Elizabeth W. Son I Professor, Northwestern University, USA

Session 2. The Waves and Echoes of Kim Hak-soon’s Testimony

Living Justice: The Power of Survivors’ Voices

Elizabeth W. Son I Professor, Northwestern University, USA

I want to thank Professor Lee and The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance

for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Korean Council hereafter) for this opportunity to participate in today’s conference. It is an honor to be in this space with so many scholars and activists whom I admire. In my presentation today, I’ll discuss the

concept of “living justice” and how Kim Hak-soon halmeoni’s public testimony and the

voices of other survivors have echoed across time and space to sustain the global social movement for “comfort women” justice.

Introduction

Fourteen years ago, when I began my research on women’s art and activism

surrounding the history of Japanese military sexual slavery, I asked survivors why they attended the Wednesday Demonstrations. One survivor, Gil Won-ok halmeoni, explained that it was for the future. As a living witness, she believed that it was her responsibility to tell the world about her experiences during the war and to fight for justice. Her sentiment echoed the words and actions of another living witness—Kim Hak-soon halmeoni who gave the first public testimony as a survivor of Japanese military sexual slavery on August 14, 1991.

Kim Hak-soon halmeoni inspired generations of women to come forward with their stories of sexual victimhood. Survivors like Jan Ruff O’Herne watched Kim Hak-soon

halmeoni’s testimony on television and decided to share her testimony publicly in 1992.

In the 1990s a group of survivors of militarized sexual violence during the Bosnian civil war were moved by the public testimony of “comfort women” survivors and decided to testify at the U.N. The 2010 Tribunal of Conscience for Women Survivors of Sexual Violence during the Armed Conflict in Guatemala was directly inspired by the survivors who testified at the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery (Women’s

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Tribunal hereafter) held in Tokyo in 2000. The list goes on and on.

Living Justice

Survivors like Kim Hak-soon halmeoni who have spoken out, activists who have gathered weekly for the Wednesday Demonstrations, artists who have created art in remembrance of survivors, and supporters who have taken care of the Statue of Peace— all illuminate the ongoing expansion of the landscape of justice. While advocating for official redress, they emphasize the necessity of cultivating relationships with survivors, leading educational campaigns and workshops, supporting memorialization projects, and building solidarity. In other words, they call for an expansive view of redress that is political, legal, social, and cultural.

The expansion of what constitutes redress demonstrates that justice does not belong solely in the hands of governments or courts. It is also in our hands. Justice is brought to life through embodied actions and through community. It is a living justice that we sustain. In my book Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific

Redress, I write about this living justice and argue that embodied practices like the Wednesday Demonstrations, public testimony, tribunals, art such as theatre, and memorials play a central role in how activists, survivors, and their supporters have advocated for official redress while expanding the contours of redress. The history of Japanese military sexual slavery, a history that centered on the violation of women’s bodies, calls for representing and mobilizing those bodies with meaning through redressive acts such as protests, tribunals, theatre, and memorial building.

For example, as I write about in my book, my interest in the Wednesday Demonstrations began as an exploration into the making of claims for official redress through protests. However, when I started participating in the protests in 2007 and spoke with participants, I realized that something more profound was happening in that public space. The Wednesday Demonstrations are the very site of a living justice. Even as supporters demand official redress as they face the Japanese Embassy, they also turn towards each other, placing the survivors and their supporters as the center of attention. This physical turn of the body from the embassy towards each other signals the expansion of who has agency to bring about change. These gatherings “have transformed the public

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space in front of the Japanese Embassy into a redressive arena, where protesters imagine and practice social redress through education on the street about history and the cultivation of reparative communities through intergenerational and transnational coalition building.”1 One of the most beautiful illustrations of this living justice is reflected in how Gil Won-ok halmeoni has described the supporters who come to the protests as her “descendants.” When I interviewed her, she explained, “Sometimes when elementary school

children come, they go, ‘Halmeoni, halmeoni, cheer up and have strength! We’re here.

Cheer up, and my heart just suddenly opens up.”2 She expressed the social bond she feels with these young supporters. Her love for them was palpable. They have become part of her family—a meaningful form of social redress.

For the rest of my presentation, I will talk briefly about different echoes of Kim Haksoon halmeoni’s testimony in other survivors’ public testimony, artistic work like theatre,

and remembrance-based actions—all helping to sustain a living justice.

Echoes: Jan Ruff O’Herne, Connections with Bosnia, and Korean Trojan Women

In 1992, after watching Kim Hak-soon halmeoni and other survivors give their testimony and make a plea for justice on television, Jan Ruff O’Herne, a Dutch survivor of

military sexual slavery during Japan’s occupation of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia),

decided to come forward publicly and support Korean survivors. She actively participated in the movement in Australia and traveled the world giving her testimony, speaking, for example, at an international public hearing on Japanese war crimes in 1992, at the Women’s Tribunal in 2000, and at the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007.

During her testimony in front of the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the effort to pass HR 121, O’Herne explained why she broke her silence:

In 1992, the war in Bosnia had broken out, and I could see that women were again being raped in an organized way, and then after that, that same year, I saw the Korean comfort women on television. They broke their silence, and Ms. Kim Hak Sun was the first comfort woman to speak out. I watched them on television as they pleaded for justice, for an apology and compensation from the Japanese Government.

