 | Voices of the Korean Comfort Women: History Rewritten from Memories Subjects: Area Studies; Humanities; Social Sciences; Asian Studies; History; Sociology & Social Policy; Korean Studies; Asian History; Modern History 1750-1945; Women''s & Gender History; Gender Studies; Asian Studies (General); An innumerable number of young women were taken from Korea during the Pacific War to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers. These women including teenagers, euphemistically referred in Japanese documents as Comfort Women, were shipped to the vastly expanded battle fronts throughout the Japan-occupied territories covering from Northern China to Myanmar and to the South Pacific Islands. Many of these girls died, killed or abandoned during and after the war, but a small percentage of them returned only to face yet another devastating war at home and lasting social stigma. In Voices of the Korean Comfort Women, nine survivors tell their traumatic life stories as to how they were taken, how they had been treated with atrocities at the Comfort Stations, and how they had survived through not only the Pacific War but also the Korean War and beyond. These often harrowing personal testimonies are each expanded by the interviewer's observational notes thereby providing poignant contextual information. This English translation of vital oral history, underpinned with theoretically informed guides, will be invaluable to students and scholars of Asian history, the Pacific War and war time sexual violence against women as well as those interested in historical trauma and human rights. Chungmoo Choi is Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, USA, where she teaches cultural studies, critical theory, gender, literature, film and religion of Korea. She is author of Healing Historical Trauma in South Korean Film and Literature and co-editor of Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism. Hyunah Yang is Professor of Law at Seoul National University, Republic of Korea, where she teaches gender and law, sociology of law, postcolonial feminist jurisprudence. |
