Representations of Comfort Women in Transnational Literature

REPRESENTATIONS OF COMFORT WOMEN IN TRANSNATIONAL LITERATURE

MIN JI KANG

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2018

To my family

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank the many people that who have inspired and supported me on this journey. This project would not have been possible without the invaluable guidance of my committee chair Dr.

Malini Schueller and the helpful advice of Dr. Leah Rosenberg. I am thankful to my colleagues

Lauren Cox, Alyssa Hunziker, Bharati Kasibhatla, and Dr. Yen Loh, for their valuable feedback.

My work is also fueled by the insight and energy from my students. I am immensely blessed by the support of my family: Dr. Jin Ho Kang, Kwang Yeon Kim, and Tae Wook Kang, who inspire me more than they know. I also thank Ian Cho, who encouraged me ceaselessly.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 6

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 8

2 WOMEN AND NATION: REIMAGINED CHASTITY IN A GESTURE LIFE BY CHANG-RAE LEE, COMFORT WOMAN AND FOXGIRL BY NORA OKJA KELLER, AND DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON BY WILLIAM ANDREWS ...... 19

Former Comfort Women’s Involvement in Kijich’on prostitution ...... 28 Intersections of U.S. Imperialism and Japanese Imperialism ...... 33 Transnational Connections ...... 39

3 RESISTANCE IN TRANSLATION: TRANSLATING ILBON'GUN WIANBU, A TRILOGY ON COMFORT WOMEN ...... 42

Women in Base Camps ...... 44 Collective Resistance ...... 54

4 CONCLUSION...... 60

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 63

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 67

Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

REPRESENTATIONS OF COMFORT WOMEN IN TRANSNATIONAL LITERATURE

Min Ji Kang

May 2018

Chair: Malini Schueller Major: English

Literary depictions of comfort women, an estimated 200,000 women taken from parts of

East Asia to serve as sexual slaves during World War II, largely emphasize the victimization of women by the state. While there are many historical accounts and testimonials on comfort women, as well as fictional accounts, there is certainly more work to be done on the ways that these women have been depicted in regard to literary and cultural studies. I move beyond previous notions of victimization by focusing on how individual women deploy strategies of resistance, not by conforming to American and Korean masculine notions of chastity, but by subverting these concepts through advancing their own ideas of womanhood and national cause.

I explore notions of Korean nationhood and the symbolic elevation of comfort women as figures of the nation by arguing that elite male nationalists chose the female body as a productive site onto which to project traditional conceptions of chastity. Using the theoretical framework of political and literary scholars Katharine Moon, Chunghee Sarah Soh, and Chungmoo Choi, I explore how the notion of chastity was constructed and disrupted in Foxgirl and Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller, A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee, and Daughters of the Dragon by William

Andrews. I also extend my analysis in translating Ilbon'gun Wianbu, a trilogy of Korean texts,

which differs from American texts by emphasizing how some women resisted and critiqued imperial conquest through their political cause, individually and collectively.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

In 2017, new negotiations opened between the Japanese government and Moon Jae-in,

President of South Korea, to dispute the “irreversible” deal regarding comfort women that Park

Geun-hye, the former Korean president who was impeached in 2016, signed with Japan in 2015.

This continues a long dispute between South Korea and Japan, over the occurrences during

Japan’s occupation of Korea throughout WWII, when an estimated 200,000 women across South

Korea, China, Indonesia, Philippines, and the larger part of Southeast Asia were subjected to years of torture and sexual slavery in military base camps. The deal issued a new apology and gave South Korea $8.3 million in funds for the comfort women, after which South Korea could not bring up the issue again. Former president Park was highly criticized for taking the deal, as she ignored women’s wishes to reject it. Surviving women demanded that Japan take legal responsibility for the injustices that occurred. A major issue in the new negotiations was that

Japan demanded that the South Korean government not use the term “sexual slaves.” Under the undisclosed terms of the agreement, South Korea would formally refer to the women as “victims of comfort stations of the Japanese military” (Choe). While a reminder that the dispute surrounding comfort women is still ongoing, this debate points to how these women continue to be nationally remembered as “sexual slaves” or victims. However, these terms do not fully show their complex roles during and after WWII.

I note the historical trajectory in the victimization of Korean comfort women, mainly tied to concepts of purity and chastity. Ilaria Maria Sala’s article1 in the New York Times notes how

“Public discussion about the issue seemed to return, again and again, to the notion that the purity

1 Why Is the Plight of ‘Comfort Women’ Still So Controversial?” (2017).

of comfort women had been violated.” More recently, cultural denotations of comfort women have shifted slightly towards portraying the women as martyrs of the nation, seen in public memorials, as well as movies such as I Can Speak (2017), a movie that focuses on a former comfort woman who struggles to learn English in order to speak of her experiences to the

Japanese government. Kim Ye Won from YS Times reports2 the move by South Korea’s

Department of Foreign Affairs to replace the term wianbu (comfort women) to chonggun hŭisaeng yŏsŏng (woman sacrificed for military service) in labeling the new statues commemorating the women. Kim Min Joo also writes3 in the International Newspaper about a public event, put together by a Young Adults Association in Busan, commemorating comfort women. Public leaders of the association openly referred to the women as hŭisaengja (sacrifice) as well as victims. This shows how, even though there are recent developments in the portrayal of former comfort women, there is still a large focus on them as violated victims and martyrs who were sacrificed. Sala notes how, “Any account that strays from exalting the purported purity of comfort women remains controversial.” By putting the emphasis on comfort women as violated victims, Korea frees itself from blame in the trajectory of exploitation. As Sala states,

“This is why for some, comfort women must be represented as having been young and pure, virginal, sex slaves: Anything else would mean wrestling with the far more challenging notion that some of South Korea’s women did sleep with the enemy, literally and metaphorically, and that the rest of the nation may have had something to do with that.”

2 Kim, Ye Won. “Wianbu kirimbiin'ga chonggun hŭisaeng yŏsŏng ch'umobiin'ga? ilbun'gun wianburŭl karik'inŭn myŏngch'ingdŭl” (‘위안부 기림비’인가 ‘종군 희생 여성 추모비’인가? 일본군 위안부를 가리키는 명칭들)

3 Kim, Min Joo. “Ch'ŏngnyŏndŭl chaenŭnggiburo wianbu p'ihaeja ch'umo” (청년들 재능기부로 위안부 피해자 추모)

A further look at the ideology behind Korean women’s chastity reveals the hypocritical use of the term by the Korean government. Deliberate forms of exploitation of women by Korea can be traced back to the early Goryeo period (935-1394) of Korean history. Katharine Moon notes how certain women have been trained by the government to perform as entertainers or, kisaeng, for kings and high government officials. Korea’s use of women extends to diplomatic causes in The Comfort Women, as Sarah Soh notes how Korea sent kongnyo˘ (tribute women) to

“Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) in China…[and] Chinese rulers of the Ming

Dynasty (1368-1662), [continuing] until around 1521” (204). Even in the present, Katharine

Moon notes the continued use of women for diplomatic and economic reasons by noting female entertainers in the modern day used for businessmen, politicians and scholars. She says how,

“not only kisaeng, but other women also have served as a collective sacrifice for governmental priorities” (40). This is seen through the continued use of Korean women as prostitutes in kijich’on, or American base camps, in Korea after the Korean War. Sarah Soh reveals how, “The estimated number of kijich’on prostitutes over the more than four decades of the American presence ranges between 250,000 and 300,000” (211).

The view of comfort women as violated victims, whose reparation is important in the context of the larger Korean nation’s painful past, is one that overlooks Korea’s own complicity in the mass exploitation of women. Sarah Soh calls attention to the need to “ask questions regarding the creation and operation of a ‘special comfort unit’ by the South Korean Army during the Korean War, not to mention the egregious sexual crimes against women of Japan and

Korea committed by the U.S. troops in postwar Japan and postcolonial Korea” (224). I contribute to this discussion by examining how the portrayal of comfort women as national victims shows a contradiction in which women are expected to be chaste, except when it benefits the ‘good’ of

the country. At the same time, women with a sexual past, such as comfort women, kisaeng, and base camp prostitutes are also stigmatized for being ‘defiled.’ Katharine Moon notes the split in public view of comfort women vs. kijich’on prostitutes when she says how, “Even those who advocate on behalf of the former Korean ‘comfort women’ to the Japanese military in World

War II, still believe- kijich’on prostitutes work in the bars and clubs because they voluntarily want to lead a life of prostitution, because they are lacking in moral character” (9-10). Compared to prostitutes, who are shunned by the public, Moon notes Korean public memory on comfort women, who are seen as, “women who sacrificed their chastity and lives for the good of the country” (40). These women are honored for their ‘sacrifices’ to Korea. However, the novels I look at reveal the complexity and contradictions in how the binary of ‘chaste victim’ and

‘licentious prostitute’ are complicated through figures of comfort women. The constraints of chastity that were placed upon the women show the overarching masculinist views that both

Korean and Japanese society placed upon women; both colonizer (Japan) and colonized (Korea) embodied similar views about comfort women through their ideas of their chastity.

Women have historically been used for national causes, as discussed by feminist scholars.

Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias (1989) identify the ways in which women have been implicated in nationalism, which include their roles as active transmitters and producers of the national cultures. Continuing the discussion of women in national discourses, Anne McClintock

(1993) notes how women have been used as symbols of the nation. Historically, ideas of the

Korean nation have been identified through chastity and homogeneity. Chastity is a key trait traditionally associated with ‘respectable’ Korean women,4 as it gave the women value and honor, both for the Korean government and for their families. Since chastity was so valued in the

4 Japanese feminist scholar Chizuko Ueno states how “chastity emerges as a form of male property” (93) and this explains how girls who were not chaste were seen to be ‘devalued.’

idea of the Korean woman and larger nation, the violation of Korean women’s chastity constituted the violation of the Korean nation through the idea of national shame. The violated chastity of the women is connected to shame, felt by the comfort women, their families, as well as the Korean nation. Hyunah Yang explains that, “the discourse of the violation of national virgins mobilizes the Korean sense of shame, which in turn serves to unify the nation” (Kim 5).

Because the chastity of the women was connected to the value of the nation, as well as the family, the violation of chastity thus became a violation of the whole family and nation.

International discourse surrounding the issue of comfort women, or “comfort women” as even this term is contested5, largely focuses on the historical injustices against women that occurred under Japanese occupation of East and Southeast Asia during WWII. Historical accounts that explain the extent of the Japanese military’s coercion of 200,000 women from across East Asia include The Comfort Women (1997) by George Hicks and The Comfort Women

(2009) by Sarah Chunghee Soh. Both of these texts have not been translated for the Korean audience, so I hope to put these histories in conversation with Korean portrayals of comfort women. While these historical accounts trace the sociopolitical conditions in Korea and Japan during WWII, creative works such as novels and films add to the discussion by shedding light on the women’s experiences and their relationship to others within and outside of the camps after liberation. Further, the novels I discuss critique dominant narratives of comfort women as victims and martyrs to show the underlying complicity of Koreans in Japanese exploitation of

Korean women through their emphasis on comfort women’s violated chastity.

5 More on controversy surrounding the term “comfort” women can be found in "Prostitutes versus Sex Slaves: The Politics of Representing the 'Comfort Women'" by Sarah C. Soh.

As of now, scholarship on literary representations of comfort women has been focused on

Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman and Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life. Scholars have traced comfort women’s struggle to overcome their painful past through shamanism and mother- daughter relationships. Patricia Chu (2004) highlights the subjectivity of Soon Hyo as an immigrant woman and mother in Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman, moving beyond traditional representations of comfort women as victims. Scholars such as Masami Usui (2004) and Sung-Ae Lee (2009) add to the discussion, pointing out how the mother-daughter relationship is crucial in understanding Soon Hyo’s story in Comfort Woman. Lee Kun Jong

(2004) and David J. Kim (2013) add an interesting dimension in their mention of the significance of shamanism rituals in Comfort Woman. I wish to add to existing scholarship on literary portrayals of Korean comfort women, not only by seeing connections between main texts on comfort women published in the U.S., such as Comfort Woman, A Gesture Life, and Daughters of the Dragon, but also by looking at Korean texts written in Hangul, which show aspects of women’s survival and resistance that are different from the American works. The works in

Hangul have a different relationship to Korean nationalist discourse from the American works in that, instead of focusing on the women’s chastity and familial relationships, the Korean trilogy emphasizes women’s political stance against the Japanese, individually and collectively.

