The Comfort Women

Background

Soh was born in South Korea. She graduated from Sogang University in Seoul and earned her master's degree and then Ph.D from the University of Hawaii in 1987. She is a sociocultural anthropologist who specializes in issues of women, gender, sexuality.

In 1996, Soh published an essay titled "The Korean 'Comfort Women': Movement for Redress", which appeared in Asian Survey. Soh wrote that some 80% of the 70,000–200,000 comfort women were Korean. Soh wrote that the comfort women program was instituted by the Japanese military in 1932, and was operated until the end of World War II in 1945. The comfort women program was greatly expanded in 1937 after the rape of Nanjing demonstrated the sexual violence which Japanese forces were capable of. The idea was that the Japanese soldiers would be provided with sanctioned sex to prevent the indiscriminate rape of women in conquered territory. Soh wrote that many of the Korean comfort women were recruited into the military sex program on false promises of good wages working elsewhere, for instance in factories and hospitals. Others were abducted.

Soh wrote about how the sexist Korean patriarchal culture was a critical underlying factor in the criminal collaboration by Koreans in the Japanese comfort women program. This combined with the sense of shame about sex work to prevent the comfort women program from being investigated after the war. In the 1960s and later, the comfort women issue was not considered important by the government of South Korea because of the elitist tendency to ignore the plight of the poor; most of the coerced Koreans were from poor families. It was only in the early 1990s that the comfort women issue was discussed globally, especially by the South Korean activist group Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (KCWS). Soh considered the actions of the KCWS to be successful, achieving the establishment of a United Nations investigation committee and the admission of guilt by Japan. She wrote that the issue of monetary compensation for the surviving comfort women was a divisive one, preventing smooth political relations between Japan and South Korea.

In 2000, Soh wrote an essay for Peace Review describing the historiography of the comfort women issue, especially the issue of redress, which was an international problem. She described how the Asian Women's Fund (AWF) was established in Japan to compensate the surviving comfort women, but that "feminist and human rights activists" saw the non-governmental AWF as a way for Japan's government to sidestep its responsibility.

Soh authored a position paper for the Japan Policy Research Institute in 2001. She wrote that the redress movement to compensate the survivors of the comfort women program arose first from feminist opposition to male Japanese sex tourism in Korea. Also at issue were the opposing views of Japan and Korea regarding whether Japan's colonization of Korea was legitimate. The modern comfort women issue exists in the context of continuing friction between Japan and Korea; unresolved questions about Japan's responsibility for its actions during the 1930s and World War II. The comfort women question arose in the 1990s, and was not on the table during 1952–1965 when Japan and Korea were establishing bilateral relations. After public testimony and lawsuits in 1991–1992, the government of Japan officially apologized for the comfort women program in early 1992. However, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party was unwilling to indicate any legal responsibility for redress. In 1994, the Social Democratic Party came to power in Japan, and was able to establish the Asian Women's Fund, which Soh described as "an amalgam of private and government money", operated by the government. The AWF paid a number of comfort women, but its actions were opposed by conservatives who thought it was too much, and also by liberal feminists who thought it was too little. Soh wrote that the Japanese government established the fund so that they could quickly pay the surviving comfort women before they died, but others in the organization reined in the fund to avoid an escalation of demands for compensation stemming from Japan's wartime activities.

Summary

In this book Soh criticizes the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery, also known as Chong Dae Hyup, a left-wing activist group, arguing that it has exaggerated the comfort women story, creating a false narrative of victimization. She asserts that Chong Dae Hyup's narrative of the Japanese military coercively taking young Korean women away from "loving parents" is baseless, and she accuses the activist group of strategic misrepresentations that have prevented deeper understanding of the comfort women issue. She insists that it is incorrect to portray the comfort women as sex slaves and the system as a war crime. In her view, the burden is on Korean society to repudiate victimization, admit its complicity and accept that the comfort women system was not criminal. However, she concedes that current Korean nationalism is so strong that it is highly unlikely Korean society will come to that realization anytime soon.

