"What I keep feeling is that many people are still not that interested in the ‘Comfort Women’ issue despite other people’s exclamations about the issue, and that many people consider the issue to be somebody else's problem, because they didn't experience it themselves and the victims aren't their own daughters. However, one should realize that one can't exist alone without other people. It doesn't matter if I alone excel in studies, obtain a PhD, and get a well-paid job. I'm here because there are other people."

On February 14, the editorial team of the webzine [Kyeol] visited a silver town in Deungchon-dong, Seoul. As the webzine has started to focus on the ‘Comfort Women’ issue in earnest, the person we paid our visit to is the first person who springs to mind without any hesitation that we want to meet, share our news with, and listen to. The person we are meeting with is Yun Chung-ok, a former Ewha Womans University professor, and a pioneer who publicized the ‘Comfort Women’ issue. This senior scholar's house, which we visited with great anticipation and delight, was filled with serenity, order, and kindness. Although she is over ninety years old and seemed weaker than when she used to work zealously, we could still feel her fierce lifelong journey reflected in her clear voice. We only conducted a brief interview so as not to disturb her too much, focusing on her reasons for starting her studies and her message to younger scholars.

I was unable to ignore the stories that sounded like novels
more than any other novels written by my fellow women living in the same era

What inspired Yun Chung-ok to work so passionately all her life, when she could have led an easy life as a scholar of English literature, or a university professor?

"I studied 19th century novels for my major. As I was thoroughly drawn towards literature, I wasn't interested at all in group activities or social work. However, I still ended up meeting different individuals. Those encounters always amazed me, and the stories I heard were so unthinkable that all the novels I had known before paled in comparison."

Shortly after liberation, Yun Chung-ok began to pay attention to the ‘Comfort Women’ issue by questioning the fact that the women who had left for the Korean Women's Volunteer Labour Corps never returned home. In the 1970s, when nobody was talking about those women who had never returned, a book called 《Season of Wrath》 triggered something inside of her to decide to explore this problem on her own. There was no known path ahead, and she did not know where to go, but her dogged search for the ‘Comfort Women’ victims in all directions enabled her to meet Bae Bong-gi in Okinawa in 1980. Through years of field investigations and the collection of testimonies and data, Yun Chung-ok personally conducted her research and presented her report on the status of the victimization of the ‘Comfort Women’ under the title [The Korean Women's Volunteer Labour Corps and Our Duties] at the international seminar ‘Women and the Tourism Culture' hosted by the Korea Church Women United in April 1988. The women who attended the seminar were extremely shocked. This then led to the establishment of the Research Committee on the Korean Women's Volunteer Labour Corps (under the Korea Church Women United) which aimed to investigate the truth about the ‘Comfort Women’ issue.

Although she was a scholar of English literature who was naturally drawn to discovering the inner flesh and the truth of life depicted in novels, Yun Chung-ok says that she could not turn herself away from the ‘Comfort Women’ victims who poured out stories that ‘sounded like novels’ but were more unthinkable than any other novel ever written. While the stories of each and every one of them were unimaginably tragic, Yun Chung-ok also vividly discovered the complicated and intermingled links between war, hierarchy, poverty, social structure, and discrimination against women that gave rise to the problem. She remembers that this realization prompted her to open her eyes again to human history after her retirement. Her voice was calm yet frank as she expressed these scholarly confessions.

"I feel sorry for them...”

Born in 1925, Yun Chung-ok lived in the same era as the ‘Comfort Women’ victims. While she was attending Ewha College (now Ewha Womans University) in 1943, she like so many others received the letter notifying her that she was to be drafted for the Korean Women's Volunteer Labour Corps. However, thanks to the judgement of her father who intuitively perceived that something was wrong, she dropped out of college immediately, and her family were able to avoid any trouble by fleeing for refuge. After the war, the men who were taken away returned, but the women did not, and nobody was able to find out what happened to these women. Over the next decades, Yun Chung-ok was persistently haunted by a sense of burden owing to the fact that people like herself were forced to suffer the problem that she herself had avoided; a sense of conscience and responsibility that compelled her to find out and talk about this problem as a scholar; and a sense of empathy that she could not shake off as a person living in the same era as the victims.

"Whenever I hear about how other people suffered this kind of thing, I am always astonished and feel urged to find out more about them. I can't do otherwise whenever I hear about those stories. How could anyone not search for them? One must absolutely search for them."

The ‘Comfort Women’ issue was bound to be "my own problem" for Yun Chung-ok, and this mindset became a driving force for her. During her tenure as a professor, she spent her spare time during vacations continuing with her field investigations and research. Even after her retirement, she did not cease with her studies, and instead dived headfirst into this issue. Yun Chung-ok, along with Kim Shin-sil and Kim Hye-won, set up a field investigation committee to visit Japan, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea, etc. to collect the cases of ‘Comfort Women’ damage. The vivid and touching contents of the investigation were published serially in The Hankyoreh for a month in January 1990 under the title of [Reporting on the Traces of the Korean Women's Volunteer Labour Corps]. The publication caused extensive reverberations in our society.