In Chapter 1, I analyze American novels on comfort women, including Comfort Woman

(1998), A Gesture Life (2000), Foxgirl (2003), and Daughters of the Dragon (2016). Looking at these novels together shows the various ways in which comfort women were depicted during and after their time at the “comfort stations,” shacks designed for sexual slavery within the military camps. While comfort women are associated with chastity according to Katharine Moon, which is highly valued within Confucian society, these novels show how women cannot be defined

simply as chaste or virginal. While characters in the novels are violated of their chastity, some actively subvert it for their own survival. For instance, Soon Hyo in Comfort Woman recognizes her husband’s need to control her through his constructed idea of her chastity and she resists this idea. Similarly, Kkutaeh in A Gesture Life criticizes a Japanese soldier’s portrayal of Korean comfort women as pure and chaste victims and his justification of military rape. Meanwhile,

Foxgirl and Daughters of the Dragon shed light on the previously overlooked figures of comfort women who had to transition into sex work at American base camps in the years following the

Korean War. In these novels, the figures of Duk Hee and Jae-hee both recognize and use chastity as ways to critique U.S. imperialism through military prostitution in the U.S.

In Chapter 2, I expand my discussion on literary representations of comfort women through my analysis of Ilbon'gun Wianbu, a Korean trilogy on the experiences of comfort women. Through a close analysis of the texts, which I translate from Hangul to English, I show how the author uses historical fiction to show the ways that women were used by the Japanese imperial army and the ways in which some women resisted imperial rule through their roles in the Japanese military and in the Korean revolution efforts after liberation. After the defeat of the

Japanese army, Korean women have an active part in the subsequent Korean association that forms, where they act as quasi-feminists by establishing a “feminist democracy,” a term coined by M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2012). Aspects of “feminist democracy,” were seen in the Korean association, such as “building actively anticolonialist relationships” and feminist collectives. Although Korean comfort women are largely seen as victims and violated virgins of the larger Korean nation, the roles of the women in the stories show the intricate roles that the women had as nurses, administrators, and even soldiers, as well as their overarching role as sex slaves. Some women in the series resist the imperialist rule of the

Japanese through their care for each other, as well as their very act of survival. As seen in the texts I discuss, comfort women in instances of wartime had no control over their bodies, which were used as tools and for the soldiers. They were directly under the control of the military, and although they were undergoing the most humiliating and vicious attacks on their bodies through repeated rape, this was all justified as the war effort. It was during the war that women were controlled all the more for purposes of the larger Korean nation. However, as a result, women’s voices often become veiled by the larger ‘good’ of Korea.

Translating Korean texts on comfort women was crucial to my feminist investigation.

Compared to the number of comfort women works of fiction published in Korea, there are few

Korean texts that have been translated. As Chŏng Hyŏn-ung depicts different comfort women’s resistance within colonial rule, my translations also focused on resistance. Translation can be reinscribed as a “strategy of resistance,” (6) as stated by Tejaswini Niranjana, and open up new ways of understanding and subverting the traditional colonial discourse. Language was a form of colonial control, which I wish to challenge through communicating the narratives about comfort women to the larger world.

José Santaemilia speaks on the different ways that sex-related language has been translated into Spanish and Catalan, which I found useful for this text as well. He refers to how,

“translating the language of love or sex is a political act, with important rhetorical and ideological implications, and is fully indicative of the translator’s attitude towards existing conceptualisations of gender/sexual identities, human sexual behavior(s) and society’s moral norms” (104). In his trilogy on comfort women, Chŏng Hyŏn-ung chooses not to focus on sexual acts themselves in his writing, but on the political and military implications within the all-too- prevalent acts of sex that were going on in war zones. As I was translating, I also chose to focus

on how the Japanese soldiers viewed acts of sex as transactional, which showed the Japanese military’s overarching views towards comfort women as military tools, rather than humans.

Meanwhile, the women are also forced to view sex in this way to survive.

Claudia de Lim Costa and Sonia E. Alvarez emphasize “translation as politically and theoretically indispensable to forging feminist, prosocial justice and antiracist, postcolonial, and anti-imperial political alliances and epistemologies” (557). They argue for the decolonization of language across new geographic locations. Costa and Alvarez discuss the importance of translation, especially of non-Western sources, to promote moves towards feminist alliances.

Although their scope is on translating Latin American sources, their work is useful to my translations of Korean sources as well. It is so crucial to translate transnational voices, as it exposes us to cross cultural experiences from viewpoints that add valuable insight to existing knowledge and scholarship.

The process of translation was intriguing in itself. I have translated texts from the Korean alphabet, Hangul, to English, and for key terms I have provided the McCune-Reischauer

Romanization. In the process of translating from Hangul to English, I found that I had to write out the translation in Korean Romanization, which is a system that represents Hangul in Latin script to make the alphabet accessible to a larger audience. This was a new process for me, as I was used to reading and writing in Hangul and English, but had never utilized Korean

Romanization before. This Romanization was a third language that I found I had to get familiar with in order to be able to communicate the original Korean words to the reader. Further, the language of Romanization closely relates to the figure of the translator herself, who is a third person working between the original text, works of literature, and the writing that she is trying to

communicate. As a translator, I found myself engaging with the meaning of the text while trying to keep in mind the cultural differences that existed between Korea and America.

I include the original text in Hangul as well, in order to emphasize the linguistic unfamiliarity and visual difference. Gloria Anzaldúa destabilizes linguistic imperialism through her use of Spanish in Borderlands/La Frontera, sometimes offering no translation to communicate her experiences through the original language of her culture. She recreates the immigrant experience for the reader, leaving the reader just as confused as immigrants when they first had to overcome their language barrier. Similarly, I write in Hangul, as well as English, so the reader gets the same unfamiliar language experience as comfort women, who were forced to use only Japanese in the military bases.

In my process of translation, I found myself navigating what Maria Tymoczko discusses as the differences between the “literary translator” and the “minority-culture writer,” or “postcolonial writer.” “A translator’s refractions of a source text must have analogues in the choices a minority-culture writer makes in representing the home culture, for no culture can be represented in a translation” (24). While the post-colonial writer must choose a home culture to communicate to the audience (in this case: Korea), the translator must then makes choices of how to best convey the writer’s cultural choices to the audience, who is of another culture (American). Thus multiple layers of translation are taken into account, as well as lexical anomalies that further challenge the translator. Despite the difficulties in communicating cultural forms, my translation shares the goals of postcolonial writing, which is to “challenge dominant standards of language”

(34). Translation also opens the possibility of communicating the text to a larger audience. My translation and analysis of Korean texts about comfort women broadens the existing perspectives by American writers and challenges the ways that American writers have communicated Korean

experiences to a Western audience. The Korean texts add the perspective of some Korean women as active opponents and even warriors against imperial Japanese rule.

My work on translation of Korean texts on comfort women also adds to existing work on trauma fiction that, scholars have noted, needs to be expanded from the influential works of

Cathy Caruth. In Worlds of Hurt, Kalí Tal states how “the work of the critic of the literature of trauma is both to identify and explicate literature by members of survivor groups, and to deconstruct the process by which the dominant culture codifies their traumatic experience” (18).

Marek Oziewicz also suggests an expanded definition of global trauma fiction which, “would be available in one of the global languages, especially English, and would include translations as well as original works written in English, often by diasporic authors but accessible to readers unfamiliar with the historical or cultural details of the story’s conflict” (152). I wish to add

Korean literature to the existing American literature on the trauma of comfort women to show how it is able to add another layer in showing how some women survived Japanese imperialism.

My project aims to fulfill these aims by looking at individual and national trauma through historical fiction written in Korean and translating these to open them up to the larger audience.

In this way, these novels can contribute to the existing canon of trauma fiction by providing readers with aspects of comfort women’s experiences that American novels have not portrayed, such as their active role in the Korean independence movements.

CHAPTER 2 WOMEN AND NATION: REIMAGINED CHASTITY IN A GESTURE LIFE BY CHANG- RAE LEE, COMFORT WOMAN AND FOXGIRL BY NORA OKJA KELLER, AND DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON BY WILLIAM ANDREWS

Scholars have traced the larger sociohistorical context behind the military comfort system1 and note the experiences of individual comfort women.2 While historical accounts focus on ideas of chastity prescribed to these women by the Japanese and Korean nation, the novels that I will be looking at complicate this by showing how Korean comfort woman exhibited resistance strategies, not through the traditional idea of chastity, but by subverting it and instead defining themselves as defiant warriors and protectors who challenge the binary between ‘chaste victim’ and ‘licentious prostitute.’

Comfort Woman and A Gesture Life are two novels on comfort women that are both widely known and recognized by critics and the general audience3. Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture

Life, published in 2000, was the most popular, receiving seven book awards, including the ALA

Notable Book, and Asian American Literary Award. Comfort Woman, first published in 1998, won the 1998 American Book Award for Nora Okja Keller’s depiction of Soon Hyo. Foxgirl,

1 In “The Comfort Women,” C. Sarah Soh finds how Korean women have historically suffered in a “long-standing masculinist sexual culture,” (xvi) which contributed to the political and social climate leading up to the Japanese military’s forced sexual slavery of Korean women. Chizuko Ueno traces the history surrounding comfort women, including the systemic sexual abuse, as well as the 50 years of silence that resulted from patriarchal oppression within Asian society and male honor system. She examines gender views in Japan, as well as feminist debates among Japanese scholars and women activists.

2 Scholars such as Masami Usui (2004) and Sung-Ae Lee (2009) see how the mother-daughter relationship is crucial in understanding Soon Hyo’s story in Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller. Patricia Chu (2004) notes the intersubjectivity of Soon Hyo as an immigrant woman and mother in Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman. Lee Kun Jong (2004) compares Soon Hyo to the Buddhist shaman figure of Princess Pari, in how Soon Hyo was able to find agency by becoming a shaman. David J. Kim (2013) also mentions the significance of shamanistic rituals for former comfort women to ease their suffering.

3 Allison Layfield does a study on the reception of Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman and Foxgirl, to which she attributes the popularity to the depiction of the experiences of Asian women “in a friendly cultural context,” the use of the mother-daughter dynamic, and the representation of Asian women as either “passive victims or selfless heroines” (65).

published afterwards in 2002, was also highly praised by critics, although not as well-known as

Comfort Woman. Meanwhile, Daughters of the Dragon, published in 2014, was also well received by the popular audience, although not as widely known as A Gesture Life and Comfort

Woman. It also won the 2014 Independent Publishers award in historical fiction for William

Andrews’s depiction of Jae-hee’s experience surviving as a comfort woman during WWII and the Korean War shortly after. These novels were brought together to show narratives of comfort women from various perspectives, including the women, their daughters, and Japanese soldiers, to provide a more comprehensive view of the women.

Korean national views on comfort women involve chastity and purity. The notion of nation by Korean scholars is different from Western notions of nation seen by Benedict

Anderson, who describes it as an “imagined community” formed primarily through print capitalism. Unlike this modular view, Korean nationalism is formed through the idea of minjok, or one-ness. Hyunah Yang sees how the violation of Korean women constituted as the violation of the larger nation through the concept of “Koreanness” or minjok, in which “Minjok refers to people who belong to a common ethnic group, such that all Koreans are assumed to constitute one homogeneous Self” (129). This term is specific to Korea, and encompasses a common ethnicity, language, culture, and history. It has been used in political independence movements against Japan (31 Un-dong) in 1919 and following WWII. Thus, the concept of minjok signifies a single nation (us) against outsiders (others). Under the idea of minjok, the violation of Korean women equates to the violation of the Korean nation by an outside country. In this way, Korean comfort women became stand-ins for the Korean nation.