In wars soldiers sometimes commit rapes. To prevent this from occurring, the Japanese military asked businessmen to recruit prostitutes and operate brothels. The Japanese military sent notices to brothel operators ordering them to only recruit willing prostitutes and not to recruit women against their will. The Japanese operators followed the order and only recruited willing women. But the Korean operators recruited both willing and unwilling women. If Korean brothel operators had followed the Japanese military's order, there would not have been any comfort women issue.

When Japan offered compensation through Asian Women's Fund in 1995, Soh asserts that Chong Dae Hyup threatened Korean women not to accept Japan's apology and compensation so that it could continue its anti-Japanese propaganda campaign. Soh describes how 61 former Korean comfort women defied this threat and accepted compensation. Those 61 women were vilified as traitors. Chong Dae Hyup published their names and addresses in newspapers as dirty prostitutes, so they had to live the rest of their lives in disgrace.

Professor Soh also argues that the Korean narrative is misleading as it deliberately mixes the comfort women with the volunteer corps (Chong Sin Dae 정신대), a separate system of mobilizing women's labor during World War II. Furthermore, the Koreans turn their eyes away from their own collaboration. She asserts that the Korean comfort station operators recruited Korean comfort women, some of whom were sold to the operators by indebted parents. But after the war Korean society stigmatized these women, exacerbating their tragedy.

Reviews

Mark E. Caprio, a professor of history at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, wrote that Soh's book emphasizes the complexity of the comfort women issue. The book describes how there are vastly different experiences of comfort women depending on how they were recruited and where they were stationed. Soh works toward a more comprehensive definition of comfort women, rather than limiting the definition to a single characterization. Caprio criticizes Soh for opening the door to Japanese nationalists who make "irresponsible claims" to minimize the comfort women issue. Caprio says that Soh's book supports some of the arguments used by nationalists, and that it does not spend enough effort on refutation of the nationalist position.

In The Japan Times, the book was reviewed by Jeff Kingston, a history professor at Temple University, Japan Campus. Kingston noted how Soh defines the comfort women system as arising "from the nexus of patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism and militarism, placing it in an ongoing continuum of women’s subjugation and exploitation." Kingston said that Soh targets the Korean Council for its single "canonized story" of comfort women, a story of "sweeping generalizations", rather than a more complex assessment. Soh criticizes the Korean Council for traumatizing those comfort women who accepted monetary compensation from the Japan-based Asian Women's Fund. Kingston describes how the book places responsibility on Korean society for the Korean comfort women problem, even though Soh admits that the Japanese government established and managed the program. Kingston observes that Soh is much more critical of liberal Korean redress activists than she is of conservative Japanese nationalist apologists who can use the book's arguments for their own purposes.

Yuma Totani, a history professor at University of Hawaii at Manoa, reviewed the book in The American Historical Review. Totani notes that, in her "diverse and textured" research on the comfort women issue, Soh describes how "Korean nationalist advocacy" has served to damp discussion of the "masculinist sex culture" in Korea, a culture that contributed to the exploitation of comfort women. Soh argues for a deep look into the societal structures that allow violence against women. Totani observes that Soh's book examines four competing ideologies which are critical to the understanding of the modern comfort women issue. These ideologies are the "fascistic paternalism" of wartime Japan, the continuing "masculinist sexism" of Japan and Korea, the "feminist humanitarianism" movement which is split over the redress issue, and "ethnic nationalism" which turns a blind eye to historical accuracy in favor of emotional devotion to one's country. Totani writes that the book's greatest strength is its description of ethnic nationalism which is a particular problem in South Korea because the comfort women issue is being used by South Korean nationalists as a wedge issue. Soh writes that South Korean nationalists have constructed a master narrative of the comfort women issue, one that is simplistic and homogenizing, showing Korea as the victim. Soh's research reveals a much wider narrative, providing instead a holistic view of the issue, with more nuance and variation, especially factoring in the acceptance in Korea of institutionalized gender violence.