During wartime, women are faced with a lot of challenges, they’re faced with sexual violence, and they’re faced with different crimes committed against the female gender. This post is on the International Day of comfort women, which is held every August 14, I will share in this post the idea of what comfort women were about, to give an insight into the people involved and the possible actions that can be taken looking for a different perspective to mention a few.
In 1991, a woman 65 years old came out to make a public statement and her name was Kim Hak-Sun, She was a comfort woman, and then she decided to share her experience and her experience shook the whole world, not only Korea or South Korea but the world. And it made people come up to clamour for the Japanese government to apologize and make amends to mention a few.
Comfort women were a system of sexual slavery that was created, organized and controlled by the imperial Japanese government between 1932 and 1945. Basically, this was the period during the second world war. So, women, and girl child were kidnapped, some of them coerced and forced into sexual slavery, whereby they were put in a brothel and, you know, were servicing the military officers to mention a few.
This was an activity that took place during World War Two and the testimony of Kim in 1991, kind of brought out the idea of what happened to these women, it has led to a global phenomenon, which is what leads to the August 14 International day of comfort women, okay, so August has been designated as an international memorial for comfort women, because of in 1991 August 14, that was when, Kim came out to speak of predicament, and what she went through during the days of being a comfort woman during World War Two, so she publicly testified against Japanese military and how they created a brothel program during the war.
It is believed that this brothel was established to deal with involuntary rape that occurred during wartime. So this was the reason why this comfort women system was created. Most importantly, we can’t overlook the fact that this is a crime.
According to historians 200,000 to about 400,000 women when being used for sexual servitude, and we had women from different countries from Korea to Philippians, and Burma to mention a few. So all these women when we’re comfort women.
The importance of the International Memorial Day for comfort women is simply
- To recognize that these women have gone through a lot
- to increase the protection of comfort women because they need to be protected.
- Also, this international day is to support comfort women or those who have been involved in the process both far and wide in Korea or around the world.
- Lastly, to raise awareness at home and abroad,
So the reason why this event or this Memorial Day is being recognized is to bring about awareness, to show and disclose the happenings, that have taken place to these women, during the Second World War
South Koreans have asked that Japan should like to offer a sincere apology and commensurate or compensate the victims, so we can all say that no matter what is being done, the crime against women or comfort women cannot be overlooked.
So In other words, this post has explained the idea of what comfort women is, the International Memorial Day of comfort women that is held every August 14th, and has also explained the aims of this international Memorial Day of comfort women.
I hope that this video has helped you understand the idea of the comfort women when it started, the people involved, the country, you know, to mention a few
Reference
1 to read more on Hak Sun Kim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Hak-sun
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Hak-sun
3 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asia-comfortwomen-idUSKBN1KZ07O
4 https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200814000280
5 image from https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_s-korea-seeks-solution-victims-japans-wartime-sexual-slavery/6194409.html