The idea of Korea as one nation relates to national virtues of chastity for women.

Chungmoo Choi points out how, “All Korean women, as the discourse of homogenous single-

nation (tanil minjok) mandates, are expected to be chaste and vigilant against foreign males and, by extension, masculine foreign power4” (14). The chastity of the women is expected to guard against not only other foreign men, but also foreign empires, symbolizing loyalty to one’s nation.

The failure of the women to keep their chastity was thus seen as a failure on their part, to guard themselves against foreign powers. Along with the concept of shame, which silenced the women, they were also silenced by the Korean military government’s efforts to “normalize” their relations with Japan5. Chungmoo Choi notes, however, the shift in the Korean government’s shaming of comfort women to how recently, “Ironically, in South Korea the ‘comfort women’ issue has been cast as an emblem of a nationalistic discourse in the trope of a violated and colonized victim” (13). This is also problematic, considering how Korean women were used historically by their own country, for economic and diplomatic purposes with Japan and the U.S, as Katharine Moon notes in Sex Among Allies6. Korean patriarchal society’s projection of shame upon the comfort women and their families kept them in silence for around 50 years after the

Japanese defeat, but more recent views on comfort women have shifted to view them as symbols of sacrifice for the Korean nation7.

4 Chungmoo Choi also notes the connection of Korean men’s masculine identity projected onto the regulation of women’s bodies in how they “obsessively disciplined and regulated women’s bodies as metaphor for their uncontaminated, uninterrupted homonational (or homosocial) identity and imposed on women the ideology of chastity and self-censorship” (13). She highlights the importance put upon the chastity of women’s bodies and how this solidified Korean masculinity.

5 Elaine Kim notes the diplomatic function of silencing former comfort women and how “South Korea’s androcentric nationalism helps explain the effacing of the “Comfort Women…that Hyunah Yang discusses in her essay [Re-membering the Korean Military Comfort Women: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Silencing]” (3).

6 Katharine Moon notes in Sex Among Allies how prostitution has also played a role in diplomatic relations with Japan, especially after they cut off ties with Taiwan in 1972. Japanese tourists seeking prostitutes “skyrocketed from 96,531 in 1971 to 217,287 in 1972…By 1979, the number was 649,707. Japanese sources estimated a 700 billion won gain in revenues for the Korean economy from prostitution in 1978” (45).

7 The historical trajectory of Korean popular views on comfort women is outlined further in the Introduction section of this Thesis.

Since the violation of Korean women becomes equated to national shame, the issue of comfort women must be viewed as a national issue, and a distinctly gendered one. Scholars have noted how Korean ideas of nation and one-ness are distinctly male focused. In Dangerous

Women, Yang writes, “The nation becomes gendered, and women’s sexuality becomes nationalized. Nation is equated with the male subject position, and women’s sexuality is reified as property of the masculine nation” (130). Anne McClintock also points out how, “Nationalism becomes…radically constitutive of people’s identities through social contests that are frequently violent and always gendered” (353). Comfort women were seen as pure and chaste through the masculinist idea of Korea, as noted by Chungmoo Choi. Thus, chastity became an essential concept within Korea’s national imaginary of comfort women. However, the different depictions of comfort women in the novels go beyond labeling them simply as chaste victims by showing how they subverted chastity for survival. My analysis of Comfort Woman, Foxgirl, A Gesture

Life, and Daughters of the Dragon addresses how previous notions of chastity constructed the women as figures of the Korean nation, how Japanese and American soldiers also exhibited the view of comfort women as chaste, and how comfort women in turn challenged these notions of chastity placed on them.

The novels I look at create ways of representing and critiquing chastity by tracing the experiences of comfort women from the point of view of both Japanese soldiers and women themselves. In A Gesture Life, by Chang-rae Lee, comfort women are seen through the eyes of

Franklin Hata, a Korean born man who was adopted by Japanese parents8. Hata joins the

8 Mark Jerng notes Franklin Hata’s position as a transnational adoptee in “Recognizing the transracial adoptee,” and how this position reveals “ambivalence, erasures, and resistances that are embedded in adoption writing itself” (45). Young Oak Lee examines how the cross-cultural identities of Hata, both Korean and Japanese, create his ideologies, which interferes with his attaining an American identity later on.

Japanese Imperial Army as a medic, and as he is put in charge of looking after the medical needs of the comfort women, who frequently suffered from physical as well as sexual abuse by the soldiers. It is there that he meets Kkutaeh, a Korean girl who is kept apart from the other comfort girls by the Captain. While A Gesture Life provides the point of view of a Japanese soldier,

Comfort Woman and Daughters of the Dragon are narrated by comfort women. In Comfort

Woman, Soon Hyo’s family sold her to the Japanese army in order to afford her sister’s dowry.

The Japanese army promises to put her to work in a factory, but she soon finds herself as a comfort woman in the Japanese base camp. Meanwhile, in Daughters of the Dragon, Jae-hee’s family farm is taken over by the Japanese military, after which Jae-hee and her sister are taken as comfort women. The story follows Jae-hee’s experiences in the comfort station, as well as afterwards when she starts working in the American base camp bar industry. Foxgirl, taking place after the Korean War, tells the story from the perspective of a young girl living in an

American military town in South Korea. It is in the military town where she encounters Duk

Hee, a former comfort woman who transitioned into working as a prostitute for American soldiers.

In all four novels, the women are described as chaste by the male characters, who are told that comfort women are have ‘volunteered’ to honor Japan in their war efforts. However, the women resist these notions of chastity by critiquing the male characters’ justification of sexual oppression and by communicating their experiences. In A Gesture Life and Daughters of the

Dragon, Kkutaeh and Jae-hee are both from wealthy, respected families, and are confined to ideas of chastity by the soldiers in the base camps. However, Kkutaeh rejects the notions of chastity put upon her by the Japanese soldiers and instead reveals the reality of the comfort station’s exploitation of women to Franklin Hata. Jae-hee exhibits her identity, not by accepting

imperial control but by passing on her story and legacy to her granddaughter, Anna. In Comfort

Women, unlike Kkutaeh and Jae-hee, Soon Hyo is not wealthy or noble by blood, as she comes from a poor household. However, like the elite protagonists, Soon Hyo does not find her identity through chastity, but instead through her communication of personal and historical truth by channeling the ghost of Induk, a former comfort woman. In Foxgirl, the figure of Duk Hee challenges the contradiction of comfort women (associated with violated chastity) and prostitutes

(stigmatized as licentious) by occupying both positions.

Franklin Hata’s character visually describes women’s bodies as chaste in A Gesture Life.

Hata’s perspective allows the author to show the Japanese soldier’s ambivalence about shame and chastity and how he debases both. By seeing comfort women as chaste, Hata envisions that they were brought to the camps by choice (which was a lie that some soldiers chose to believe), while he ignores the reality of the women’s humiliation and shame brought upon by the Japanese soldiers. Franklin Hata describes the girls’ appearances, as he is first ordered to medically examine them. He describes the first Korean comfort girl as being “…naked and in the bright afternoon light coming from the slatted window her youthful skin…practically luminous, as though she were somehow lit from inside her” (Lee 183). The skin of these young girls is described as visibly pure, signaling their chastity, and even glowing with youth. This differs from his description of the Japanese woman who oversees them, as he compares her “cheapness against the line of modest girls that trailed her” (181). The Japanese woman, who was older than the Korean girls, could have been a former prostitute or madam, but was now in charge of keeping track of the comfort women. Hata makes a direct comparison between the Japanese women in the base camps and the more youthful Korean girls, which shows a hierarchy of

women’s bodies based on youth and sexual value. Hata, as well as the other soldiers, values the youthfulness of the girls, as it visually signals their chastity.

The Japanese soldiers seeing the Korean women as chaste is interesting, as they envisioned the chastity of women whose race they thought was inherently inferior. The narration of Hata, as a Korean born Japanese soldier, is also significant, as his Korean background speaks to his valuing of the Korean girls. Compared to Comfort Woman and Daughters of the Dragon, which are written in the perspective of the comfort women themselves, A Gesture Life is written from the perspective of a Korean man adopted into a Japanese family and now serving the

Japanese military, which is bound to have significant influence on his view towards the Korean comfort women. While Hata is believes that he is sympathetic towards the comfort women,

Kkutaeh reveals how he is just as complicit as the other Japanese soldiers in the sexual slavery of the women.

Youth and chastity are seen as valuable and preferred by the Japanese soldiers in

Daughters of the Dragon as well, as they also indicate virginity. Jae-hee is seen as the most valuable because she was the youngest, being only fourteen years old when she is forced into working at a “boot factory,” which ends up being a military comfort station. As soon as she arrives, she is ‘given’ to a higher officer because of this. Jae-hee recounts how, “They took me to his quarters, where he raped me. I was fourteen years old. I didn’t know what sex was” (63). By saying that she did not know what sex was, Jae-hee notes her youth and chastity. The details of the rape are not explained by William Andrews, as he chooses not to focus on the sexual violence, but by how Jae-hee’s chastity was defiled. While Jae-hee has no idea what is to become of her, a high military official chooses her precisely because of her youth, chastity, and virginity.

As seen in Daughters of the Dragon and A Gesture Life, Japanese soldiers in Comfort

Woman by Nora Okja Keller also value youth; we see this through the eyes of Soon Hyo, who is sold to the military as a young girl. The Japanese soldiers notice Soon Hyo’s youth when she first arrives at the comfort station. She is first seen as, “still young, [so she] was kept to serve the women in the camps,” (19) until she has to replace Induk, a former comfort woman who is killed for speaking her name in Korean. Soon Hyo explains that her clothes, “which were too big…made the soldiers laugh. The new P won’t be wearing them much anyway, they jeered.

Fresh poji. Even though I had not yet had my first bleeding, I was auctioned off to the highest bidder. After that it was a free-for-all, and I thought I would never stop bleeding” (21). Here we see that Soon Hyo’s youth is highlighted in the text as something that was valued by the soldiers and made her worth more. Similar to Jae-hee, Soon Hyo’s youthful and chaste body is deemed with maximum value by the Japanese soldiers.

In Keller’s depiction of comfort women, however, youth and chastity serve a different function than in Daughters of the Dragon and A Gesture Life. Keller chooses to use youth and chastity specifically as a way to critique American imperialism, as Soon Hyo’s chastity was imagined, or constructed, by the missionaries that came to ‘save’ the comfort women from

Japanese rule. After Soon Hyo is ‘rescued’ from the comfort stations by American Christian missionaries, she comes to America through her marriage to a minister. Within her marriage,

Soon Hyo reveals the minister’s lust for her youthful body, even though he tries to mask it in his desire for her salvation.

Even as the words continued to spill from his mouth, the minister backed away, but not before I discovered his secret, the one he won’t admit even now, even to himself, after twenty years of marriage. It was a secret I learned about in the comfort camps, one I recognized in his hooded eyes, in his breathing, sharp and fast, and in the way his hands fluttered about his sides as if they wanted to fly up against my half-starved girl’s body with its narrow hips and new breasts. This is his

sin, the sin he fought against and still denies: that he wanted me- a young girl- not for his God but for himself (Keller 95).

Keller’s emphasis on the minister’s, and also Japanese soldiers’, lust for youth can be seen as a critique of the way that American imperialists exploited the youth of young girls, even when it was masked within the mission of ‘rescuing’ the women.

Soon Hyo refuses to buy into the minister’s imagined chastity of her and his offer of salvation. Instead, she receives her own atonement through the spirit of another comfort woman living inside of her, named Induk, who was killed for saying her Korean name to the Japanese soldiers. She remembers how, “I grabbed [Induk’s] hand, and my fingers slipped into bloated flesh. I kissed it and offered her my own hands, my eyes, my skin. She offered me salvation”

(96). Induk was killed for speaking her Korean name and defying Japanese rule over her. Thus,

Induk signifies rebellion against imperial rule and power through reclaiming ones given name, or one’s identity. Soon Hyo rejects male constructions of chastity and atonement, and instead achieves it through finding her own sense of identity through her connection with the ghost of

Induk.

