Lee Ok-Sun, left
From an October 28 Amnesty International press release chastizing the Japanese government for its failure to take responsibility for the brutalities perpetrated against enslaved "comfort women" during WW II:
"I was taken to China when I was 16 years old," says South Korean national Lee Ok-sun, now aged 79. She was abducted and taken to Yanbian, north-eastern China — where she was forced into sexual slavery in a "comfort station".
"The age range of the girls was from 14 to 17 and they forced us to serve 40 to 50 soldiers a day," she says. "It was impossible to serve that many men, so I refused and was beaten. If a woman refused they cut her body with a knife; some girls were stabbed. Some girls got diseases and died… It was a painful experience — there was not enough food, not enough sleep and I couldn’t even kill myself. I desperately wanted to escape." Lee Ok-sun was in China for 58 years before she was able to return to South Korea.
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I don’t know why Christianity, or any other religion, needs a concept of Hell. Just look around, look backwards, and you find Hell right here on earth in all its wondrous variety.
I don’t know how else to respond to the statement “I couldn’t even kill myself.”
I remember the first time I heard the term “comfort women.” I could not understand it. The words made no sense, because my brain kept rejecting them. It was so abhorrent, instead of processing it, my brain simply stopped working. Sadly, my brain could process “I couldn’t even kill myself.” This is about as pitiless as it gets. These are the moments when I think the world should be glad that I was born when/where I was because people think Valerie Solanas was crazy? Ha. Fucking Ha.
This was a HUGE issue when I lived in Japan. Getting the Japanese government to even address the reality of ‘comfort women’ was nigh unto impossible. You see, the Japanese believed that Koreans were racially inferior – therefore enslaving them was OK. They looked at the Philippines in the same way. Sound familiar?
Korea hates Japan – but it copies them culturally. Frankly – I thought it was unhealthy for both countries. Japan has never really taken responsibility for its actions in Asia during WWII, and Korea has never been able to move past that occupation. It’s very sad – especially for the women caught in the middle. Neither country will claim them.
Also check out these stories on women’s enews, this one on a museum commemorating the women
http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2509
and this one on efforts by former “comfort women” to obtain an apology:
http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1851/