Q. What is the Wednesday Demonstrations?

It is a weekly-held demonstartion in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to bring a justice to Japanese Military Sexual Slavery issue. The Wednesday demonstrations has been held over 13 years as of 2007, July, and they had their 717th demonstration on July 12, 2006.

Q. When did it start and how did it start?

A. The first demonstration was held on Jan., 8 1992 when Japanese Prime Minister, Kiichi Miyazawa visited South Korea. The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (the Korean Council), formed with 37 women’s groups in Korea in 1990, sent the Japanese government an open letter demanding the justice for the Japanese Military Slavery. Three former victoms of the Janpanes Military Slavery, Park Soon Geum, Lee Hyo Cha and Yun Chung Ok participated in this demonstration.

Q. Who participates in the demonstration?

A. At the beginning, mainly members from the Korean Council and other women groups joined the demonstartions with the former victoms of the Japanese Military Sexual Slavery. The former Comfort Women are always in the center of the demonstration. About 10 to 20 former victoms of the Japanese Military Sexual Slavery particpate in the demonstartions in turn. It is now truely a field of history eduction that many Koreans have participated in the demonstrations. People who want to support the justice gather together every Wednesday. Gratefully, many people from other countries show their support, too.

Q. How does the Japanese government react to the Wednesday Demonstartions?

A. From the beginning to now, the Japanese government has been neglecting the demonstartions and kept silent about the Japanese Military Sexual Slavery.

Q. How can we help for this demonstartion?

A. Please visit the official site of the Korean Council. Support

Read more at Wednesday Demonstration History

ShareThis

Interview with Kim Hak Soon, a sixty-eight former Comfort Woman, who testified in public for the first time in Korea that she was forced to serve Japanese solders sexually. She was born in Manchuria and sold by her stepfather to a Japanese military in 1941 when she was sixteen.

Q. What made you give this difficult testimony?

A. The direct motive was Lee Mang Hee that I met at the welfare work force. But I’ve been thinking that I should reveal it sometime. I watched it carefully whenever there were any news about Comfort Women on TV. I was wondering how they would report it. My heart throbs even when I see Ijanggee, the Japanese nation flag, and I feel suffocated even by the word comfort. I’d wanted to release it. I feel unburdened now.

Q. How did your stepfather trade you in the Japanese military? Could you tell us the detail?

A. My father passed away when I was young. I was maltreated because people believed my father died due to my bad luck. When my mother got married again, I was adopted at the age of 14. My stepfather sent me a gisaeng school, female entertainer school, to learn music and dancing. He took me to Manchuria with another stepdaughter to do business using us. We thought we would become a gisaeng when he treaded us. But we were sold as Comfort Women to a Japanese platoon located in Northern China. I never knew that I would become a plaything for Japanese solders.

Q. Where did the Japanese military take you and how many Comfort Women were there?

A. I followed wherever Japanese solders went because I was so young. I didn’t have discretion even to remember the name of troops or the commander. We were taken to an empty Chinese house located in front of the troops and I saw three other Korean girls. At least I was relived to see them. I didn’t know their Korean names but they were called by their Japanese name, Miyako, Sadako, Sijiae. Five Korean girls became Comfort Women there and the oldest one was 22. Others were 17, 18, 18 years old and I was sixteen. So I was the youngest.

Q. Could you tell us about your life there more in detail?

A. We lived an empty Chinese place as all Chinese left because of the Japanese military. During the daytime, we delivered ammunitions, cooked, did laundry and worked as nurses. During the nighttime, we were forced to serve Japanese solders. If we rejected to do it, even a little, we were beaten by Sijiae or pulled in hair and dragged naked. We lived on the food from the military but we were never paid. We never saw a penny. I remember that a private paid 1 Won 50 Jeon, and a officer, who stayed all night with a Comfort Woman, paid 8 Won but Sijiae must have taken all the money.

Q. You said the Japanese military was a platoon. How many solders were there and when did they come ?
A. I think that there were about three hundred solders. Because it was on the front line, they took vacation and came in groups.

Q. Could you tell us how you remember your life there? How did you manage to run away from it?

A. I can’t put my life there in words. I tried not to think of my life there because it wasn’t a human being’s life. It was like a public toilet for the Japanese solders. I get frightened even now. When solders dashed to me…. I bit my lips. I ran away but got caught. I shudder at the thought of it. I lived that life for the summer so I think I was there for about four or five months. One night I ran away with a Korean man’s help when he came by the troops for his business. Every girl got crazy to get his help on that day. They must have thought they could run away with his help. He had a wife in Korea and did business to sell silver coins. I followed him and survived in China. After the 1945 Liberation of Korea, I came to Seoul. I suffered a lot but I was glad to be back.

Q. You lost your husband, one son and one daughter all by accidents. How has your life been?

A. I managed myself as a housemaid or peddler. Now the village office gives me 10 kg rice every month and I make 30,000 Won doing welfare work.

Q. What would you like to say to the Korean government and the Japanese government?

A. The Japanese should admit the existence of Comfort Women and show repentance. The Korean government should demand an official apology from the Japanese government and compensation. I’d like to see Miyako and Sadako most of all. I wouldn’t have any more wish if more women like me report it and we try together to reveal the crimes that the Japanese military committed.

** The translation of this interview is based on the article by Women News issued on August 30, 1992.

ShareThis

Hoju system, aka “Hojuje” is a patriarchal family registration system that restricts women’s legal rights within family relationships. It was introduced in Korea in 1898. The system is based on the male-oriented patriarchal idea that all family has a ‘hoju’ (a male head of a family) and all family members are under the hoju. Family members fall in to line in Hojuje in the order of hoju, his sons, his grandsons,… followed by female descendents, his mother, his wife, his daughters, his granddaughters,… his daughters-in-law and so on. With this system, women are not a family member once they get married and become a husband’s family member. This has generated unreasonable family disputes because women are not treated equally in the family. This is also an apparent unconstitutional that every individual has the right to dignity and gender equality in family life.

The major difference that the abolishment of Hojuje will make are following:

1.
Before:
Hoju is succeeded in the order of son, grandson and so on.

After:
There will be no more hoju in a family. So there will be no more male-dominated and hierarchal order to succeed it.
Individual registration system will replace hoju system.

2.
Before:
Women who get married are not a legal family member any more. (Women who get married are crossed out in the hoju document.) They don’t have legal right for inheritance.

After:
Women are a family member regardless of their marriage status as men are. When they get married, they change marriage status on their own individual registration document as men do.

3.
Before:
When a woman gets divorced and she keeps the custody of her child(ren), the woman and her child(ren) are not a legal family.

After:
When a woman gets divorced and she keeps the custody of her child(ren), they remain as a legal family.

4.
Before:
When a women gets married again with her child(ren) from her previous marriage, her children cannot have her husband’s family name. Her children must keep her ex-husband’s family name. (This generates a family that has three different family names, a wife’s, a wife’s husband and the wife’s children’s from her ex-husband.)

After:
When a woman gets married again with her child(ren) from her previous marriage, her children change their family name to their stepfather’s family name with the court’s approval.

5.
Before:
When a married man has a child outside his marriage, the child should be registered under the man’s family.

After:
When a married man has a child outside his marriage, the man should consult with the child’s mother to register the child as his family.

6.
Before:
Children must follow their father’s family name.

After:
Children are allowed to adopt his or her mother’s family name based on mutual consent from both parents.

The revised Civil Law will take effect in 2008.

ShareThis