Even when the minister suspects that he only imagined Soon Hyo’s chastity, his lust and desire to control her as a colonized subject is made even more apparent. Failed chastity is denoted visually, as Soon Hyo is forcefully baptized by the minister in order for him to marry her as a Christian woman. She is dressed in a white wedding gown for her baptism, and she notices,

“how the white cloth, the color of purity and death, soaked up the earth” (103). Soon Hyo associates white, the color of purity and virginity, with death here because the white wedding gown becomes a metaphor for the minister’s ‘purity’ for her. Just as the dark dirt of the earth soils the white gown, the minister’s impure thoughts stain the seemingly ‘pure’ intentions of the marriage. Soon Hyo is also associating her purity as being dead after the comfort station, and she

will now marry this minister, whose ‘pure’ intentions are also dead to Soon Hyo, who sees the real reason of why he wants to marry her. On their marriage bed, the minister later on reveals how his ideas of her simultaneous chastity and un-chastity both attract him. He asks if she knows about consummation and calls her his “little lamb.” Then he tells her how, “There is something about you- the way you look so innocent, yet act so experienced- that makes me on fire for you.

You are not a virgin, are you?” (106). The minister imagines his own image of Soon Hyo as a chaste girl, and yet he also suspects that she cannot be, because she has a past as a comfort woman. The minister constructs his own notion of Soon Hyo’s chastity as a way of atoning his own sin of lust, and also as a way of imagining Soon Hyo as a chaste girl who he can instruct, control, and make his ‘American’ bride. This idea of chastity is similar to the idea of comfort women as chaste victims violated for the Korean nation, in that chastity is constructed in both cases by masculinist ideas of comfort women.

Former Comfort Women’s Involvement in Kijich’on prostitution

We continue to see masculinist ideas of chastity assigned to comfort women in Keller’s next novel Foxgirl through Duk Hee, a former comfort woman who transitions into sex work in kijich’on (U.S. base camps in Korea). Foxgirl, centering on the narrative of Hyun Jin and Sookie, who live in kijich’on during the Korean War, tells the experiences of the two girls who go into sex work in order to sustain themselves. Sookie starts working as a prostitute after her mother,

Duk Hee, a military prostitute, abandons the house because she is getting an abortion at the

“monkey house,” a small clinic for prostitutes. Meanwhile, Hyun Jin is introduced to sex work later on, when Hyun Jin defies her parents after finding out that Duk Hee was her surrogate birth mother. No longer under her parents’ care, Hyun Jin finds that she has no other choice but to become a sex worker. Traditionally, scholars have focused on the development of Hyun Jin, as

Young-Ae Lee discusses Foxgirl’s use of retelling folktales and Eleanor Ty notes the personal

viewpoint of Hyun Jin in considering the lives of marginalized women in kijich’on after the

Korean War. Departing from previous scholarly work on Hyun Jin, I focus on the character of

Sookie’s mother, Duk Hee. Political scholar9 Katharine Moon connotes the possibility of former comfort women later on working as prostitutes in American base camps in the years surrounding the Korean War. Keller further complicates the binary of chaste comfort woman and promiscuous kijich’on prostitute through the character of Duk Hee.

Korean society’s hegemonic views of sex workers are seen in Hyun Jin’s mother’s view of them, where she says calls them “dirty animals,” and Hyun Jin is not sure “if she was talking about the GIs or the women” (53). This shows how the discourse surrounding prostitutes differs from that of comfort women, who are seen as respectable. Katharine Moon also notes how, even those that advocate for Korean comfort women believe that prostitutes lack in moral character, as

I stated in the Introduction. Keller’s use of Duk Hee subverts notions of sexual immorality and the larger prostitution industry within America town as she tells Hyun Jin her past. Duk Hee’s experience echoes that of countless other women who endured years of sexual exploitation under

Japanese imperial rule, only to come back to find their families and homes disappeared. Duk Hee does not elaborate on her experiences of suffering as a comfort woman, but even after she escapes the Japanese base camp, she continues to struggle with poverty and sexual exploitation under U.S. military occupation. Women’s sexual abuse under imperialism only switches hands from the Japanese to U.S., but continues. Keller challenges Korea’s veneration of comfort women by showing how even after the Japanese defeat, Duk Hee had no option but sex work, which continues to stigmatize her within Korean society.

9 In Sex Among Allies, Katharine Moon states how her research and interviews conducted with kijich’on sex workers led her to believe that “some former comfort women also worked as GI prostitutes among the first generation of kijich’on sex workers” (46).

Keller uses the most degrading place for sex workers, which are the fish tanks, precisely to expose the important historical details of Japanese imperialism in Korea during WWII. After getting out of the monkey house, where she has her abortion, Duk Hee finds her house and source of work are not available to her anymore. Out of options, Duk Hee ends up in the “fish tanks”-“rows of boxes…[where] women danced naked in the glass doorways” (114). The fish tanks, the cheapest option for GIs, were where prostitutes went when they could no longer make money at bars. This is where Duk Hee tells Hyun Jin her backstory when Hyun Jin asks if she was her mother. She reveals how she knew Hyun Jin’s father from childhood and how, “during

World War Two, the Japanese raided Korean towns and villages for boys to fight for them. And they took girls, too, to…to…take” (117). When Hyun Jin asks, “Take where?” Duk Hee simply ignores her, saying how “After the war, I returned to Paekdu…I had a mother, a father. A little sister. Two brothers. I thought I might be able to find them back home. But there was no one. No village. No home. Our house and fields were burned to the ground” (117). Within Hyun Jin’s unanswered question and Duk Hee’s omitted words are her experiences of sexual slavery as a comfort woman. By using the fish tanks, the place associated with failure and depravity, Keller empowers former comfort women who became prostitutes in the location linked to sexual degradation and shame through Duk Hee’s communication of historical truth.

Duk Hee, having been a victim of sexual slavery during WWII, constantly refers to the position of women as being in war, even though the Korean War ended. She teaches Hyun Jin and Sookie the ways in which to survive during times of poverty and desperation, which were through protection and resistance. She continues to tell the girls to use sexual protection in the form of condoms. In one of the ‘lessons’ that Duk Hee has with Sookie and Hyun Jin, she shows them how to use a condom, or “kondom” as Hyun Jin calls it, by demonstrating it with a hot dog,

or jajie dog (which translates to penis dog). As she shows the girls how to “protect” themselves sexually by placing the condom on the hot dog, Duk Hee reminds the girls how, “It is a war,”

(20) revealing the underlying sexual warfare taking place, as well as the former occupation of

Korea by foreign military powers. Duk Hee’s interaction with the girls is always interlaced with a layer of truth about the ways in which women were supposed to protect themselves against exploitation. She is acutely aware of the dangers facing women within the clubs, as a sex worker, as well as a former comfort woman. Furthermore, Duk Hee constantly encourages tactics of resistance against American imperial control over their lives, as she says, “If you ever catch an

American man to marry…you need to learn their secrets. The more you know about them, the more power you will have. Remember, it is a war” (22). Sex work for Duk Hee is not only about survival, but also gaining knowledge and power in an industry that stripped women, physical and mentally, of control over their own lives. Duk Hee’s words reveal how she survived her experiences as a comfort woman in the past, and she is passing down her tactics of survival to the girls.

The fox girl story that Duk Hee tells the girls is another aspect of her passing down her knowledge of survival. The story10 tells of a beautiful girl, who lures boys and then transforms into a fox and kills them. While the fox girl is seen as predatory and thus “bad,” Duk Hee says how “it depends on who tells the story,” (26) pointing to the subjectivity within stories. Duk

Hee’s focus on subjectivity also relates to stories of military prostitutes, who were seen as unrespectable women and leeches to Korean society, in reminding us that it depends on how we see their roles within the American base camps. Duk Hee’s interpretation of the fox girl also

10 The story echoes other traditional folk tales of fox women luring men, such as the story of the nine-tailed fox woman.

involves the girl having a distinct motive, which was revenge. Different from the original story, which focuses on the mercilessness of the girl, Duk Hee’s backstory reveals how the fox girl had her jewel of knowledge stolen from a boy that she trusted, and thus searched the world to reclaim her knowledge of the world. Duk Hee gives the fox girl a reason for her actions, which were often simply labeled as ruthless, similar to how sex workers within the camps are also there for a reason, or motive. This reason in most cases was a desperate need to survive, and feed their children, or other members of their families11. Thus, Duk Hee uses her former knowledge from her traumatic past as a comfort woman to pass down this knowledge of survival and empowerment to Sookie and Hyun Jin12.

Both Duk Hee and Jae-hee are important figures in how they go from being comfort women for the Japanese army to working in the U.S. military base camp in Korea. After the

Korean War in 1954, Jae-hee also has no choice but to become a prostitute in kijich’on in order to provide for her daughter. Like Duk Hee, historical sexual slavery under Japanese imperialism and state sanctioned prostitution under U.S. military involvement come together through Jae- hee’s character. However, different from Foxgirl, where Keller purposefully leaves out Duk

Hee’s past as a comfort woman, Andrews reveals more about Jae-hee’s experience as a comfort woman in Daughters of the Dragon. In Foxgirl, Nora Okja Keller deliberately intersects the categories of comfort woman and military prostitute to challenge the binary characteristics

11 Katharine Moon notes how many of the women supported family members through their earnings. “A 1965 study conducted by the Eighth Army found that of 105 prostitutes surveyed in the Yongsan area, all ‘were supporting from one to eight members of their family” (26). Even after they get married to an American soldier, they typically invited their families to the U.S., exemplifying ‘piggy back immigration’ (a term coined by Elaine Kim), or sent money back to Korea to support their families.

12 Sung-Ae Lee studies Nora Okja Keller’s Fox Girl and Comfort Woman, as well as House of the Winds by Mia Yun, to see how the retelling of folktales in the novels functions as a way to show patriarchy and dominance within colonial structure in Korea. Lee describes Duk Hee’s modification of the ending as empowering.

(chaste victims vs. promiscuous social leeches) between them, while Daughter of the Dragon both continues and challenges it via Jae-hee, who takes on the national trope of chastity but uses it in relation to American military prostitution.

Intersections of U.S. Imperialism and Japanese Imperialism

While imagined chastity reveals the cracks in the binary between chaste comfort women and promiscuous kijich’on prostitute in Comfort Woman and Foxgirl, Hata’s ambiguous position as an ethnically Korean Japanese soldier and his imagined chastity of comfort women critiques

Japanese imperialism in A Gesture Life. Even though the comfort women system is nothing more than the forcible rape of young girls, some Japanese men envision the women, and themselves, to be pure and chaste in order to ease their own sense of shame. Hata narrates his rape of Kkutaeh, a Korean comfort woman, as “all quite swift and natural, as chaste as it could ever be” (260).

Hata wants to think of the terms of his rape in the purest way, keeping his own image of

Kkutaeh, and of himself, untainted. By seeing her as youthful and pure, and his act of rape as

“natural” and “chaste,” he is constructing his own version of the events, and of himself, and thus can relieve his own consciousness of possible guilt and shame at raping a girl who could not deny him, because of their hierarchical positions within the base camp. Hata even describes how he tells the statue-like Kkutaeh that he loves her and that, “it unnerves [him] even now how particular and exacting that sensation was, how terribly pure” (260). Hata’s description of his own acts of rape, and identity as a rapist, as “pure” reveals the extent of his own fantasy constructed to relieve his guilty conscience.

Kkutaeh reveals the reality behind Hata’s imagined chastity and ‘love.’ Although he subjects her to his romantic fantasies by telling her that he loves her, she tells him, “You think you love me but what you really want you don’t yet know because you are young and decent.

