Militarized Currents: Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific

6. South Korean Movements against Militarized Sexual Labor

125 6 South Korean Movements against Militarized Sexual Labor Katharine H. S. Moon As the twentieth century draws to a close, South Korean survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery (the Japanese “comfort system,” or chŏngsindae) and activists on their behalf have been noted as some of the most persuasive and omnipresent advocates of women’s human rights at international meetings and conferences. Within South Korea, graphic accounts of sexual brutality in wartime have become household news. In 1992, a television drama series, Eye of the Dawn, which depicted Korean resistance to Japanese colonial rule, not only included portraits of young women and girls being forcibly rounded up for sexual use in battlefronts, but also made the story’s heroine a chŏngsindae survivor. She became a spy against the Japanese and therefore a nationalist and patriot. Globally, the chŏngsindae issue, as a political struggle regarding women’s sex work, is probably the first to receive so much widespread publicity since the international (mostly Western) debates and policy measures ensuing from the scare of white slavery in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Numerous academic, literary, and other works on the issue have been rolling hot off the presses,1 and even women’s fashion magazines have been reporting periodically on this newly unearthed history.2 This is not to say that the chŏngsindae movement (CM) is a success story pure and simple; it is not. Its major demands—official reparation and apology to survivors—still have not been met by the Japanese government , and such demands generally were not supported by the South Korean government.3 Yet, in terms of raising awareness, presenting formal petitions to governments and international institutions, building 126 · KATHARINE H. S. MOON coalitions, and obtaining media coverage, the CM has achieved enormous visibility within just a few years. The CM, however, is not the first women’s movement in South Korea to protest and redress sexual exploitation and abuse of Korean women by foreign men. In the 1970s, Korean women activists, some of whom are now fighting for the chŏngsindae survivors, protested vehemently against the Japanese government and Japanese society’s participation in kisaeng tourism (sex tourism) in Korea.4 Also, since the mid-1980s, a group of Korean women and men have sought to recognize and publicize the plight of U.S. military camptown (kijich’on) prostitutes as victims of debt bondage and objects of foreign domination. Yet, these movements never generated or received the kind of public recognition and support, both domestic and international, that the CM has garnered. The CM and the kijich’on movement (KM) originally began together as part of a larger Asian women’s human rights movement against the sexual exploitation of women. Professor Yun Chong Ok’s groundbreaking research on former chŏngsindae women was first publicly presented at the International Seminar on Women and Tourism (held in Seoul and on Cheju Island in April 1988). There, a kijich’on woman gave her own testimony about her ordeals as a sex worker. The stated intent of the conference organizers and participants was to challenge traditional conceptions of women’s chastity and the socioeconomic conditions that foster the sexual abuse of women’s bodies and labor. Representatives from the Philippines, the United States, Canada, England, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Korea were present. The conference participants aimed to share information on related issues and problems from different parts of the world, especially Asia, to forge women’s solidarity as activists and criticize the role of governments and businesses in fostering the trade in women’s sex work.5 Additionally, at the outset of the conference, the leaders had invited Yu Pok Nim and Faye Moon, founders of a counseling center for camptown sex workers, My Sister’s Place, to join forces and support the CM as a cause against militarism and the violation of women’s human rights. On the surface, the founders of both movements shared values and concerns that might have made them likely alliance partners in a larger women’s movement: both were opposed to the sexual exploitation and abuse of women and were motivated by their nationalism and Christian SOUTH KOREAN MOVEMENTS AGAINST MILITARIZED SEXUAL LABOR · 127 sensibilities. However, the two were unable to forge a real partnership and went their separate ways, as will be discussed later. This chapter compares the ideology, leadership, and organization of the two...