KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

One of the challenges facing studies on the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ issue is to go beyond the narrow topic of ‘forced mobilization’, and to create a realm for in-depth research with a broader sense of coercion which incorporates the compulsory nature of mobilization under a colonial regime as well as the captivity and violence practiced upon the victims of sexual slavery.

This study focuses on two different topics in order to achieve this goal. The first is a historical research on ways the victims of the ‘comfort women’ system were mobilized, and this research consists of two axes. One is on the major trends and discussions related to the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ issue, and the other is an in-depth analysis on the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ system and the mobilization of Joseon women. Existing literature related to the topic, Japanese newspapers, magazines, and trial records, which were created during the period of intensive mobilization of ‘comfort women’ by the Japanese military, were collected in order to understand the major trends and discussions regarding the issue. The victims’ testimony and soldiers’ memoirs were analyzed in order to understand the nature of the mobilization and victimization caused by the ‘comfort women’ system. These consist of testimonies from Joseon women who were victimized by the ‘comfort women’ system and from Chinese victims of sexual violence practiced by the Japanese military, as well as the memoirs of Japanese soldiers themselves.

The second is an attempt to verify the results caused by the broader sense of coercion, which includes forced mobilization, detainment, and continued sexual violence. Psychosocial aftereffects experienced by the victims of the ‘comfort women’ system in Korea were collected and analyzed in depth in order to investigate the effects of various forms of coercion. Victims of the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ system may have not only experienced severe psychosocial aftereffects caused by forced mobilization, detainment, and sexual violence, but also may be still under the influence of the psychological and physical trauma 70 to 80 years after the fact. Analysis and professional diagnosis of the victims’ psychosocial aftereffects are important and meaningful research when studying the issue of ‘comfort women’, as it proves actual physical and psychological effects of the practice of coercion, which used to be found only in primary historical records and victim testimonies. Despite efforts to measure the severity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) experienced by the victims, professional and systematic in-depth studies of the research and diagnosis of psychosocial aftereffects are yet to be conducted. This paper made an attempt to systematically analyze the victims’ psychosocial aftereffects, by re-analyzing the victim testimonies and art therapy records while examining physical and psychological conditions of the live victims.

Major findings of the historical research are as follows. Firstly, there were only a few trial records of the Japanese Government-General of Joseon related to military ‘comfort women’. The low quantity of these records can be interpreted as the authority’s condoning of the illegal practices, and even participating in the system. This policy was executed by the brokers, Japanese army contractors, and military ‘comfort station’ operators. The members of the industry known as brokerage agencies and recruiting agencies were often connected to traffickers, and commonly deceived women who were trying to get regular jobs into prostitution. There isn’t much literature which proves a precise connection between military ‘comfort women’ and brokerage agencies, but newspaper advertisements and trial records present cases indicating the connection. Cases involving brothel owners moving to battlefields to operate military comfort stations as well as Japanese military contractors and ‘comfort station’ operators were also examined.

Secondly, a quantitative analysis was conducted on the data collected from testimonies from the 1990s to the present made by 238 Korean ‘comfort women’ who were recognized by the Korean government as victims. The mobilization was concentrated during the period in which the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ system was becoming a regular practice. Despite a law which restricted the mobilization of women under the age of 17, many in reality were still trafficked as young as 12 years old. Multiple parties including soldiers, civilians attached to the military, policemen, as well as Korean and Japanese brokers participated in this. Considering that soldiers, civilians attached to the military, and policemen represented “undeniable governmental authority”, forced mobilization in which governmental authority was involved was very common. The proportion of forced mobilization based on governmental authority including village and town foremen reached 55.7%.

Thirdly, according to testimonies from Chinese victims, the Chinese ‘comfort women’ system was established during the Japanese invasion into China, mostly by mobilizing local women. The analysis suggests four different types of Chinese ‘comfort women’: officially mobilized women through the Japanese military, local women who were forcibly taken by the Japanese military, the women temporarily taken by the Japanese military, and the women who were raped in military bases and forced to accompany the military to various regions throughout their mop-up operations.

Lastly, analysis of the Japanese soldiers’ memoirs revealed their perspective of the ‘comfort women’ system. ‘Comfort stations’ were operated as a strategy to take care of the soldiers’ sexual demands and to maintain military order, with the Japanese military playing a major role in mobilizing and managing women. The soldiers saw the ‘comfort women’ system as a type of state-regulated prostitution at the time. The analysis of the victims’ testimony and the soldiers’ memoirs suggest that the perceptions of the victims and soldiers regarding ‘comfort women’ and ‘comfort stations’ were significantly different. It also shows that both military and governmental authority actively participated in mobilizing women, and that it was the military’s role to manage the ‘comfort stations’

The findings from the analysis on the victims’ psychosocial aftereffects are as follows. Firstly, according to the analysis of oral testimony from 10 victims made between the mid to late 1990s and the early to mid 2000s, all of them were suffering from psychosocial aftereffects. Despite the fact that almost half a century had passed since their time as ‘comfort women’, 3 of them were still experiencing PTSD and complex PTSD, and the rest of them were also believed to had experienced PTSD and complex PTSD in the past.

Secondly, the analysis of 93 pieces of art created by 6 victims in 2009 as part of an art therapy program suggests that they had distorted body image issues and low self-esteem, as well as experiencing depression, resentment, delusional disorder, and attention deficit disorder. The negative effects of the events related to the ‘comfort women’ system were reflected at an unconscious level through non-verbal expressions in their art.

Finally, the psychiatric examination conducted on the victims living in the House of Sharing showed that the conditions of 5 victims were beyond simple psychiatric symptoms, severe enough to be professionally diagnosed for hwa-byung or major depression. The result of the physical examination on the victims revealed that 7 of them were in conditions requiring medical attention in the near future. It was, however, difficult to confirm that their current physical symptoms were caused by the victimization experienced in the ‘comfort women’ system