By Brett Buccheri
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
A Towson University professor plans to use an academic conference in Japan this June as a platform to educate people about war crimes the Japanese military committed against comfort women during World War II.
Assistant Professor Hyang-Sook Kim, 39, who grew up in South Korea, said she has been impacted by the issue of comfort women ever since she learned about them in middle school.
“Comfort women” is a term used to describe the women who were used as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II. Women across all of Eastern Asia were victimized.
“I was shocked by the fact the Japanese military molested those women,” said Kim, who teaches public relations at Towson. “Nobody can forget about it if they learn the history behind it.”
Kim said she is designing T-shirts that she and a few friends plan to wear at the 66th annual International Communication Association conference in Fukuoka, Japan, which is scheduled to run from June 9 to June 13.
She said the tentative design is to have white T-shirts with a shadowed, simplified picture of the iconic comfort women statue that sits outside the Japanese embassy in South Korea. That will be contrasted with a yellow butterfly, a symbol of the comfort women.
“I mainly got this idea because the conference is in Japan this year,” said Kim, who will be presenting two academic papers at this year’s conference, both of which are unrelated to her protest. “Maybe people don’t show me any interest if I tell this story in some random place, but because it’s in Japan and it’s related to Japanese history, it might be more relevant.”
She said another idea of hers is to make folding fans with facts about the issue printed on them. She said fans would probably be a better way to spread her message than her original idea of handing out fliers.
“If people see a flier, they tend to just throw it away,” she said. “But when the information is on something that is useful to them, then maybe they will keep it.”
She said the fans would require some financial help from friends or other people advocating for this issue.
Friends like Eun Soo Rhee, an assistant professor of advertising at Towson, are eager to help Kim educate the current generation on a history that is often unrecognized.
“I was impressed by her determination,” Rhee said via email. “I wanted to raise awareness of this historical background so our society can protect and help the victims.”
The timing for Kim’s plan to heighten awareness for comfort women could not have been better.
In December 2015, Japan and South Korea reached an agreement under which the Japanese government apologized for its actions and agreed to allocate $8.3 million to a fund that South Korea will administer to help the 46 comfort women who are still alive.
An estimated 200,000 women were forced into sex slavery for the Japanese military during the war. Although these women came from such places as China, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan, most of the victims were from Korea, according to previous press reports.
“That’s a typical approach by the Japanese government all the time,” Kim said. “They always just offer money and then no sincere actions to admit their mistake.”
Kim said she was also not pleased to hear that removing the comfort women statue in front of the embassy was part of the same agreement.
“If they truly feel shameful and they truly admit their military crimes, then they should not have asked to remove that statue,” she said. “The statue is really symbolic because it represents what happened to [the comfort women] in World War II.”
When Kim visits South Korea this summer, she said she plans on visiting the statue for the first time and take her young daughter to tell her about the history behind it.
“I’m not sure how well I can explain it or how well my daughter will understand what happened, but it’s important,” she said.
She said the statue should still be there when she visits because college students are currently rotating their time at all hours of the day to protect the landmark.
Kim said the South Korean government, specifically president Park Geun-Hye, is also to blame for the recent settlement.
“She doesn’t consider justice to be the best priority so that’s a reason why this whole settlement could happen,” she said. “The Korean government actually decreased the fund for the comfort women victims, which is ridiculous. That’s the reality of the Korean government nowadays.”
She said because she cares so deeply about the issue, it is going to take a sizable action from Japan to repair what has already been done.
“A public apology wouldn’t necessarily be enough, but it would be the first step,” she said. “They should not even attempt to remove the statue or attempt to destroy the history in textbooks. I see why they don’t want to, but they have to admit their crimes sincerely to the victims.”
2 Comments
Dear Mr./Ms. Buccheri, students of Towson University journalism students and Dr. John Kirch
I’m requesting you to do fact-finding on you own account about the “comfort women” problem.
You wrote “the atrocity by Japan as a nation” as if it was fact;
“An estimated 200,000 women were forced into sex slavery for the Japanese military during the war.”
(A) Japan is being bothered with “violation of the human rights” by this false accusation:
I’m requesting you to do fact-finding by yourself before you believe in the atrocity. Because, now, Japanese people, especially the late former soldiers and their children, are bothered with violation of the human rights of this false accusation. If you are journalists, you are to do fact-finding on your own account in place of swallowing what other said.
(B) Counterargument:
Firstly, there never disclosed objective/verifiable evidence to show the atrocity as a nation.
If you believe in that only by victims’ testimony on their personal experience without objective evidence, don’t you think it’s too naive as journalists ?
The problem is that even one incident to show “atrocity as a nation” was never identified.
“identified” means;
– the date and location was identified.
– the victims were identified.
– the perpetrators were identified.
– the persons who were at the location at that time were identified.
– plural testimonies each describes the same concrete affair without contradiction.
– official record ( if possible ).
Next, if you insist Japan did “the atrocity as a nation”, you are to prove all of the below;
1. Incident: The individual atrocity was identified.
2. Perpetrators: That was done by the Japanese military members.
3. National Policy: That was done according to Japan’s policy as a nation.
I don’ t expect the above about all the incidents. But, now, there never exists even one case. Why can you believe in the “atrocity as a nation” ?
For example, they said many comfort women were abducted. But there never existed other witnesses than victims themselves who saw and testified the abduction. They said many comfort women were killed by Japanese military. But there never existed their parents who claimed their daughters’ missing. We don’t know even one name of an identified victim who was killed by the Japanese military. How do you explain this contradiction ?
Remember that, the prostitution was legal job at that time in Japan. Mainly many Japanese prostitutes worked as “comfort women” at that time. Korean “comfort women” also worked with them, because Koreans were Japanese citizens at that time. The Japanese military was involved in running “comfort station” at the points such as transportation and medical checkup. Japanese government acknowledges these.
(C) other tips:
– About “what the involvement of the Japanese military was”, “what Japan apologized”, Please see https://sites.google.com/site/olnatidy/astboacn
– Japan officially denies the atrocity as a nation. http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/files/000140100.pdf
– There is a commercial fictional movie that depicts some Japanese comfort women and one Korean comfort woman work together (“Shunpu den”, 1965. You’ll find it in YouTube). This was released also overseas ( English title is “Story of a Prostitute” ). It means there was common sense for Japanese including the former soldiers that many prostitutes worked as “comfort women”. ( The movie was released in 1965. The first claim of the “comfort women” was 1991. We can say the movie is not for “propaganda” but just for commercial entertainment. )
I hope you will be faithful to the journalists principle, “fact-finding endorsed by objective/verifiable material”.
Thank you in advance.
Sincerely.
If Korea had freedom of speech equivalent to one in Taiwan, they’d be much more friendly to us, if not as sweet as Taiwanese are. The Japanese forced Korean girls not to comfort station, but to school. People who actually experienced the Japanese rule know that, but they are not supposed to talk about it in public.