Sunday, May 31, 2009

The Korean Comfort Women Issue

Received this letter in the mail this morning telling me about an article in the Korean Times.


In the Sunday edition of the Korean Times for May 24, i.e. the Saturday-Sunday combined edition, there was an interesting article on comfort woman and their history of fighting exploitation. This mirrors very much an article in Mission in the South”…. Check it out here

The Maryknoll Sisters were always active in the plight of these women. The reference is Sharing House, their abode since the 1990s is what I reported in the book."


The following is a paraphrasing of the article from the Book, Mission in the South by Rev. Robert Martin Lilly,M.M. on the comfort woman.


Solidarity with former Comfort Women

The term comfort woman is a euphemism for the Asian women who were forced to become sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army. Battlefront brothels were common in China and Southeast Asia in the 1930s and throughout the Pacific War areas in the 1940s. In April 1988, the issue surfaced in Korea when a Protestant group called Church women United denounced the current sex tourism phenomena saying it was a modern equivalent of comfort women.


In 1990 an elderly Filipina went public with her story. In 1991 women from Korea came forth when as young girls they were forced to serve as sexual objects for Japanese soldiers. Since then the movement for support has gained momentum. Maryknoll Sisters were instrumental in helping the Association of Major Superiors realize that sisters as churchwomen would do well to support the comfort women- which they did.


.A number of organizations Christian and non-Christian are involved in the overall effort. Programs have included an international gathering in Seoul in 1999 and the movie, Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women, produced by a Korean American.

The ninety-minute film traced the abuse and maltreatment the women suffered upon their return home, surprisingly not from Japanese perpetrators but at the hands of their own family, local community and government. It also points up the nonchalance for the the issue on the part of scholars. It was shown in Korea and on PBS in the US in May 2000. This was the first time anything dealing with it appeared on nationwide TV.


In the fall of 2000 there was an international tribunal in Tokyo on the issue.As always the key point was the demand for an official apology from the Japanese Government with financial recompense.

Ecumenicism in Korea


The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity this year was the combined work of the different Churches in Korea. This material was used throughout the world.

The Catholic Church in Korea, is not a leader in this Ecumenical Movement but it does participate and this year the 9th annual forum was held at the Franciscan Education Center on May 14 with the guest speaker Jurgen Moltmann the renowned Protestant theologian.

The Catholic paper said Moltmann introduced a different direction from the polemics of the past. He proposed that we work together not only about life issues but with the problems that we face in globalization and to work together in a common effort to remedy the situation.

Moltmann felt that following the methods of the past in ecumenical dialogue we are not getting any closer to one another and suggested that we in the future not remain trying to directly get the unity of the separated Churches but work together against the dehumanization in our society, destruction of the environment, and the polarization in our society. He felt that this would enable us with God to grow closer and this is the meaning of the unity we seek.

My reading of the article was that there was not unanimity on what was said. One participant made a good point, I thought, when he said the whole idea of the work for unity is not just the work of the specialist but of all the Christians. In Korea it is mostly the work of the leaders in the movement. It will have to get down to the level of the ordinary Christians. It is here in their lives , works and sharing their faith experiences with others, that we will see change.