Legal experts and “Comfort Women” movement activists reflect on the 34-year legal struggle to resolve the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” issue.
Editorial Team of Webzine <Kyeol>
Historian Harrison C. Kim traces how discourse on “Comfort Women” in North Korea has evolved—at times in dialogue with the outside world—while developing distinct advocacy practices and perspectives.
Cheehyung Harrison Kim
The author – an ethnomusicologist – invites us to listen to “Comfort Women” survivors’ songs as a way to understand their lives and to remember them.
Joshua D. Pilzer
The Berlin Statue of Peace, established in 2020, marked an important milestone in the “Comfort Women” memorial movement as the first public memorial of its kind in Europe.
Jung-Hwa Han
The “Comfort Women” system was not only a violation of women’s rights, but also a grave infringement of children’s rights. In this article, Professor Ñusta Carranza Ko examines how imperial Japanese authorities systematically violated the rights of underage girls, in direct contravention of international conventions of the time, reframing the issue as a case of child rights violations.
Ñusta Carranza Ko
A report on the “Comfort Women” survivors rescued by the Allied Forces, as featured in the Chinese magazine “Da Zhan Hua Ji,” published just beforethe end of World War Ⅱ.
Liu Guangjian (刘广建)
Until 2022, when the book The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory was published, it was widely thought in Singapore that there were no Singaporean "Comfort Women" who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese military.
Kevin Blackburn
The history of the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” issue has challenged long-standing conservative cultural norms regarding women and sexuality in Asia by amplifying the voices of the victims. Moreover, it has contributed to the establishment of globally significant norms and values related to women’s human rights. This means that the records documenting the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” issue and related activities meet the criteria of “world significance.”
Hye-in Han
Professor Jing Williams considers her education on the “Comfort Women” issue as “a process of planting seeds for the future,” recognizing that some of her students may become advocates for women’s human rights.
Jing Williams
The right-wingers in Japan deny any direct involvement of the Japanese government, citing that the documents proving that the Japanese Army or Japanese government had directly ordered the establishment of the “comfort stations” have never been found. They also claim that neither the Japanese army nor the Japanese government were involved in mobilizing “comfort women”, and that private businesses simply recruited “comfort women” by illegal means. Having accepted these claims, the Abe administration is contradicting what the previous Japanese government had admitted.
Choi Jong-gil
Eka Hindrati is an Indonesian researcher who is persistently engaging in various activities towards resolving the 'comfort women' issues despite many challenges. Through a written interview, we asked her about the progress of studies and investigations on 'Japanese military sexual slavery' in Indonesia, and about what efforts are needed in order for South Korea and Indonesia to unite through the shared past.
Eka Hindrati