But I will tell you now, it is my sex. The thing of my sex…” (300). She says how if Hata really

loved her, then he would kill her, as he would not be able to bear seeing her as a sexual slave for the Japanese soldiers. Kkutaeh exposes the reality behind the system of rape that was occurring behind the veil of chastity and ‘love.’ While some Japanese soldiers (and Korean born Japanese soldiers) could choose to believe in a romantic lie to ease their conscience, the comfort women did not have that same choice. Kkutaeh refuses any sort of ideological thinking and instead reveals the reality of sexual exploitation under Japanese imperialism.

Kkutaeh’s rejection of Hata’s false notions of love led Hata to later on see his complicity in imperial sexual violence. When he recounts his relationship with her much later, he recognizes that his ‘love’ was even more terrible in that he embodied imperial violence, “not the ever imminent misery and horror but the gentle-boy face of it, the smoothness and equability, the picture of someone heroic enough to act only upon his own trembling desire” (295). The oppression of women, masked by youth and a false sense of love, is revealed through Hata’s memories of Kkutaeh.

Hata’s construction of Kkutaeh’s chastity reveals Japanese imperialist views, which desired to justify the sexual oppression of countless women. In Daughters of the Dragon, historical sexual slavery under Japanese imperialism and state sanctioned prostitution under U.S. military involvement intersect through Jae-hee’s character. While Duk Hee subverts traditional ideas of comfort women as chaste victims, Jae-hee confirms the valorization of comfort women and uses it to her advantage in Daughters of the Dragon. After the Korean War in 1954, Jae-hee has no choice but to become a prostitute in the kijich’on, in South Korea in order to provide for her newborn daughter.

Japanese and U.S. imperialism come together as Jae-hee is taken to her room at the

Hometown Cat Club Bar in America town. “It was small- only a little larger than my room at the

comfort station. It reeked of stale sweat and semen. The familiar stench ignited my memories of

Dongfeng like a match to gasoline” (208). Unlike her years as a comfort woman, she is introduced to capitalist ideas at the American camp, as she is told how to earn money. However, her transition into capitalism was hardly an improvement, since she could only earn fifty cents an hour through doing chores, which barely covered her housing costs. Unlike the other women working at the clubs, Jae-hee refuses to become a military prostitute, or a “juicy girl,” as the soldiers called them. She instead chooses to be an overseer for the girls, making sure that they are doing their jobs and looking after their physical needs.

Similar to how Soon Hyo viewed the American missionaries, imagined chastity factors in the American soldiers’ view of Jae-hee in the kijich’on camps, but she subverts this idea of chastity to her advantage. Different from Soon Hyo and Kkutaeh, Jae-hee is able to earn her liberation from sexual exploitation by utilizing the imagined chastity that the soldiers instill upon her. Along with her ability to speak English, Jae-hee projects an image of chastity, which makes her even more enticing to the U.S. soldiers. Jae-hee becomes a favorite for the men, who offer her substantial amounts of money for sex, but she refuses any sexual encounters, especially because of her experience as a comfort woman. She eventually gains the attention of a highly ranked officer, Colonel Frank Crawford, who sees her as being more respectable than the other prostitutes because of her chastity.

It is through her projected chastity that Jae-hee is able to appeal to the U.S. soldiers, especially Colonel Frank Crawford, who ultimately gives her money to escape the camp base and the opportunity to become a translator of a construction company in Seoul. He tells her how she is “a beautiful woman. Intelligent. Graceful. And [she] has something…something special.

Maybe in a different time and place [they] could have fallen in love” (232). The Colonel sees

Jae-hee as set apart through his imagined chaste image of her, which he connects to values of intelligence and grace, and Jae-hee is able to utilize this to gain his favor and achieve financial freedom from the American base camp.

Jae-hee’s relationship with Colonel Frank Crawford is notable through a number of different points. The Colonel exemplifies a different military man than those that Jae-hee encountered through her many years as a comfort woman and bar worker in the kijich’on area.

Colonel Frank Crawford is different from the other soldiers in his manner as well, as he never has sex with any of the prostitutes and just comes to drink and talk with Jae-hee. Their relationship itself is chaste in that it is non-sexual, as they have many conversations together.

The extent of their physical intimacy is dancing together, which Jae-hee describes as, “…almost like pretending to fly for my father…I looked into General Frank Crawford’s eyes, and this time,

I did not see Colonel Matsumoto. I only saw this good man with one arm who loved his country,

General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy, and Old Fitzgerald bourbon. And I saw someone who could have loved me and who I could have loved in a different time and place” (234). Although

General Frank Crawford is seen by Jae-hee as unique compared to the other soldiers who visit the bar, Andrews complicates ideas of American sentimental exceptionalism by equating Colonel

Crawford specifically to the confederate general Robert E. Lee, who defended slavery while also being morally against it. Jae-hee sees Colonel Crawford as the exception to the other soldiers, especially the Japanese soldiers, such as Colonel Matsumoto, who only wanted to dominate and exploit her, even though the Colonel is still part of the U.S. military that has taken over her country. The Colonel’s character wavers between furthering the image of benevolent military presence, which the U.S. projected to Korean society during their military occupation of South

Korea in the period following the Korean War13, and being an accomplice in the military’s control over Korean prostitutes.

Similar to the figure of Duk Hee in Foxgirl, Jae-hee also blurs the binary between venerable comfort women and stigmatized kijich’on prostitute and passes on her knowledge of survival to her descendants. Later in the novel, Jae-hee cannot stop the pregnancy of her daughter, who dies while giving birth. However, she passes on notions of protection to her granddaughter, Anna, who is adopted into an American family. When Anna comes back to

Korea, Jae-hee passes on her history through communicating her past under Japanese and U.S. imperialism. She then gives Anna a two-headed dragon comb, which she believes was passed down to the females within her family from the Empress Myeongseong. Even though Anna was raised in America, Jae-hee points out how the “spirits of your ancestors are strong inside you.

You have a duty to them- a duty to Korea. You must tell my story for Soo-hee, for Jin-mo, for

Korea” (303). Like Duk Hee, Jae-hee communicates historical truth to her female descendant, and tries to protect her. Different from Duk Hee, who leaves out the details of her experience during Japanese imperialism, however, Jae-hee’s story provides a more comprehensive history of

Korea, bringing together Japanese and U.S. imperialism through the sexual exploitation of women.

The constraints of chastity that were placed upon the women show the overarching masculinist views that both Korean and Japanese society placed upon women. Soon Hyo, Duk

Hee, and Jae-hee are doubly oppressed by East Asian traditional views of women, combined with imperialist values. All the women, including Kkutaeh, experience how Japanese and

13 In Sex Among Allies, Katharine Moon gives the political background behind the complexities in the U.S. and South Korea’s diplomatic relationship during the period following the Korean War, which shows South Korea’s political insecurity and desire for military protection from North Korea through the presence of the U.S. army.

American soldiers value their youth and chastity. However, they refused to believe in notions of chastity that were placed upon them to justify imperialist control and sexual exploitation.

Instead, they subvert masculinist notions of chastity for their survival and resistance. Kkutaeh rejects the notions of chastity and love that Hata tries to project upon their relationship, and in doing so, reveals the reality of sexual oppression within sexual slavery. Soon Hyo exposes how her husband’s lust and desire to control her body were masked by ideas of religious salvation, as well as rescue from Japanese imperialist rule. Sexual slavery was only replaced by marital rape, which Soon Hyo’s husband sees as acceptable through his position as an American minister.

Meanwhile, Duk Hee and Jae-hee’s unique positions as former comfort women who become workers in the military base camp, and their relationship to the American soldiers, open up an important space for the critique of U.S. imperialism during the political instability in South

Korea after the Korean War.

While scholars, such as Hyunah Yang, see how the collective Korean nation has been understood in “the way that it dichotomizes the Koreans and Japanese- us and them, victim and offender, good and bad,” (129) looking at these novels dealing with comfort women complicates this binary through the complexities in relationships between the women and their colonizers.

Jae-hee’s relationship with Colonel Crawford complicates the critique on imperialism, as she genuinely feels that Colonel Crawford is set apart from the other soldiers by his care and generosity, yet he shows how even ‘benevolent’ soldiers are still part of a larger militaristic imperialist rule. Kkutaeh also feels a sense of connection to Hata, as they share the same language, yet she is fully aware of his position as a Japanese soldier, which puts him in power over her. The complex relationships within the novels show how the intricacies between colonizer and colonized cannot be defined simply.

Transnational Connections

Cynthia Enloe shows how “feminist imaginations” within Tokyo revealed the unequal political positions of Japan to the U.S. She directly refers to how the government uses women in their political efforts and “while most of these women never make the headlines, they are counted on by foreign policy makers to keep playing their supportive, or at least passive, roles: today’s international unequal alliances depend on that” (138). Even though Enloe’s essay mostly deals with the lack of representation of women in the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, she broadens the discussion to Asia in discussing Japan-U.S. relations. I wish to take on what Enloe calls a “feminist curiosity” in thinking of women during the war, and extend that to women that are at the margins of Korean society. The important role that Korean sex workers within the

American base camps had in being “personal ambassadors” is outlined clearly in Katharine

Moon’s Sex Among Allies as well. Looking at narratives of Duk Hee and Jae-hee in these base camps, especially with their backgrounds of being comfort women in particular, sheds light on a previous part of U.S. occupation that is overlooked in most literary scholarship on U.S. imperialism. While Duk Hee and Jae-hee are stigmatized by their positions as sex workers, by focusing on aspects of protection and survival within their narratives rather than victimization, I show important aspects of critique on sexual exploitation that occurs as a process of militarization and imperialism.

Enloe says, “Paying serious attention to women- their experiences, their actions, their ideas, in all their diversity- that is, wielding a feminist curiosity, is the only way to ensure that men as men and masculinity as an ideology are made sufficiently visible to be seen with political clarity” (158). I wish to make visible these figures of women within kijich’on, specifically those that were previously comfort women, to bring attention to the fraught binary of chaste comfort

women vs. promiscuous kijich’on prostitute, and how comfort women subverted masculinist ideas of chastity for their survival and resistance.

The women in all of the novels, although oppressed by militarization and masculinist politics, were not be fully subjugated through them. Jae-hee rejects traditional notions of chastity enforced upon her by the male soldiers, but finds a new sense of identity through her knowledge of sexuality and imperialism and later on passes on her experience and historical truth surrounding comfort women to her granddaughter, Anna. Similarly, Duk Hee fails to protect

Sookie and Hyun Jin from prostitution within the camps, but instills in them the mindset that they are still active participants of the war between the women and the U.S. troops through her retelling of the fox girl story. She also passes on tactics for survival, such as protection, which will help them navigate their positions within system of sexual exploitation at the American clubs. Soon Hyo also rejects the imagined chastity put upon her by the Japanese soldiers and her

American husband, and is able to communicate her personal and national trauma14 by channeling spirits, such as the ghost of Induk. Meanwhile, Kkutaeh rejects chastity and naïve notions of love that Hata tries to put upon her, but exposes the systemic exploitation of women that is going on through Japanese imperialism.

14 Nora Okja Keller, the author of Comfort Woman, connects Soon Hyo’s personal trauma of being a comfort woman to a larger national trauma of Korea. In an interview, Keller compares the experience of Akiko to the history of Korea, as “much like Korea itself, you know, she suffered under colonialism from Korea, and then…American occupation, so yeah, definitely in a way even her shamanism is a way that she was able to transcend that and to take back some power for herself” (Lee 154). Soon Hyo’s experience speaks to the experience of many of the comfort women, who felt betrayed by their own countries as well as Japan.

Exploring the ways in which literary figures of comfort women were able show resistance to masculinist imperial views of chastity is not to discount the fact that in most cases, they did not have agency within the system of sexual slavery. Many of the women were silenced and their identities were stripped away within the base camps, and a majority did not survive to tell their stories. However, looking at the ways in which literature is able to imagine ways in which comfort women were able to critique imperialism and resist traditional views of chastity by finding new identities of communicating personal and national trauma is useful to think about in seeing how women were used for Korean, Japanese, and American imperialist causes.

