) and Herstory (Min
Kyu-dong, 2018). I Can Speak shows the transnationality of the
comfort women discourse by dramatizing the conflict between
Korea and Japan in the public sphere of the United States. This
film does not reproduce the comfort women as neighbors in need,
but as oddballs. The protagonist Ok-bun is a “scary old lady,” who
“harasses” the clerks at the district office with 8,000 complaints
and lectures her neighbors about keeping public order. She refuses
10. Sohn Hee-jeong, “Kiŏk ŭi chendŏ chŏngch’i wa taejungsŏng ui
chaegusŏng: ch’oegŭn taejung wianbu sŏsa rŭl jungsimŭro [Gender politics
of memory and the reconfiguration of popular appeal: On the recent popular
narrative of comfort women],” Munhakdongne 23, no. 3 (2016): 549-570.

320
help and has stuck to her principles and looked after herself all her
life. She is trying to learn English so she can communicate with her
younger sibling who was adopted overseas. Through Ok-bun, the
film testifies to the life of comfort women after liberation: It doesn’t
take a detailed history of how she parted ways with her family and
was isolated from society to see that this curmudgeon has led a life
filled with ups and downs. Portraying a comfort woman as such an
abrasive presence is a fresh attempt in feature film.
In I Can Speak, Ok-bun learns English from Min-jae, and
cooks for him and his younger brother. The process of being
welcomed into a family coincides with the validation of her voice
within the community. The highlight of the film is Ok-bun’s
testimony in the U.S. Congress on behalf of her friend who passed
away. In this scene (based on the parliamentary hearing that
adopted Resolution 121 demanding an official apology from the
Japanese government regarding the coercion of young women into
sexual slavery), Ok-bun reveals a scar on her body she had never
shown anyone before, dressing down the Japanese counsels in
fluent Japanese and telling them that they should be ashamed of
themselves. This shift gives the comfort women, who are generally
represented as subalterns, the language to fight directly: I Can
Speak is a declaration that the comfort women are no longer
voiceless subalterns.
Herstory is based on the Shimonoseki (下關)–Busan trials in
which the plaintiffs—the Japanese military comfort women and
ten members of the “Labor Corps”—demanded compensation
for damages from the Japanese government. The first scene of
the movie begins with the word “History” removed from the
screen and replaced with “Herstory,” revealing that the feminist
perception of history is the departure point of the film. Mun
Chŏng-suk, modeled after Kim Mun-suk, who is known to
have organized the Shimonoseki–Busan trial plaintiffs, appears
as a female hero who devoted her personal resources to the
Japanese military comfort women movement. Mun Chŏng-suk,

321
 a businesswoman who ran a travel agency in Busan, loses her
contract with the Japanese consulate after doing business together
for twenty years, for operating a “Labor Corps” report agency. This
Azalea suggests that Busan’s tourism industry was still heavily dependent
on kisaeng (courtesan) tourism geared toward Japanese people
The Story “Our in 1991. Members of the Women’s Entrepreneur Association, for
Grandmothers” example, decline to join the comfort women campaign for fear of
Could Not Tell losing their Japanese customers.
by Heo Yoon This background keenly observes Korean society’s cold
reaction to the comfort women of the Japanese military when Kim
Hak-sun first came forward: A citizen throws a rock through the
window of Mun Chŏng-suk’s office where she ran the comfort
women hotline; a taxi driver says that the old ladies have no shame;
and even Mun Chŏng-suk herself, watching the news about Kim
Hak-sun, says to her daughter in high school, “At your age, one
misstep can ruin your life.”
The strength of Herstory lies in its narrativization of women’s
solidarity in which women help other women. Businesswoman Mun
Chŏng-suk, whose top priority in life was to make money, funds
the comfort women trials out of her own pocket, exemplifying
the “women helping women” motif that Korean female audiences
wanted to see. In addition, Herstory employs a device that allows
the audience to experience the narrative of the movie as a proxy
for real life through the effective insertion of archival material
into the movie. When Kim Hak-sun’s press conference appears
on the television news program that Mun Chŏng-suk is watching
in the movie, the audience receives confirmation of the reality on
which the feature film is based. In addition, the ending credit scene
shows portraits of each Japanese military comfort woman in the
Museum of Sexual Slavery by Japanese Military, implying that
the film is taking an ethical approach to the issue of the Japanese
military comfort women. It is a way of remembering the lives of
comfort women of the Japanese military and supporting their fight.
The overall flow of this film is reminiscent of several scenes from

