Comfort Women – History and Overview of the Current Situation

Although the violence toward comfort women dates back to World War II, it wasn’t until two decades ago when the public became aware of it. Kim Hak-sun, one of the females from South Korea who was forced to work as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels, agreed to publicly share her story in 1991. She even started legal action against Japan with the goal of receiving a formal apology and settlement.Unfortunately, Kim Hak-sun passed away six years later,and Japan agreed to offer an official apology and pay compensation in 2015.

Basic Facts about Comfort Women

During World War II, the idea of the Japanese leaders was to keep the army content by offering them women as sex workers. With that goal, they recruited girls from Japan, but also Korea and Taiwan who were under their occupation then. These women were gathered in structures that reminded as brothels and were regularly visited by soldiers and officers. Not only they were made to provide sexual services to the army, but there were many reported cases of collective rapes.

According to comfort women testimonies, as the chances of the war ending bad for Japan increased, their fate worsened. If the army was forced to retreat, the women were murdered, abandoned, or left behind, and only a few of them managed to save themselves by surrendering to the foreign armies.

The archives show that there were more than 400 comfort stations throughout Asia in 1942. The number probably increased in the following years until the end of the war. As for the number of Korean comfort women, it significantly varies depending on which source you consult. However, it is believed that there couldn’t be more than 20,000 of these women while some estimates deliver a terrifying number of 200,000.

An Overview of the Current Situation

The issue has gotten the public attention it deserves in the 1990s, but vital actions to resolve the problem and find a way to amend the sins seems to have started more than a decade later. It was in 2011 when Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president at the time, visited Japan and emphasized how important it is to identify adequate compensation for the crimes.

Japan agreed to pay $8.3 million in 2015 to ease the suffering of victimized women and formally apologized to South Korea. The surviving victims, although there are not many of them, agreed that a direct apology to them is needed. It remains to be seen whether a deal reevaluation is ahead and what the future brings for the relations of two countries.

website: www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/12/japan-korea-comfort-women/422016/

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