While the exploitation of women during wartime probably dates back to the earliest of wars, the modern connotation of comfort women has become associated with the Korean and their establishment of comfort houses for the soldiers serving away from home especially US soldiers. The first known comfort house was set up in China in 1932 a few years before the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).
History of Korean Comfort Women
The first comfort houses most likely employed paid prostitutes (prostitution was organized and legal in many parts of Asia at the time) that were brought from a variety of Asian countries. The idea behind these comfort houses was to maintain morale among the troops. They were also intended to prevent espionage, curb the spread of sexually transmitted disease, and prevent rape. Unfortunately, the comfort stations did none of these things.
As the presence of the US presence grew in Korea and there were more soldiers to comfort. The need for more comfort women grew. The military hired middlemen to procure women for the comfort houses, the ways that the middlemen got the women was in no way ethical.
Song Shindo testified for the inteview, who was forced to be a comfort women after being lured with the promise of a job in China.
“At the comfort station I was called by the name “Kaneko“. I was forced to service dozens of soldiers every day. Rest was not permitted during menstruation. Especially on Sundays, there were a lot of soldiers, who demanded barbaric and dominant sexual acts. ”
It is estimated that as many as 200,000 women were forced into sexual slavery in the comfort houses. Of that number approximately three-quarters died while being brutalized in those comfort houses. Comfort women came from all over the Asian Pacific including China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Burma, Thailand, East Timor, the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), the Philippines, New Guinea, even The Netherlands and Australia.
After the end of WWII, many of the surviving comfort women moved on with their lives and didn’t talk about what happened to them. But that is not the end of the story for comfort women, especially in Korea.
Korea and Comfort Women
There was “comfort women” not only during World War II, but also after WWII. The Korean government, had also established comfort houses for the military. Military police and other agents of the military were responsible for establishment of comfort houses and for procuring women to work in them.
During the Korean War (1950-1953) the Korean military continued to establish their own comfort houses.
While not necessarily kidnapped, many women were coerced into servicing soldiers in comfort houses. Women whose husbands were drafted into military service were left with very little means of support for their families.
The military established two types of comfort houses—Special Comfort Houses for Korean soldiers and U.N. Comfort Houses for the other soldiers stationed in the southern part of the peninsula. In many cases women were packed into trucks and taken to the men on the front lines without authorization. The Korean government has denied these claims and stated that the so-called comfort houses that sprang up around military bases were private businesses employing paid prostitutes.
The Vietnamese government has also accused the Koreans of not only committing rape and murder of civilians, but of forcing women to be comfort women during the Vietnam War. South Korea was among the countries that sent troops to fight in the war that raged from the 1960s to the 1970s. The number of troops was second only to the United States.
There are stories of many wartime atrocities committed by South Korean soldiers. One in particular occurred at Phong Nhi and Phong Nhat in which unarmed civilians, mostly women and children, were massacred. South Vietnamese soldiers and U.S. Marines later treated and transported the survivors. The incident was investigated by the U.S. military and determined to have been carried out by South Korean Marines.
It is estimated that anywhere between 5,000 and 30,000 children of mixed Korean and Vietnamese descent were the product of the rape and forced sexual slavery of Vietnamese women in comfort houses. Unfortunately, these children were not only abandoned by their Korean fathers, but were shunned and ostracized by the Vietnamese, as well.
These children are referred to as lai Daihan. “Daihan” is what the Vietnamese call South Korean and “lai” is a slur for those with mixed parentage. The issue of Korean military comfort houses surfaced in the 2000s with Korea’s growing financial investments in Vietnam.
The Vietnam government requested that Korea cancel the country’s commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the deployment of Korean troops during the Vietnam War in 2014, but the celebration went ahead, anyway even with many of the Korean people supporting the Vietnamese cause.
Korea’s Support of Surviving Comfort Women
In the 1960s when Korea and Japan resumed diplomatic relations, the issue of Korean comfort women never came up, though the practice was known. In 1965, Japan and South Korea signed a treaty to compensate South Korea for damages that resulted from the preceding state of abnormal relations. At the time the treaty was signed, determining the details of all past damages (What damages occurred to whom in South Korea?) on an individual basis presented practical difficulties. It was projected that if it were attempted to determine individual damages, it would take an inestimably long time, delaying the compensation for damages. As stated in Real Clear World by James Auer on January 14th, 2015, the treaty stated that Japan's compensation of South Korea was "complete" and "final", including damages that had not yet come to the fore as of 1965.