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 documentaries about comfort women. The process of meeting the
grandmothers and volunteers, the solidarity with the volunteers,
and the students saying, “You’re beautiful, grandmother!” to Bae
Chŏng-gil, who gave testimony at a school, are some of the episodes
from a documentary about the comfort women trial. In particular,
the song that is sung when the results of Bae Chŏng-gil’s trial is
announced in the final scene of Herstory is reminiscent of Song
Sin-do’s My Heart Is Not Over. The song in the film is about the
same thing as the song that Song Sin-do wrote and sung.11 Song,
who fought a court battle against the Japanese government for ten
years, said, “I don’t trust people because there’s no telling what a
person is thinking.” My Heart Is Not Over (An Hae-ryong, 2009),
a documentary on Song Sin-do’s lawsuit against the Japanese
government, tells the story of how Song Sin-do—“so tough you
can’t get a needle through her”—comes to form a solidarity with the
members of the trial support group. However, while Song Sin-do
sings her song in Japanese, Bae Chŏng-gil sings in Korean. A scene
where Bae Chŏng-gil sings the Japanese military song in a cab is
included in the film; however, most comfort women in Herstory
cannot understand or speak Japanese. Instead, it is Mun Chŏng-suk
[[Link]] Project MUSE (2025-09-27 15:15 GMT) University of Sydney Library

who volunteers to interpret. The comfort women who had gained

their own language in I Can Speak are once again speaking through
a representative in Herstory.

11. Through a decade of trials, the Tokyo Superior Court ruled in favor of
the fact of comfort women damages and violation of international law, but
dismissed the suit for redress. At a report rally attended by Song Sin-do along
with support group members, she shouted, “My heart is not over!” and sang
this song: “Hey-hey, I don’t mind losing the trial / I can lose and lose without
rusting / Everyone here, listen to me. No more wars, no never again. / Tosiko
[Song Sin-do’s Japanese name] makes it happen now, if I live a 100 years, if I die
tomorrow / I do what I have to do. If I have no money, have no clothes, no jewels
to wear / I will make it happen. You rotten politicians. Cheer up, everyone.
Cheer up.” Kawata Fumiko, “I Can Lose and Lose Without Rusting: The Song
of Old Women Who Survived the Colonial Period Under War,” translated by
An Hae-ryong et al., Bada Ch’ulp’ansa (2016): 13. Investigative writer Kawata
Fumiko, who researched Pae Pong-gi and other comfort women in the Japanese
military who were living in Japan (and referred to as chaeil Chosŏnin or chaeil
kyop’o), published this book, which includes the part on Song Sin-do, “No War
or Tsunami Can Take Away My Life.”