In July of the same year, Yun Chung-ok founded the Korean Institute of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery in her study. It was a decisive move based on the consensus that the investigation of the truth should precede the search for practical solutions to the problem, and the move centered on the participation of the students majoring in women's studies at Ewha Womans University at the time (Yeo Sun-ju, Yamashida Young-ae, Lee Sang-hwa, Cho Choi Hye-ran). The Korean Women's Volunteer Labour Corps Research Society achieved many successes, ranging from the collection of the records of oral statements through interviews with the ‘Comfort Women’ victims, to the publication of the collection of those oral statements (a collection of testimonies), and more. While leading these tasks of recording the testimonies of the victims and investigating the status of the damages, Yun Chung-ok also tirelessly worked on identifying the victims living overseas and on reinstating their nationality. Alongside her activities for the Korean Institute of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery, she diligently led other relevant movements as a co-representative of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, which was established in November 1990 in participation with 37 women's organizations.

When we see other people in pain,
We instinctively approach them

Everyone knows that it must not have been easy to walk along the path that no one has ever taken before, to reveal the problem for the first time that had been buried for decades without being mentioned by anyone, to raise the issue in the international community, and to regain human rights and the dignity of the victims. However, Yun Chung-ok said, ‘Listening to their stories has never been a difficult thing for me', and waved her hand, adding that, "I'm the one feeling ashamed and sorry."

"Well...... Even if I was given a new life, I wouldn't be able to remain still if I heard those kinds of stories. When someone is in pain as severe as that, our instinct takes over, and this makes us jump in to help them, almost by our instinct. Not by will."

Yun Chung-ok could also not ignore the issue of the sexual assault victims of the Vietnam War who suffered the same painful fate as those of our country, because she viewed the ‘Comfort Women’ issue as a matter of human rights and empathy, instead of viewing it as a matter exclusive to any ethnic issues, hatred, or confrontation. The fact that South Korea, which should know about pain better than any other country, still acted as a perpetrating country became a heavy burden in her mind. After resigning from her position as the co-president of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery, she headed to Vietnam in 2006 in her private capacity. She visited the sexual assault victims of the Vietnam War, their families, and their children in order to listen to their stories and to express sincere apologies.

After decades of crying out for a change directed at the South Korean and Japanese governments, and after facing the fact that the activities of the Japanese researchers and civic groups that she met and formed solidarity with during the process were also necessary for the relationship between South Korea and Vietnam, she began to take new steps once again as she ‘couldn't just do nothing.' In the same way she began her vague journey for the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan with a single phone on her desk in 1990, she proposed the launch of a civic solidarity between South Korea and Vietnam this time. In support of this lone voice, many groups in South Korea and Vietnam have been continuing with their activities since the 2000s to restore the human rights of the women who were violated by war, by helping the sexual assault victims of the Vietnam War and their children and grandchildren.

Beyond South Korea
Hoping for human rights and peace to be restored throughout Asia

Even during our conversation, she showed great empathy for the victim’s pain to the extent that she expressed that a desire to invite the families of the children of the sexual assault victims of the Vietnam War to South Korea, in order to help them to meet their fathers in South Korea "even if they had to stay at my house for a while."

Yun Chung-ok's efforts in calling for the resolution of the issues of the ‘Comfort Women’ victims and of the Vietnam War victims in terms of the women's human rights and peace, not of the government's position, diplomatic relations, or political reasoning, have only recently been slowly coming to fruition. As a result of the decades of continuous activities by the people and organizations that share the same goal as her, the 'People's Tribunal on War Crimes by South Korean Troops during the Vietnam War' was held in April 2018 in Seoul.

There are still many difficult knots to untie, including the ‘Comfort Women’ issue as well as the issues of civilian massacres and sexual assaults that happened during the Vietnam War. It is hoped that the researchers who never turn away from the truth, the activists who never give up in their pursuits, and the citizens who express their interest and support for those researchers and activists, will continue to follow suit.

After all, the important thing is to discover people and empathize with them

"No matter how great you are at studies, whether or not you got an A+, went to Harvard University or the University of London, you cannot live alone. There will always be other people around you. The idea that you can be successful alone should be thrown away. As long as you exist, other people also exist, in the same way there are men and women, and east, west, north, and south. East exists because west exists; and south exists because north exists. They can never exist alone. I think we need to be aware of that."

Yun Chung-ok stresses that although she has lived her whole life as a researcher, what matters in the end is not achievement or success, but the realization that we live together with 'people'. As human beings, we should open our eyes to other people, to empathize with them, and to not forget that we exist because there are other people. She said those words calmly but those words left a strong impression on us.

Interveiwer : So Hyun-sook (Head of the Research Team, Research Institute on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery)
Interviewee : Yun Chung-ok
Arrangement : Slowalk