CHAPTER 3 RESISTANCE IN TRANSLATION: TRANSLATING ILBON'GUN WIANBU, A TRILOGY ON COMFORT WOMEN

Currently there are many historical and cultural texts that depict comfort women’s experiences. Several Korean texts on comfort women have been translated by historians and human rights organizations including, True stories of the Korean comfort women: testimonies/ compiled by the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan and the Research Association on the Women (1995), Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex

Slaves of the Japanese Military (2000), and Che 2-Chʻa Segye Taejŏn Ŭi Yŏsŏng Pʻihaeja =

Women Victims in World War II (2009). These testimonies highlight the personal experiences of how women were often kidnapped, or tricked into going to the comfort stations, where they were forced into sexual slavery. Articles on comfort women can also be found in American news sources (New York Times, Huffington Post) as well as Korean sources (Munhwa News and

Insight). All of the news articles refer to these women as pihaeja, or victims, and emphasize how they are still suffering from physical and mental effects of trauma. Meanwhile, more recent views on comfort women focus on the restitution efforts of former comfort women and their ways of healing from the immense physical and psychological trauma through speaking about their former injustices (Film: I Can Speak), as well as through music (JTBC News) and art therapy (Film: Spirit’s Homecoming).

Although recent cinematic and news platforms are shifting towards portraying former comfort women as more than simply victims, literature is able to further shed light on the complex identity of these women and their survival strategies through combining historical events and imagined details. Looking at the Ilbon'gun Wianbu, a trilogy published in South

Korea, adds to historical sources as it speaks about the detailed experiences of women within the

comfort stations, which were extremely painful memories for women to speak in detail about in the biographies. Although the trilogy exposes readers to the comfort women’s painful memories, it works against showing the women solely as victims, or pihaeja, of sexual violence through imagining their resistance against Japanese colonial oppression. I will be focusing on the specific ways that some women resisted colonial rule over their lives individually, as well as collectively by ultimately forming a Women’s Association.

In addition to historical and news platforms, works of literature provide a broader range of women’s experiences. American novels on comfort women include Comfort Woman, Foxgirl, and Daughters of the Dragon. Nora Okja Keller reveals how Soon Hyo survives as a comfort woman and afterwards moves to the U.S. after marrying an American missionary in her novel,

Comfort Woman (1998). In Keller’s next novel, Foxgirl (2002), Duk Hee, a former comfort woman, works as a prostitute in the American town after the Korean War. After her time as a comfort woman, Jae-hee ends up working in an American military camp as a bar mother, who takes care of other prostitutes in William Andrews’s novel Daughters of the Dragon (2014).

While American novels on comfort women deal with how women overcame sexual slavery largely through familial relationships, Ilbon'gun Wianbu, which I call attention to in this chapter, centers on the women’s political organization. After the Japanese defeat of WWII, the Korean women form a coalition, along with the men. Ultimately, I emphasize how this Korean trilogy is important in that it reveals a more complex notion of comfort women, not simply as victims of

Japan’s colonial control, but as active members in Korea’s efforts to break free from that colonial control. The women are revolutionary agents in their resistance efforts through their collective participation in Korea’s struggle for independence and Jin Ok’s care for comfort women around her.

Women in Base Camps

Ilbon'gun Wianbu: Chŏng Hyŏn-ung changp'yŏn sosŏl (2015) is a trilogy that follows a group of comfort women, who are first taken to China and later on, Indonesia. The novel mainly follows the story of Jin Ok, an educated Korean woman who was kidnapped and sent to a comfort station in China. Although she is a sexual slave, Jin Ok soon becomes a leader in the comfort station, as she is chosen as the Commander in Chief’s concubine. Jin Ok exerts limited control over the Japanese soldiers in her position as a concubine, and tries her best to take care of the women’s physical needs. She even attempts their escape from the camp, but fails, which results in the women being sold to Indonesia. It is in Indonesia, after the Japanese are defeated, where the women form a Women’s Association under the Korean Independence Movement.

The trilogy was well received by the Korean public audience, yet is not one of the most popular works by the author, Chŏng Hyŏn-ung. The author’s interest in historical fiction and historical trauma is apparent from his work. Chŏng Hyŏn-ung, also the President of JJ Media

Company in South Korea, published several novels, including the Maruta 731 (Ma Rut'a/마루타

731) trilogy, which is a novel based on his research of the human experiments that a secret

Japanese army base (731) conducted on prisoners of war during WWII. Although Ilbon'gun

Wianbu is well received by the public as telling the horrific realities that comfort women faced within the Japanese base camps, there is a lack of critical attention on the ways that it works to complicate previous notions of comfort women in political discourse.

The story is told from a third person, omniscient narrator who lets the reader follow the characters from an outsider’s viewpoint and see the larger historical background. The front cover of the first book states the author’s intention for writing the novels:

강제로 끌러간 소녀들을 잔혹하게 짓밟은 일본군의 만행과 일본군 위안소 설치와 운영에 대한 증언과 진실 (일본군 위안부 1).

Testimony and truth on the girls who were taken forcibly and violently crushed by the Japanese soldiers’ acts, and the Japanese military’s installation and running of the comfort stations (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 1, my translation).

The words on the front cover of the first book in the series show the author’s intentions to uncover the truth behind what happened in the camps and expose the horrible injustices of military sanctioned sexual slavery. The words chŭngŏn, meaning testimony, and chinshil, meaning truth, strongly emphasize how the story was based on actual testimonies by surviving women. In discussions of national memory, Chŏng Hyŏn-ung’s work constitutes as an extension of Bosmajian’s ‘post-memory,’ which is “based on the authors’ acquired knowledge of a particular traumatic event” (152). In this way, the trilogy adds to national memory of comfort women narratives by relating the experiences of comfort women, combined with the author’s interpretation and imagination of their resistance efforts.

The genre of the trilogy, historical fiction, is interesting because it raises questions of how much of the narrative is historically true, as opposed to the author’s contribution and use of imagination. In addressing possible questions of authenticity, Chŏng Hyŏn-ung writes that he based the characters in this series, especially Jin Ok, on actual women that he interviewed. He revealed that the Korean woman that he based Jin Ok on was a woman educated at a teacher’s school, who was preparing to study abroad in Japan when she was kidnapped and taken to China as a comfort woman. She was very beautiful and could speak Japanese, so she was able to gain the attention of the Commander in Chief, and later on became his concubine, which is what happens to the character of Jin Ok in the novel as well. Although the reader can assume that most of the text was based on his interviews, Chŏng Hyŏn-ung does not reveal the exact details of the woman’s experience, such as when she was taken to the Japanese camp or the Commander in

Chief’s name, possibly to protect her privacy and create characters that encompassed the experiences of many women.

The first novel in the trilogy introduces how the women were usually tricked or forced into sexual slavery through false promises of employment by the Koreans, as well as the

Japanese. They were brought in order to prevent mass rape of women in the villages that

Japanese soldiers were pillaging, and more importantly, to prevent the spread of venereal disease in the camps. The involvement of Koreans, as well as Japanese officials, shows the underlying violence behind the idea of violated chastity1 that is associated with comfort women. The women range from women of noble to lower class backgrounds. However, the novel centers on a few women, the main being Jin Ok, and Yeo Jin Hong, a Chinese woman who comes to the base camp as a Communist spy. The Commander calls Jin Ok his wife, although in reality she is his concubine. The women are mostly used as sexual slaves, but are also employed as nurses when needed. In Ilbon'gun Wianbu 2, Jin Ok works actively to protect the women around her by getting them medical help, especially in her care of Ok Kyung, another comfort woman who gets her leg amputated as a result of torture from a Japanese soldier. In Ilbon'gun Wianbu 3, Jin Ok makes an escape plan for her and the women, but they are caught by the Commander in Chief, and sold to Indonesia as punishment. This is where Jin Ok ultimately becomes involved in the

Korean Women’s Association after the defeat of Japan. In this way, Chŏng Hyŏn-ung’s depiction of Jin Ok resists the media’s representations of comfort women as simply victims, by showing how she actively fought against Japanese imperial control with the limited ‘power’ that she was given.

The women were devalued under the hierarchy of the soldiers, but they had a very active, yet limited, role in the war effort. While the women were forced into sexual slavery, some were brought into the battlefield, where they were taught to use weapons. Chŏng Hyŏn-ung states how

1 More on the idea of violated chastity can be found in the Introduction and Chapter 2 of this thesis.

the women were given rifles by the Japanese and taught how to use them to prepare for possible enemy attack.

옥경과 금순에게도 권총이 주어졌다. 그것은 무겁고 무서웠으며 쏠 것 같지

않았다. 본부 중대에서 몇번의 사격 연습도 했고, 교육도 받았다. 적이 나타나면 다른 병사와 함께 쏘아야 하며, 만약 포로가 될 상황이면 마지막 한 발을 남겼다가 귀 밑에 대고 쏘아 자결하라는 지시를 받았다…위안부들에게 다른 군인과 동일한 업무를 주는 것이었다. 그러면서 필요에 따라서는 간호사도 되고 위생병도 되어야 하며, 모든 군인들의 정부 역할까지 해야 하는 것이었다 (일본군 위안부 1,110).

Ok Gyeong and Geum Sun were also given rifles. The rifles were heavy and frightening for the women, who did not seem like they would shoot them. At the military headquarters, they even had shooting practice and education. They were told that when the enemy would appear, they had to shoot them, and if they were captured by the enemy, they were to keep one bullet to shoot themselves under the ear. In this way, depending on the needs of the military, [the women] had to act as nurses, medics, and military administrators for all of the soldiers (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 1,110, my translation).

Giving the women weapons seems to go against the logic that they were powerless, but these women could not use these weapons freely. Shown from the women’s fear and discomfort in holding the rifles, the women’s personal freedom was forbidden in this section of the trilogy. As an extension of imperial war effort, they were forced to exhibit the same degree of nationalism towards Japan as the male soldiers. In this way, they were expected to be loyal to the same country that subjected them to sexual slavery.

Although the women were subject to horrifying circumstances under the system of sexual slavery, some women actively show resistance. The narrator describes the thoughts and actions of Jin Ok with the most detail in relation to the other women. Jin Ok managed to gain limited control over the comfort station in the military base that she was located in through her relationship with the Commander in Chief, and tried to protect as many women as she could by

‘buying’ them. She was even given the title of ‘high class civilian under the military’ (Kunsok

Kodŭnggwa/군속 고등관) by the Commander in Chief. Jin Ok was well aware that the system of comfort stations was very much a business, where traders would own a certain number of women and sell them to military bases, which were in control over the comfort stations. Using the limited power that she is given through her position, Jin Ok convinces the Commander in

Chief, who wanted to expand the comfort women ‘business,’ to buy 50 more comfort woman.

The trilogy reveals the Japanese military’s decision to economically profit from the control over women, under which Korean women, each costing 500 yen (about 4 USD), were valued at about half what the Japanese prostitutes2 cost.

The character of Jin Ok can be seen as an active player within the Japan military’s sexual exploitation, as she is also complicit in treating the women as commodities. She was even under suspicion by the other comfort women, such as Im Sŏnyŏng, who thought that she was only after money since she had the support of the Commander in Chief. Im Sŏnyŏng is put in jail after she refuses the Japanese doctors to administer a test for sexually transmitted diseases. When Jin Ok goes to see her in jail, she tells her that she understands her sense of shame and anger at the

Japanese doctors, who molested the women under the excuse of medically examining them. Im

Sŏnyŏng tells Jin Ok that she would rather rot in jail than go out and face the physical and sexual abuse of the soldiers. Jin Ok sympathizes with her, saying,

알고 있어. 우리의 상태가 감옥보다 나을거 없다는 것은 알고 있어 (일본군 위안부 1, 315).

I know that our condition [as comfort women] is not any better than prisoners (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 1, 315, my translation).

2 I use the term prostitute here because Japanese women were not forced into living in the comfort stations, while women from other nations were.