323
 This difference leads to intentional erasure of Japanese civic
groups. In the film, support groups made up of Japanese citizens
appear only briefly as an audience watching the trial. The fact
Azalea that the Japanese support organization arranged everything,
from accommodation to meals for the comfort women during the
The Story “Our actual trial process, as well as interpreters and legal support, is
Grandmothers” completely left out.
Could Not Tell The Organization for Post-war Restitution and Shimonoseki-
by Heo Yoon Busan Trial Support, which provided direct support for the trial,
released a statement stating that the film Herstory had been
made without research or interviews with those involved in the
Shimonoseki–Busan Trial, that the film failed to make a distinction
between Japanese military comfort women and Labor Corps,
disseminated false information on important figures, regenerating
prejudice, and thereby sullied the honor of the comfort women
and the people who supported them through the trial.12 The
film Herstory, which removes the Japanese language and people,
reiterates the contempt toward and blackmail of the Japanese
military comfort women instead of depicting solidarity with the
Japanese who supported the trial. In one scene, the women are
expelled from accommodations and restaurants for being “dirty
women”; in another, a Korean-Japanese woman participating in the
trial is threatened, provoking anger in the audience. Such episodes
are reproductions of 1990s Korea with present-day Japan that is
swinging to the right. In other words, solidarity with the Japanese
has become something that cannot be depicted in a comfort-
woman movie. In addition, the plaintiff, who was recruited to

12. The support group pointed out two main things: using Labor Corps
and comfort women interchangeably in the film, defaming the honor of the
deceased who had suffered due to the rumors during her lifetime; and having
Sukiyama, a teacher who sent her to the Labor Corps but was on good terms
with her and was deeply horrified by Japan’s war crimes, painted as a villain.
The film distorted the truth by failing to check these facts. In addition, it
underplayed the rapport between the comfort women and Mun Chŏng-suk,
thereby distorting the truth and defaming the honor of many parties that were
directly involved in solving problems, contrary to the “based on true events”
position claimed by the filmmakers.

324
the Labor Corps, confesses that she later had to play the role of a
comfort woman, an embellishment of the truth to drive the plot
to its climax. Testifying to the truth of her past, which had been
concealed all her life, the Sŏ Kwi-sun court scene works as the
height of the story’s internal narrative, but insults the memory of
the woman after whom Sŏ Kwi-sun was modeled, who suffered all
her life from being mistaken as a former comfort woman.
When a representational genre such as literature or film
deals with history, true stories and historical evidence cannot help
but become the subject of controversy. Especially when it comes
to comfort-women films, lived experiences are inevitably raised
as relevant concerns because these films emphasize that they are
depicting historical events. In this process, “real” comes out as a
version that we expect and perceive as natural. In fact, this problem
is not about Herstory team’s insufficient preliminary investigation
or that the film’s representation is different from the facts, but
that in order to effectively represent the composition of good
Korea versus evil Japan, Korea must become weaker and weaker,
and Japan must appear more vicious and violent. In addition,
representations of comfort women actively cite actual cases or
testimonies. The author Kim Soom wrote a novel citing testimony
books and official records in 316 footnotes in the novel, One Left
(Hyŏndaemunhak, 2016), which deals with comfort women.
This novel’s premise is that only one final victim of the Japanese
military comfort women remains, and purports to represent the
experience of violence and trauma “as is.” When the author, whose
previous literary works had tended to the fantastical and grotesque,
encountered the subject of the Japanese military comfort women,
she went through a transformation of style. As such, even with
“sincere intentions” to remember the comfort women and express
solidarity, cultural violence against comfort women remains
intact. Kim Soom’s novel and Spirits’ Homecoming have positioned
themselves as ethical texts in solidarity with comfort women.
Critics exempted their sensational representations from doubts

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 regarding the ethics of representation and the lure of provocative
material. On the contrary, the many footnotes were seen as
evidence of authenticity.
Azalea Kim Soom later published Flowing Letter (Hyŏndaemunhak,
2018) the story of a girl who was taken as a comfort woman, and
The Story “Our published a “testimony novel” based on the testimony of Kim Bok-
Grandmothers” dong and Kil Won-ok in time for the first Remembrance Day on
Could Not Tell August 14, 2018. The novel, Have You Ever Wished for a Soldier
by Heo Yoon to Become an Angel? (Hyŏndaemunhak, 2018), with the subtitle,
“testimony of the Japanese military comfort woman Kil Won-ok”
cited the actual experiences of Kil Won-ok as its source—meeting
the victims of the Vietnam War civilian massacre, Congolese Yadizi
activist Marwa Al Aliko, letters, and so on.
If One Left and Flowing Letter are fiction based on the
testimony of comfort women, the “testimony novel” is a more
true-to-life, documentary text. Ironically, however, while One Left
or Flowing Letter focused on proving that the content represented
in the text is true, “testimony novels” such as To Be Sublime Is to
Look Within and Have You Ever Wished for a Soldier to Become
an Angel? read like modernist novels. Fragmented narrative and
recurring scenes create an affect that realism fiction cannot show.
This can be seen as the result of the writer’s contemplation at the
boundary between fact and representation, and realism.

