Seeking Comfort
by Brian Mockenhaupt
Far East Economic Review
Issue cover-dated January 10, 2002The House of Sharing is part nursing home, part goldfish bowl for a group of wartime comfort women who battle against old age to tell a younger generation of their hardships
THE BARS OF SUNLIGHT filtering into Lee Ok Sun's tiny room gather at her feet, around the pile of pistachios spread out before her. She reaches for each nut slowly, cracks off the shell, drops it in a pile and reaches for another. A spider's web of wrinkles creases her face as she squints into the light and then returns to her busy work.
Here there is a moment of quiet, which Lee appreciates. But the troubles of her life, which date back now more than half a century, crowd her waking hours. Beatings left her scarred and partially deaf. Infections from countless sexual encounters with soldiers left her barren.
"They treated us like pigs, so I suffer now. I've had to have surgery all over my body, all because of the Japanese," she says. "How can I forget? I have to think about it every day." And when her body doesn't remind her, the questions do. Rare are the days when there is no one asking Lee and the eight women she lives with to share their memories, asking if they are sad they can't have children or whether they can forgive.
The nine were all so-called "comfort women," a few of the estimated 200,000 Asian women who served as sex slaves for the Japanese army in the 1930s and 1940s. Now they have taken refuge in the hills north of Seoul at the House of Sharing, which is part nursing home and part advocacy centre. But it is also part goldfish bowl--a place where the women's lives are on display for scores of visitors who come each year to see one of the last great living reminders of Japan's darkest hours in Asia.
The story of the comfort women is certainly better known and better understood today than a decade ago, when only a handful of the women had spoken publicly about their lives during the war. But the flag-bearers of the movement, the former comfort women like Lee, are dying. They are old and weak and tired of telling stories kept well hidden for so long.
"I want to be in peace now, because I'm old. But the Japanese don't want to apologize, so how can I be at peace?" says Lee, who is 75.
The House of Sharing, founded 10 years ago by a Buddhist women's group, is a final refuge for a few. Here they have the camaraderie and commiseration of shared experience, and they live in relative comfort. The women each have a room with a television and refrigerator. A cook prepares their meals and a nurse watches their health. There are weekly trips for shopping and sightseeing and the surrounding hills and farmland are fine for afternoon walks.
But still, the past is never far away. Some of the women travel around Korea and abroad talking about their experiences, and they join other comfort women each Wednesday for a protest outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul, now in its 10th year. And even at home they are not alone. Last year 5,000 people--half of them Japanese--came to meet the women and tour a museum in the grounds that displays their own artwork depicting their time as sex slaves.
Lee moved to the House of Sharing last year from China, where she had lived since she was taken from Korea at the age of 16. A devout Christian, she rises at 4 a.m. to pray for two hours before the rest of the house wakes up. Later in the day she will meet--a little reluctantly--some of the day's visitors. "It's difficult for us because sometimes we don't have the strength to talk and we get tired of telling our stories over and over," she says. But it's important to talk, especially to the young people. "We have to teach them well because when we die, that's it, that's the end. And no one else will be able to tell them what happened."
On this Sunday, 78-year-old Kang Il Chul is spending time with 30 students from a sexual-history class at Seoul's Hanyang University. "I don't like to talk about it, but I have to because I'm one of the few grandmas who's willing to speak out," she says away from the students. "I was too embarrassed so I buried it deep, so it makes it hard to talk about what happened because I have to think about the past and it all comes back." She adds, "If I had enough money, I'd get my own house."
She tells the students of her time during the war, the hunger and the beatings, and life in China until she returned to live in Korea last year. But mostly she implores the students to protect their country, to ensure that the Korean people are never again dominated. For Kang, and many other former comfort women, Japan is a real threat. "The future of our country is up to you. You can live without a house, but you can't live without a country," she tells the students.
"You don't understand this and you don't take this into your hearts," she says, her voice trembling with emotion. "I would be so happy if all of you really listened to my story of hardship." Later, one student tells her he will be enlisting in the army soon, and will tell his friends about the importance of protecting Korea. A Japanese exchange student says she has taken Kang's words to heart. "If I had my wish," Kang says, "I would not want to tell you bad things like this. I would like to tell you happy things."
But there hasn't been a lot of that in the women's lives. Most of them grew up poor, and were duped into serving the army with promises of well-paid jobs overseas. Instead they were moved to the comfort stations, and ended the war having lost their chastity, a prized asset in a society that views sex before marriage as a source of humiliation. Some women never returned home. Most who did claimed that they had been working as labourers, waiting until family members had died before talking about what really happened. Unfit for traditional marriage, some became mistresses or second wives, caring for another woman's children, or simply lived alone.
"They have this painful stone in their heart," says Yun Chung Ok, a retired professor who has been researching comfort women since the 1970s and who helped found the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. "They became ashamed, for their family. They hid themselves. And they could not say anything about their past. They thought their existence was shameful."
Now, having found a network of support, the women have put voice to their anger at being cheated of their lives. "I hate all the Japanese people," Lee says. "They tried to kill all of us. What kind of people are they? How bad can somebody be?" Still, she hasn't given up her hopes of communicating her pain to her country's former enemies, and she is relearning Japanese: "How can we make them understand if we don't speak the same language?" she asks.
For others, though, the will to keep on fighting is fading with the years. Pak Du Ri sits in the doorway to her room, puffing on a cigarette and swatting flies. "We've been doing this for 10 years and it hasn't brought us anything," she says. "I'm tired of telling my story. What difference does it make?"