However, Im Sŏnyŏng scoffs at Jin Ok’s term uri, meaning us, when she reveals her thoughts about Jin Ok’s position as the Commander in Chief’s concubine.

당신은 우리하고는 달라. 당신이 어떻게 우리라고 하면서 같은 운명인 것같이 위장하지? 당신은 살이 살을 먹는 입장이야. 그것을 포주라고 해. (일본군 위안부 1, 315).

You are different from us (uri). How can you act like you have the same fate as us, referring to yourself as part of uri? You are in the position of skin eating skin. That is what a pimp is (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 1, 315, my translation).

Im Sŏnyŏng’s words reveal the attitude of many other prostitutes who viewed Jin Ok as taking advantage of them by exerting her control over the comfort station business and buying more women for the camp. There was an overarching mood of distrust for Jin Ok, which hindered the women from reciprocating Jin Ok’s emotional support for them.

Although she does participate in the system of exploitation, it is evident from the story that Jin Ok had to do this in order to get as many comfort women under her control and protection. She tells the disgruntled Im Sŏnyŏng,

그래, 넌 나를 미워하고 있구나. 하지만 난 돈을 벌기 위해서 일하는 것이 아니야. 너도 고참들한테서 얘기들었겠지만, 처음엔 나도 창부였어. 그러다가 부대장의 눈에 띄어 첩으로 들어간거야. 그러한 위치에서 너희들이 착취당하는 것을 막으려는 생각에서 용역을 인수받은 거야. 그것뿐이야. 안 믿을지 모르지만 그건 사실이야 (일본군 위안부 1, 316).

Yes, I can see that you hate me. But I am not doing this to earn money. You must have heard from the old-timers that I was also a prostitute3 when I first got here. Then I caught the attention of the Commander in Chief. I wanted to use my position to stop the exploitation of the women, so I got involved in the military’s comfort station business. That’s it. I don’t know if you will believe me but that is the truth (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 1, 316, my translation).

3 The women refer to themselves as prostitutes in some instances, and this may be because the Japanese soldiers enforced this term upon the women in thinking of their positions in the camps, but it is obvious from the way that they were forced into acts of sex in the Japanese camps that they were sexual slaves.

Even though she was in a different position than the other women due to her relationship with the Commander in Chief, Jin Ok knew what these women went through in the comfort stations, and thus tried to improve their conditions. She also knows that even though she has some agency in her position, she is still a sexual slave, who faces physical abuse from the

Commander in Chief. In this way, Jin Ok’s character occupies the dual position of both exploiter and savior.

Furthermore, since the narrator gives access to Jin Ok’s thoughts and words, she acts as a spokesperson for other women throughout the trilogy. Jin Ok’s words to Yeo Jin Hong, the

Chinese spy, reveal how most women had no sense of patriotism in their day-to-day struggle to survive, despite Korea’s later depiction of comfort women as nationally sacrificial victims.

일본 여자들도 돈을 번다는 목적이 있는 모양인데 우리 애들은 무엇이에요? 그저 하루하루를 보내요. 더러는 이렇게 된 마당에 돈이나 벌자고 하는 애들도 있는 모양인데 사람은 망가지고, 인생은 어떻게 되는 거예요? 가장 오래 된 직업이고 가장 더러운 직업이 창부라고 하는데, 이 짓을 강요당하고 무슨 인생이 있겠어요? 차라리 마고우 상처럼 조국을 위한 희생이라면 떳떳하고 보람이라도 있지요 (일본군 위안부 2, 192).

At least the Japanese women had monetary motivation, but what about our girls? They just spend day by day without purpose. Some say that they will earn money since they are in this position anyways, but their bodies are destroyed and what happens to their lives? They say that the oldest and dirtiest job is prostitution, so how can we have lives after being forced into [sexual slavery]? It would be better if this were our sacrifice for the nation, like you [Yeo Jin Hong] are doing. Then, at least we would be able to have pride and reward (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 2, 192, my translation).

Jin Ok reveals that there was nothing honorable about their enslavement within the camps. Her words show a desire for national cause that will give meaning to their suffering and the need to be recognized as martyrs for the nation, which they become later through their involvement with

Korea’s independence efforts against the Japanese. Since she knows the suffering of the women,

Jin Ok feels responsible for them, as seen from her calling them her “girls” or “children” in the text.

While the women desire to find purpose in the midst of their hopeless situation, Jin Ok is an exceptional figure in the story also through her sense of protection over the women. Through her sexual power over the Commander, who was infatuated with Jin Ok and called her his ‘wife,’ she was able to make demands for the health and wellbeing of the women, even though she was limited by her status as his concubine. Jin Ok was able to change the rules for the station

(Ilbon'gun Wianbu 2, 265) to protect the comfort women, by increasing the ‘wages’ (in the form of military currency if the soldiers did pay) for the women and decreased the amount of time allotted to the soldiers, based on their positions4.

Jin Ok also communicates a political statement when she makes two Japanese soldiers sing a traditional Korean folk song, Arirang, which originated from a Korean patriot, or chongshin, during the Chosun period who sang it while being sent off to the execution fields for stating the truth. After she explains the historical background behind the song, she tells the soldiers,

그 노래는 전래되어 내려오면서, 절망에 부딪히면서 부르는 민족의 노래로 바뀐 것이지. 지금은 일백여 곡으로 편곡이 되어있다. 그래 네가 한 번 불러 봐라. 그걸 부르는 조선인은 사상범으로 체포된다. 그러나 넌 관동군 병장이니까 체포하지는 않을 것이다 (일본군 위안부 2, 80).

As this song was passed down, it changed into a song for the nation when it faces despair. Now it has over one hundred different arrangements. So I want you to sing it. Any Korean who sings this is arrested as a political offender. However you are a sergeant of the Gwandong district, so you will not be arrested (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 2, 80).

4 Soldiers of higher ranks were allotted more time with the women than those of lower rank.

The soldiers agree to Jin Ok’s demand, due to her position of power over them, and she cries while singing the song with them. It is significant that Japanese soldiers sing Arirang, a song embodying Korean nationalism. The position of the colonizer and colonized are switched briefly in this moment, as Jin Ok, technically a women enslaved by the Japanese military, commands members of the military to obey her commands. She has them sing a song that would get any Korean arrested, as the song showcases the patriotism and resiliency of the Korean nation.

Along with Jin Ok’s patriotism and resiliency, the story reveals her dreams, which were curtailed when she was kidnapped. When another comfort woman asks Jin Ok what she wants to do if she escapes the camp, she replies,

나는 중국말을 잘 모르고 영어도 잘 못해. 조선에 돌아가야 희망이 없을 것 같고, 일본에 가서 공부를 할까 해. 사범학교를 나올 때 나는 동경에 가서 대학을 다니려고 했었지. 나의 집이 대주주여서 그런 꿈이 현실적으로 가능했어. 그런데 나는 납치를 당한 거야. 내 꿈이 한순간에 날아가 버렸어. 그러나 그 꿈을 뒤늦게라도 찾아야 되지 않겠어? (일본군 위안부 3, 64).

I don’t know how to speak Chinese or English. Even if I am to go back to Korea, it does not look hopeful for me there, so I want to study in Japan. When I graduated from Teacher’s School, I was going to attend a University in Tokyo. My family was extremely powerful so my dream was realistic. However, I was kidnapped. My dream flew away in that mere second. However, even though much time has passed, I must find that dream- don’t you think? (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 3, 64, my translation).

Jin Ok’s words reveal her past as a daughter of a prominent household in Korea, where she had a promising future as a teacher. Although her kidnapping by the Japanese soldiers restricted her dreams, she does not give up on her aspirations. Jin Ok is set apart from the other comfort women in her position as part of the elite, who had access to such forms of education and mobility. Her position gave her the means to continue seeking her dream from before her time in the comfort station, which some women did not have. In this way, Jin Ok is able to envision a

future that is better than the devastating reality that she faces within the camps. The other comfort women also reveal their own desires to go back to Korea to reunite with their families or simply to have the freedom to do as they pleased. Hope for the future and the belief in the continuation of life before being comfort women allow the women to survive their inhumane conditions.

Although Jin Ok is an exception figure even under inhumane conditions of sexual slavery, she is still limited in her position. As Jin Ok sees the suffering, and experiences it firsthand as a comfort woman as well, she makes a plan to have the girls escape. She attempts to have the women escape from the camp during one of their outings to town. However, she is reminded that she is a sexual slave when the women are caught in trying to escape and sold to

Indonesia as punishment. When a Japanese soldier captures her, she slaps him, saying,

이놈아, 어디에 손을 대느냐? 나는 부대장의 부인이다 (일본군 위안부 3, 66).

You jerk, where are you putting your hands? I am the wife of the Commander in Chief (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 3, 66, my translation).

The Japanese soldier only laughs at her, saying,

부대장 부인? 하하하, 너는 이제 조센삐에 불과하다…네가 조센삐들을 모두 탈출시킨 것을 알고 너를 포기했다. 체포 명령을 내리고 떠나셨을 뿐이다. 너희들은 다른 업자들에게 넘겨졌다 (일본군 위안부 3, 66).

Wife of the Commander in Chief? Hahaha, You are nothing but a Chosunpi (Korean prostitute)…The Commander in Chief knew that you had the Chosunpis escape and so he left you with directions to arrest you. All of you were sold to another vendor (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 3, 66, my translation).

Jin Ok was the only comfort woman who had the status and audacity to insult the Japanese soldiers physically and verbally, while any of the soldiers could insult and abuse the comfort women freely. As the wife of the Commander in Chief, Jin Ok had temporary power over the subordinate Japanese soldiers, but she risked everything to have the women escape. The failure

of Jin Ok’s plan shows her devotion towards freeing the women and the reality of the limitations that the women faced. As her plans for escape are crushed, Jin Ok is reminded, once again, of her status as a slave under the Japanese military.

Although she is sold to the Japanese camp in Indonesia, Jin Ok continues to be described in the story as a leader for the women around her.

언제부터인지 진옥은 위안소에서 병사 받는 일을 하지 않았다. 그녀는 전에 부대장의 첩으로 있을 때처럼 용역 업자는 아니었지만, 여자들의 대표 역활을 하면서 용역업자와 대등한 입장에 섰다 (일본군 위안부 3, 226).

From a certain point, Jin Ok did not take on soldiers. She was not a service provider, as she was when she was the concubine for the Commander in Chief, but she acted as the taep'yo (leader) for the women and rose to a position of power equal to service providers in the camps (Ilbon'gun wianbu 3, 226, my translation).

The story describes her as taep'yo, or leader, a word that would describe a political leader or someone in power in a company. This specific term shows the power that she was able to gain through her language expertise, as well as her leadership over the women around her. Jin Ok’s position of power, although limited by the Japanese leaders over her, shows how she was able to obtain an equal position to the Japanese service providers in a strict societal hierarchy that labeled Japanese as superior to Koreans. In this way, Ilbon'gun Wianbu departs from American novels on comfort women, which focus on women navigating their personal trauma through familial relationships, by instead revealing the character of Jin Ok to be a shrewd woman with political acumen.

Collective Resistance

Along with Jin Ok’s political views, Ilbon'gun Wianbu is unique from other novels on comfort women in depicting a new Korean society, which emerges after the liberation of the

Korean comfort women. In discussing the way that this new Korean society embodied aspects of anticolonial relationships and different ways of thinking of women’s agency, I connect Jaqui

Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s concept of “feminist democracy.” Alexander and

Mohanty’s feminist democracy (2012) involves “building actively anticolonialist relationships and cultures” through understanding agency as “the practice of thinking of oneself as a part of feminist collectives and organizations” (xxvii). The way that Korean comfort women reclaimed agency collectively are seen in Jin Ok’s active role within the base camp, as well as the various roles of other women who find their identities through their roles in the new society.