4. Good Citizens’ Movement and

Physical Manifestation of Memory
Spirits’ Homecoming begins with the subtitle, “This film
was made based on the testimony of victim comfort women in
the Japanese military,” and the voice of Kim Hak-sun is heard.
The film poster for Herstory emphasizes that it is a true story
of “the Shimonoseki-Busan trials that turned Japan upside
down.” In representation of the comfort women, “true stories”
and “testimonies” became the most important factors. Creators
endeavor to prove that their representation is based on facts

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 through testimonials and other primary source material. Lack
of deliberation about representation and methodology is made
up for by proving “good intentions.” And it is the good citizens
who consume these texts that support these good intentions.
Spirits’ Homecoming was completed through crowdfunding of
75,000 donors. The names of the people who participated in
the crowdfunding are included in the closing credits of Spirits’
Homecoming. Citizens who participated in the funding took the
position that this film should be produced in order to expose the
atrocities of the Japanese military and not forget history, as did
the audience who went to the theaters to see it. In other words,
watching Spirits’ Homecoming itself was regarded as an act of
support for the comfort women. As a result, representations
related to comfort women became texts that good, patriotic
citizens must support.
This trend is best exemplified by the industry of merchandise
such as pins, cell phone cases, and bags. Marimond, a lifestyle
and accessories brand that develops “fashion content to see the
comfort women in a different light and remember their beauty,”
professes a philosophy of donating more than 50% of the profits.
[[Link]] Project MUSE (2025-09-27 15:15 GMT) University of Sydney Library

Currently, Marimond’s homepage states that as of January 1, 2020,

the accumulated donations amounted to 2.3 billion won. Through
the Flower Grandma Project, which branded the comfort women as
flowers, Marimond introduced a variety of products ranging from
cell phone cases to clothes and travel suitcases that are popular
chiefly among women. As each comfort woman is referred to as a
different flower—wild chrysanthemum (Kang Dŏk-gyŏng), rose
of sharon (Kim Hak-sun), dianthus (Song Sin-do), and magnolia
(Kim Bok-dong)—and products developed use the respective floral
images, the main market for these products are women. A photo
of a popular K-pop idol using a cell phone case from Marimond
became a news item on the Internet, and the celebrity was lauded
for being socially aware. 2sol Cosmetics is actively supporting
the comfort women by delivering the full construction fee of the

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 Sydney Statue of Peace in Australia, holding a special lecture on the
comfort women, and donating a portion of the proceeds. The CEO
of 2sol Cosmetics claims the proceeds should help women’s rights
Azalea because the majority of the customers who purchase its cosmetics
are women.13 Marimond and 2sol are referred to as upstanding
The Story “Our companies in the public sphere and are actively supported by
Grandmothers” female consumers.14
Could Not Tell The most positive example of this ethical consumption is
by Heo Yoon Heeum Museum of Sexual Slavery by Japanese Military in Daegu.
Heeum secures funds for the museum and comfort women support
programs through products such as bracelets and totes bearing the
motto, “blooming their hopes with you.” Heeum’s products include
pressed flower artworks of two comfort women Sim Tal-yŏn and
Kim Sun-ak. The pressed flower works, which started as art therapy,
led to a profitable business.15 A documentary about Kim Sun-ak,
Comfort (Park Mun-ch’il, 2020), was also commissioned by the Daegu
Citizens’ Forum for Halmuni.16 Even after returning to Korea after
the war, Kim Sun-ak continued to work as a prostitute to survive, and
also sold sex and traded “Yankee goods” in the camptown. Numerous
names such as Kim Sun-ak, Kim Soon-ok, walpae Warpa, Sadako,
Teruko, Yoshiko, Matsudake, Comfort Woman, Gisaeng, Mama-san,
maid, mama, granny, Crazy Dog, wino, Slut Dog, and Scary Granny,
Ms. Soon-ak speaks to the life of a comfort woman who returned no
longer a girl. Heeum’s financial independence made possible these
diverse representations of comfort women.