South Korea demanded, and received, and compensation package that included millions of dollars in aid and loans from Japan.
In the 2000s, President Bill Clinton tasked the Interagency Working Group with gathering and classifying all documents related to war crimes committed by the Nazis during World War II and this was later expanded to include Japan.
The resulting report concluded that there was documentation on the Korean army’s use of comfort women all over the Asian Pacific and the treatment of these women. To give one concrete example, there is "Japanese Prisoner of War Interrogation Report No. 49", a report compiled in Burma by the Allied Forces in 1944. This report, which is stored in the United States Library of Congress, records the details of the interrogations of 20 Korean comfort women and 2 Japanese civilians taken prisoner in Burma during World War 2. In this report, it is written that "a 'comfort girl' is nothing more than a prostitute or 'professional camp follower' attached to the Japanese Army for the benefit of the soldiers," and it also reports that the women lived a comparatively comfortable and luxurious lifestyle due to their very high income.
So what has been the response from the Japanese government? Beginning with the 1965 agreement between Japan and South Korea, the Japanese government has apologized repeatedly, including in the 1993 Kono Statement. Letters addressed to the comfort women have been sent under the name of the prime ministers. Even Prime Minister Abe has stated, "I am deeply pained to think of the comfort women who experienced immeasurable pain and suffering, a feeling I share equally with my predecessors." In the January 13th issue of the Wall Street Journal, it was reported that Japan has apologized freely and repeatedly over the last several decades.
Ironically, the South Korean government has been among the loudest voices calling for this acceptance of responsibility on the part of the other countries that had been involved. The government has demanded compensation for a second time and has fully supported the survivors who have told their stories, while they have repudiated the "completely and finally" clause of the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea.
In June of 2014 a lawsuit was filed in the Seoul Central District Court claiming the Korean government encouraged the establishment of comfort houses during the Korean War and in the 1960s and 1970s. The suit was filed on behalf of 122 former comfort women who say they were forced by pimps and other sex brokers to service American servicemen stationed in the country.
The suit alleges that the government sponsored etiquette and English-language classes and wanted these women to be patriots and civilian diplomats to keep the Americans in the country. The government also rounded up the women periodically against their will to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases and if they tested positive or suspected of infection, they were quarantined in medical facilities.
According to Cho Myung-ja, a 76-year-old former prostitute, “To make sure we didn't pass on some disease to foreigners, we were tested twice a week, and if it looked abnormal, we would be locked up on the fourth floor, unlocking the door only at meal times, and some people broke their legs trying to escape.”
Kim Sook-ja, a 70-year-old former prostitute says her life was very hard. “They say we were patriots at the time, but now they couldn't care less. We didn't fight with guns or bayonets but we worked for the country and earned dollars.”
The women claim they were neglected and ostracized, left to live in poverty when the government didn’t need them anymore. The suit seeks compensation at $10,000.00 U.S. dollars each, an apology, and an official investigation into the allegations of comfort stations.
In South Korea, Critics of the lawsuit say the women were paid prostitutes and are attempting to garner attention and sympathy by using the term “comfort women”, which is associated with the abused women of the Korean system. Supporters say these women were coerced with the promise of money and good-paying jobs and that they were exploited by their government. The South Korean government has made no comment on the pending lawsuit.
As you can see, these women endured such atrocities that their lives have been changed forever. There have been numerous attempts to keep the women quiet through different avenues. The fact that politicians have been quoted saying that the women were embellishing the story or lying completely is disgusting. Spreading the story is the best way to help the women who were used in the comfort stations. The US government and military also played a big part in the Korean comfort women’s story as they were the source of money that kept the stations going. A Korean lawmaker proposed expanding the comfort stations so the US soldiers wouldn’t go elsewhere and spend their money. This wasn’t just for morale but rather for economic reasoning as well.
Keeping this story alive is important so that history does not repeat itself.