In the third novel of the trilogy, Jin Ok becomes an important figure for the Korean rebel movement in Java. After she is relocated to Indonesia, she becomes involved with a movie director, who is ethnically Korean, but grew up in Japan and disguises his nationality. Hinas, the movie director, then reveals that Jin Ok was labeled as a ‘dangerous figure’ by the Japanese army and how he is a part of an underground independent agency called Koryo Independence

Young Men’s Organization (Koryŏdongnipch'ŏngnyŏndan /고려독립청년단). They hear that the Japanese emperor admitted defeat, and since they are no longer under Japanese rule, Hinas makes a Korean organization “조선인민회” (Cho Sŏninminhoe/ Chosun People’s

Organization) and a subsequent Women’s Association to make sure that all of the Koreans in

Java (a village in Indonesia), including soldiers, civilians, and comfort women, would get back to

Korea safely.

Although it is Korean men who initially construct this Chosun People’s Organization, Jin

Ok continues her role as a leader and older sister figure for the comfort women after their liberation. After Japan’s defeat, Jin Ok stops the comfort women station from accepting Japanese soldiers and changes the accepted currency from military money to Japanese yen and Indonesian currency (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 3 251). Jin Ok then establishes an assembly to create order for the women and elect officials. Most of the women nominate Jin Ok as leader of the Women’s

Association, but she refuses, as she feels unqualified as a former concubine for the Commander in Chief.

By putting women in positions to vote for their own leaders and be in positions of power, the Women’s Association “suggests a different order of relationships” and “alternative vision for change” (Alexander and Mohanty, xxvii). As part of the “alternate vision for change,” newly formed elected officials create different departments, which women are able to lead.

조선어 교실뿐만이 아니라 이천여 명의 조선인 집단을 이루는 코타의 한 부락에서는 <조선인민회보> 라는 주간 신문도 창간하여 발행하고, 영화감독이면서 영화사를 가지고 있었던 히나쓰가 주축이 되어 부락 내에 극장을 세우고 영화 상영을 비롯한 연극공연과 음악 감상, 그리고 무용 발표를 했다. 코타 지역 조선인 촌을 만들면서 새로운 세계가 태동하는 것이었다 (일본군 위안부 3, 258).

Not only did they make a Chosun (Korean) school, but the Korean organization in Cota, [town in Indonesia] which had around 2000 people, created a weekly Korean newspaper named 조선인민회보 (Chosun People’s Paper), and Hinas, a movie director who also owned a production company, opened a theater to show film, music, and dance performances. The Koreans formed their own town in Cota, which marked the start of a new world (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 3, 258, my translation).

The women were in charge of many of these organizations, as there was a women principal at the

Korean school, some women worked in the newspaper company, and many of the performers at the theater were women. In this way, women become part of the new society, which Chŏng

Hyŏn-ung refers to as a new se-kye (meaning new world), and were able to reclaim the agency over their lives that they had lost through the war. The women were not seen as victims in this new world, but as active participants who obtained positions of power. The Women’s organization had different programs for women to learn specific skills, including: education, rules, cooking, housework, entertainment, and culture, which provided valuable skills to further equip them in life.

The novel briefly mentions the specific roles of some of the women in this new se-kye, which related to their backgrounds before the war. For instance Kang Ji Sook, who had the background as a kisaeng, (or entertainer) was popular with the men for her beauty, as well as her various talents, and Han Maengsuk, who was a writer from a region of Korea called Mokpo, published a poem called “The Legend of Mokpo’s Samhakdo Island.” In this way, the women were able to use their skills and background to find their own roles and agency through the

“conscious and ongoing reproduction of the terms of one’s existence” (Alexander and Mohanty xxviii). Compared to their time in the comfort stations, where they were robbed of their freedom and sense of identity by being forced into their roles as sex slaves, the women in the new society were able to claim their roles, thus reestablishing their identities.

While Jin Ok was an older sister figure to the women around her, she refuses to embody

Korean society’s hetero-normative ideas of marriage and motherhood. Hinas proposes to Jin Ok, but she refuses, saying,

나는 더 이상 결혼이니 사랑이니 그러한 일을 생각하지 않기로 했어요. 나는 일본에 가서 악착스럽게 돈을 벌거에요. 그리고 나와 친구들이 받았던 사무치는 원한을 내 식으로 복수할 거예요(일본군 위안부 3, 294).

I am determined not to think about marriage or love. I am going to go to Japan and earn money tenaciously. Then I am going to revenge my friends and my overwhelming resentment in my own way (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 3, 294, my translation).

When Hinas asks how she will revenge the women, saying how history has a way of being forgotten, she answers,

잊어서는 안돼요. 용서해서도 안 되고…(일본군 위안부 3, 294).

We must not forget. Nor should be forgive…(Ilbon'gun Wianbu 3, 294, my translation).

Unlike in American novels, which focus on comfort women forming familial relationships, Jin Ok does not want to think about marriage, as her sole focus is to get revenge on the Japanese. She chooses to go to Japan because she had the goal of protesting what they did to her and other women. Jin Ok refuses to let history be forgotten, nor does she think the women should forgive the Japanese. By actively resisting the roles of women that Hinas and the larger

Korean society placed on her, Jin Ok shows how she wanted to construct her own ideas of identity as a Korean woman. These ideas included the ability to see herself not simply as a victim, but as a woman in control of her future and seeking justice for the crimes that were committed against her.

Although Chŏng Hyŏn-ung depicts Jin Ok as a figure of resilience and leader that takes part in the Korean rebel efforts, she is limited in her role as it was Hinas and other Korean men who initially construct the organization. However, once the organization starts, the women show their participation in exerting their influence and skills, crafting “different order of relationships among people,” (xxix) as Alexander and Mohanty note. The women are no longer helpless under

Japanese rule, but use their educational background and learn skills through the different programs to be able to gain positions within the new se-kye.

The story ends with the Koreans leaving Indonesia, and Chŏng Hyŏn-ung notes the resiliency and resistance of the comfort women who survived.

배가 멀리 떠나는 것을 부두에서 지켜보는 남은 여자들은 저마다 다른 이유로 울었다. 이별이 슬퍼 울었고, 운명이 기구해서 울었다. 그러나 그녀들은 살아남았고, 생존했다는 그 자체는 하나의 승리였다 (일본군 위안부 3, 299).

The women who were left at the dock watching the boat leave each cried for differing reasons. They cried at separation, and at their unfortunate fate. However, these women survived, and the very survival of these women was a victory (Ilbon'gun Wianbu 3, 299, my translation).

The novel ends with the Korean Association disbanding in 1946, when around 2000 men and women finally made their way back to their home country by boat, but the resistance of women continued, as they were now able to make their own choices. Although the Korean

Women’s Association was limited in scope and only temporary, it provided the women with a chance to learn valuable life skills for their lives back in South Korea or wherever they chose to go. Meanwhile, the author stresses how even the very act of survival of these women can be seen as a victory against the horrific acts of violence against them. In these ways, Chŏng Hyŏn-ung imagines a feminist democracy through fiction that branches transnationally (Alexander and

Mohanty, 2012) across Asia, as these women leave for various places to live new lives.

CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION

In “The Postcolonial and the Postmodern,” Homi Bhabha states how, “Culture as a strategy of survival is both transnational and translational” (247). This calls to attention the need for postcolonial discourse that communicates cultural histories through transnational voices and texts. My project addresses this need by shedding light on the fraught identity of comfort women during WWII and afterwards to show the larger structures of Japanese and U.S. imperialism that control women’s bodies.

The first chapter compares four novels on comfort women published in the U.S., which showed their experiences from various perspectives (including former comfort women, their families, and Japanese soldiers). My analysis of these novels depict the complex identities of these women as survivors, who pass down methods of survival to other women, and how they subverted the notion of chastity that was put upon them by imperial U.S. and Japanese views.

These women reveal how chastity was used by imperial powers as a means to justify control over women’s bodies, and how some comfort women subsequently refuse such control.

In my second chapter, I also bring together Korean works on comfort women to show how, although both chapters focus on the ways that the texts challenge the official discourse of chastity and victimhood, the second chapter focuses more on political organization and collectivities of the women through their solidarity within the camps, and their formation of the

Women’s Association after liberation from the comfort stations. The Korean texts also embody a different relation to Korean nationalist discourse than the novels in the first chapter by refusing the focus on the violated chastity of the women, but instead on the ways that some women exhibited political cause individually, as well as collectively. The ways in which the Ilbon'gun

Wianbu trilogy imagined how women found ways to resist colonial control through individual

and collective means could be useful to women’s continued efforts to find collectivity and envision “feminist democracy” beyond systems of oppression transnationally.

Narratives of comfort women embody a specific area of war trauma that calls upon the historical past of a nation. Cathy Caruth calls attention to the importance of war trauma in the larger conversation about trauma when she states, “The questions raised by war trauma concerning the nature of life thus require a new model for psychoanalytic thinking and, in particular, for the relation between psychoanalysis and history” (8). War trauma is significant because it involves historical trauma, or trauma that involves the history of oppression for nations and people groups. Thus, the trauma is not just felt by the victims themselves, but resonates to the people of that nation and becomes a national trauma that continues to be remembered. My analysis of American and Korean texts communicates the historical trauma of comfort women that continues to haunt Korea, Japan, and America, by looking at personal experiences of the women in detail and the way that chastity was used to justify the mass exploitation of women by military powers.

The depictions of the comfort women in novels reveal the underlying patriarchal political and social structures, which led to the systemic sexual slavery of up to 200,000 women from different parts of Asia. I wish to delineate aspects of these women that complicate the notion that their personal and historical trauma can be easily understood. Ongoing restitution efforts involving comfort women and resistance of sexual slavery during war is still ongoing, more than

70 years after the end of WWII. Recent public interest in the ongoing efforts of comfort women to seek restorative justice internationally has led to a number of recent films produced in Korea

and China, including I Can Speak (2017) and 22 (2017).1 The issues surrounding Korean comfort women continue to be seen through the protest for justice in front of the Japanese Embassy in

Seoul each Wednesday, which has been going on for the past 25 years2.

Global implications of military sexual slavery are seen in connections between figures of

Korean comfort women and military prostitutes that worked in American base camps during and following the Korean War. Efforts to gain justice are continuously being seen transnationally through the remaining comfort women that continue to speak out3 and increasing numbers of comfort women statues being built across South Korea and the U.S4. Thus, my project concerning literary depictions of comfort women can be expanded to narratives of women from the Philippines, China, Indonesia, and Thailand5. This is only a portion of the complexities surrounding the conflict between female bodies and imperial conquest. Along with the ongoing issues surrounding comfort women, the oppression of women’s bodies through militarization is still going on in regions of the Middle East and Africa.6

1 Recent films based on comfort women include 22(2017), a Chinese documentary on the surviving 22 women in China, and I Can Speak (2017), a Korean film on the story of a comfort woman who learns English to demand justice from the Japanese government.

2 The protest, also known as the Wednesday demonstration, started in 1992 and brings together surviving victims and supporters who demand that the Japanese government give an official apology to the victims, as well as acknowledge the Japanese government’s active involvement in the recruitment of comfort women during WWII.

3 Comfort women’s experiences continue to be revealed transnationally. Maria Rosa Henson is recently published an autobiography titled: Comfort Woman: A Filipina's Story of Prostitution and Slavery under the Japanese Military (2017).

4 A recent dispute occurred in San Francisco in November 2017, when a comfort woman statue was erected in St. Mary’s Square, which led to the mayor of Osaka saying that he will cut ties with San Francisco.

5 Transnational works on comfort women include Lolas’ House: Survivors of Wartime Rape Camps by M. Evelina Galang and Leche by R. Zamora Linmark, which feature with comfort women in the Philippines.

6 Nādirah Shalhūb-Kīfūrkiyān outlines the effects of military’s violence on women in Palestine in Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East (2009). Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern discuss military sexual violence in Congo in "Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC)."

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Min Ji Kang’s interests include Asian American literature, Postcolonial literature, Critical

Race theory, and Feminist theory. She completed a Master of Arts degree at the University of

Florida in 2018 with a project involving literary and cultural depictions of comfort women in transnational works. She also works with translations of Korean literature.