13. “Wianbu halmŏni topnŭn Hwang Sŏng-jin isol hwajangp’um taepyo ‘sahoe
munje ch’amyŏhanŭn kŏn pŭraendŭ sŏngjangedo doumdoejyo’ [2sol cosmetics
CEO Hwang Sŏng-jin helps comfort women grandmothers, ‘Getting involved in
social issues helps brand growth’],” Chonbuk ilbo, April 25, 2018. [Link]
kr/news/[Link]?idxno=2005827.
14. “Marimond, 2sol and Other Companies That Support Comfort Women
Are Added to a List That Is Circulated Around Social Media.” [Link]
[Link]/news/210606.
15. Heeum website, [Link]
16. Kim Song-hun, “Pak Mun-ch’il kamdok: Wianbu p’ihaeja kaegaein ŭi sam
ŭl tŏ aragadorok [Pak Mun-ch’il, director of Comfort: to have a better look at
the individual lives of the comfort women],” Cine21, May 29, 2020, [Link]
[Link]/news/view/?mag_id=95479.

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 Can this ethical consumption, then, bring about contemplation
and examination, or remembrance, which the comfort women
movement always emphasizes? One product review on Heeum’s
shopping mall bulletin board says, “Thank you so much for making
a meaningful purchase possible. May your days be flowery.” Each
review has this response: “Hello, this is Heeum. Thank you [customer
name here] from the bottom of our hearts for joining us in resolving
the Japanese military comfort women problem in your daily life.
:D”17 “I’m glad that just buying things at home helps comfort women
grandmothers, even though I still feel guilty about not taking action
in person.”18 Well-intended citizens who wish to help comfort women
but cannot directly participate in the Wednesday Demonstration
can relieve their guilt and feel self-affirmed by buying comfort-
women merchandise. This reveals the limitations of comfort-women
merchandise: A structure of recognition through consumption
cannot engender a discourse that serves as a channel through which
diverse narratives can emerge. By consuming products bearing
representations of comfort women as girls or flowers, consumers can
present visible proof of their ethical activities and thereby gain great
satisfaction. However, a byproduct of this activity is the materialistic
appropriation of the comfort women narrative.
Artworks made by comfort women also become illustrations
for notebooks and postcards. Numiatti promotes “products
designed to memorialize and spread the message of the Japanese
military comfort women” and aims to “make it easy for many
people to access the ‘comfort women.’”19 However, the process
of commercialization changes the artworks. Kim Hwa-sun’s
Marriage is a depiction of what it would look like if she were to
marry. In a field of yellow, Kim Hwa-sun, in a white wedding
dress, stands hand-in-hand with a person in a red suit. The gender

17. Heeum tote bag review. [Link]

no=143&cate_no=1&display_group=2.
18. [Link]
no=1&display_group=2.
19. [Link]

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 and race of the person in the red suit is unclear. The figure in the
wedding dress and the red suit look much alike; the one in the
suit has a darker complexion. Was it the queerness of the image?
Azalea In the final version of the notebook, a woman in a white dress
stands alone in the field of yellow. The short hair, red lips, and
The Story “Our fancy earrings in the original have been replaced with long pigtail
Grandmothers” and a simple white dress. The illustration evocative of a virginal
Could Not Tell girl has erased all the distinctions of Kim Hwa-sun’s drawing,
by Heo Yoon but claims that it is based on her work. This commercialization
deletes parts that do not fit in order to reinforce the target
market’s conception of comfort women as pure girls. Just as
the Japanese civic organization was erased from Herstory, the
merchandise subscribes to the grand narrative of the comfort
women movement as a national fight against Japan for exploiting
the virginal girls.

Figure 3. The original artwork of Kim Hwa-sun (left),

the image of notebook (right)

Any human sells “hope butterfly” bracelets with the same

drawing by Kim Hwa-sun with the description, “The pain of a girl
deprived of her youthfulness like a flower...At the very least, we

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 will not forget.”20 In this description, which starts with a direct
quote from Kim Hwa-sun saying she wants to get married if
she is ever born again, the comfort women is likened to “flower-
like girls.” Claiming to use the proceeds to fund the Museum of
Sexual Slavery by Japanese Military project by House of Sharing,
Anyhuman continues to repeat the motto, “We will remember,”
without expressing an official position, even after the release of the
prosecution’s investigation and ruling regarding House of Sharing.
The conspicuously missing object in the motto exemplifies that
this politics of “good remembering” produces a single fantasy of a
united “we” by not asking what we are to remember.
Comfort women campaigns typically offer a variety of
merchandise from bracelets and buttons to totes. Butterflies or girls
with bobbed hair wearing hanboks serve as visual representations
of the comfort women, but these images are pointedly evacuated
of distress in order to cater to the public imagination. The
well-meaning consumers build Statues of Peace and buy “hope
butterfly” bracelets and in return enjoy the sense of being part of
a civic movement and lending voice. The very same girl statues
are spreading all over the world, through the efforts of the Korean
[[Link]] Project MUSE (2025-09-27 15:15 GMT) University of Sydney Library

expat communities. However, people do not think of comfort

women beyond the years of girlhood; middle-aged and elderly
women are not part of the public’s conception of comfort women.
In order to position Japanese military comfort women as
activists in the comfort women movement (as well as more broadly,
i.e., for peace and human rights), stronger narratives must emphasize
the variety of lives led by comfort women who exist beyond national
memory. Geopolitically, their scope includes Japan, China, the
United States, South Korea, and North Korea, as well as comfort

20. Description of Hope Butterfly Bracelet on Anyhuman website: “The flower

charm on the Hope Butterfly Bracelet is a cosmos, which stands for purity. The
butterfly charm, representing hope, says give back the flower-like girlhood days
of our grandmothers.” Anyhuman sponsors the House of Sharing and lists the
names of those who bought the bracelet at the “Kim Hwa-sun Humans Rights
Center (Museum of Sexual Slavery by Japanese Military),” [Link].

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 women who had to settle in China and Japan, but among them,
the constant is the sociocultural emphasis on their eternal (hence
dehumanizing) girlhood. That emphasis obliterates its converse—
Azalea friendship and solidarity among “our grandmothers. ” Illegal
immigrants such as Pae Pong-ki, former kwonbŏn (kisaeng) union
The Story “Our member Kim Hak-sun, Song Sin-do who speaks Japanese and
Grandmothers” lived in Japan, Kim Sun-ak who sold sex, and others are part of the
Could Not Tell comfort-women dilemma, yet their lives are far more complex and
by Heo Yoon layered than their representations in public narratives.

5. Imagining the Japanese Comfort Women

Movement Beyond “Our Nation on Our Own”
The year 2020 was a watershed for the thirty-year history of
Korea’s Japanese military comfort women movement. Representative
Yun Mi-hyang, who was the face of the Korean Council for Justice
and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan
(hereinafter “Council for Justice”) entered the National Assembly as
a proportional representative, and immediately after that, an audit
and prosecution of the House of Sharing and Council for Justice
were made. On May 7, women’s rights activist and comfort woman
survivor, Lee Yong-soo, held a press conference in Daegu, publicly
criticizing the Japanese military’s comfort women movement
centered on the Council for Justice. In 2020, the conflict over the
Japanese military comfort women movement also erupted, but
hostility toward Japan swept it under the rug. Reconciliation or
solidarity between the Council for Justice and Lee Yong-soo was
instantly achieved when public opinion leaned toward concluding
that “Lee Yong-soo and the Council for Justice are only doing the
Abe administration in Japan a favor by drawing out the conflict”;
both Lee Yong-soo and chairperson Lee Na-young agreed by saying
that they wouldn’t allow that to happen. The discussion has not
moved on from that point, following the logic that internal unity is
necessary to fight a common enemy. The quick reconciliation only
serves to reaffirm the notion that Lee Yong-soo and the Council for

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Justice cannot restore peace without Japan’s historical negationism
or Prime Minister Abe.
The various voices that began to erupt around comfort
women, even as the Japanese right wing and Korean “new right”
denied the Japanese military comfort women, revolve around
the same nationalist discourse again. Statues of Peace have been
erected all over the world; and when local governments “submit”
to Japanese pressure and request demolition, there are renewed
protests from Korean expat organizations and allied civic groups.
The voices of feminists who argue for the reexamination of the
Statue of Peace, so that the survivors of the Japanese military
comfort women who are human rights activists would not be
typified as passive victims sitting in chairs, are treated as static
noise buried in the diplomatic conflict surrounding the Statue
of Peace. Lee Yong-soo’s handwritten memo that stated, “The
demolition of the Girl Statue of Peace, which is a symbol of
resolving world history and human rights issues, must never be
demolished,” was read at the Wednesday Demonstration, and the
conflict over the comfort women movement seemed to have been
resolved. However, it remains unclear if Korean society is ready to
listen. As the violence is repeatedly affirmed in various places such
as testimony books, interviews, and in the courts, the discourse
surrounding the comfort women movement Korean society has
not moved beyond “Uri minzokkiri [our nation on our own].” The
most demoralizing of the voices that came out during the comfort
women movement controversies was from a well-meaning citizen:
“I sent money to the grandmothers so they can have a decent meal.”
This shows that the discourse of the comfort women movement has
developed around two pillars: 1) social charity and living assistance
for the “poor grannies,” and 2) anger toward the perpetrator, Japan.
In this regard, 2021 should be the starting point for examining
the coordinates of the Japanese military comfort women movement
and diversifying the discourse. In order for the thirty-year history of
the movement to grow into the voice of anti-war peace and gender

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 equality, various entities must come together to speak. Essential
at this juncture is a cross-sectional approach among gender, race,
and ethnicity. The comfort women movement in Korea has been
Azalea in solidarity with victims of the Vietnam War and the victims of
war crimes in Africa because it acknowledges that the Japanese
The Story “Our military’s comfort women issue goes beyond nationalism.
Grandmothers” Pae Sam-sik’s play, 1945, which was first staged in 2017,
Could Not Tell depicts the solidarity between a Korean comfort woman and a
by Heo Yoon Japanese comfort woman. After Japan declares its defeat, two
women released from Chinese comfort stations rely on each other
to journey back to their hometowns. Mizuko, a pregnant Japanese
comfort woman, begs Myung-suk, a Korean comfort woman, to
take her as a travel companion and get her on the train heading
south. Myung-suk’s return to Korean society with Mizuko is
itself solidarity beyond the boundaries of the nation. 1945 asks
how a Japanese military comfort woman, neither a girl nor a
grandmother, lived and returned home. Whether rejected by the
Korean community, or forced to serve as comfort women by the
U.S. military, they survived and they returned. The time has come
to encounter various memories in the intersections of victim and
perpetrator, survival and solidarity, and ask “our grannies” the
questions we have not asked.

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