1 Elizabeth W. Son, Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific

Redress(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2018), 23. 2 Interview with Gil Won-ok, July 27, 2007, Seoul. 263

I decided to back them up especially as I realized that in Bosnia women again were being raped on an organized scale.3

Kim Hak-soon halmeoni’s testimony not only helped launch the “comfort women”

movement for justice in the early 1990s, but it also helped accentuate the importance of accountability for crimes of sexual violence committed against women during other armed conflicts such as the Bosnian war. In advocating for rape to be considered a war crime, survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery and their supporters joined European activists and Bosnian survivors of mass rapes at the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.4 At these international gatherings, activists pointed to contemporary wartime sexual violence in places like Bosnia as ramifications of the impunity granted to perpetrators of mass sexual violence such as Japanese military sexual slavery.5 Survivors at these gatherings poignantly expressed that they inspired each other to come forward with their painful pasts. Fadila Mesmiservic, who testified on the systematic rape of women in the former Yugoslavia at the Vienna Conference, said “When I heard Bok Dong Kim, I felt a terrible void in my soul

because what happened to the Korean comfort women during World War II is still happening to women today.”6 As I already noted, the experience of Bosnian women helped encourage survivors like Jan Ruff O’Herne to come forward. She shared at the Women’s

Tribunal in 2000: “[…] I feel I have to speak up, because I heard the same horrible thing was happening in Bosnia.”7

Artists have also drawn these connections between Japanese military sexual slavery

3 “Protecting the Human Rights of Comfort Women,” Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment of the Committee on Foreign Affairs House of

Representatives,” Serial No. 110-16, February 16, 2007, 25-26. 4 Charlotte Bunch and Susana Fried, “Beijing ’95: Moving Women’s Human Rights from Margin to

Center,” Signs22.1 (Autumn 1996): 200-204. 5 Activists in support of survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery have also pointed to the

Bosnian case as a legal precedent. The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s

Military Sexual Slavery (Women’s Tribunal hereafter) referenced the conviction against eight

Bosnian Serb military and police officers at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former

Yugoslavia in 1996; this was the first conviction by an international court to classify rape as a crime against humanity. See Marlise Simons, “U.N. Court, for First Time, Defines Rape as War

Crime,” The New York Times, June 28, 1996. 6 Gertrude Fester, “Women’s Rights are Human Rights,” Agenda20 (1994): 77. 7 Yayori Matsui, “Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery:

Memory, Identity, and Society,” East Asia: An International Quarterly19.4 (December 2001), 124. 264

and the Bosnian war. Inspired by survivors’ testimony, Bosnian-born director Aida Karic conceived of and directed The Trojan Women: An Asian Story, building upon Euripides’

tragedy about the enslavement of Trojan women after the fall of their city to situate the history of Japanese military sexual slavery. She explained, “This play is the story of the Trojan women and the Korean ‘comfort women’ as well as the story of my country.”8 What happened to thousands of Japanese military sex slaves resonated with Karic, who lived through the beginning of the Bosnian war, where an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 Muslim women and girls were raped by Bosnian Serb armed forces. Traveling between South Korea and Austria—Karic spent two years working on The Trojan Women with a Korean choreographer, composer, pansori singer, and theatre company. After its Austrian run at the Schauspielhaus Wien in 2007, The Trojan Women toured to the United States and South Korea.

Alongside the work of activists, artists like Karic have been using various cultural forms, from poetry and documentary films to theatre, to address the history of Japanese military sexual slavery. In the last two and half decades, there has been a proliferation of theatrical productions about the experiences of Japanese military sex slaves. Theatre provides the space for re-embodying the presence of survivors and giving audiences the chance to hear their testimony through affective means. The dramatization of the experiences of survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery can also illuminate topics not discussed at public activist events, such as the intimate struggles of living with trauma for survivors and their families. In the case of Karic’s The Trojan Women, the production fostered a critical space for

the audience to confront the long history and brutality of wartime sexual violence. The production accomplished this through aural, visual, and movement-based oscillation between themes of the specific (experiences of Korean military sex slaves) and the transhistorical (Trojan women in Euripides’ Greece), and between violation (testimony by

Kang Duk-kyung halmeoni and Ahm Jeom-soon halmeoni) and healing (shamanic ritual movements). The production also moves between multiple temporalities (Trojan War and WWII), positioning Japanese military sexual slavery not as an isolated incident, but as part of a longer history of wartime sexual violence. The production’s centerpiece is the moral

8 Hyun Noh, “Geuleeseo Bigukgua Mannan Wianbudul” [The ‘Comfort Women’ Meet Greek

Tragedy], Maeil Kyungjae[The Daily Economics], October 22, 2007, A35. 265

question of how to impede the centuries-long cycle of sexual violence against women during times of conflict and how to deal with the devastation on women and their communities. As part of the tapestry of living justice, theatre like The Trojan Women allows audiences to join a global community of remembrance and witnessing.

Echoes: Kim Bok-dong, Statue of Peace, and KAN-WIN’s #ComeSitWithHer

Along with the echoes of Kim Hak-soon halmeoni’s testimony in Jan Ruff O’Herne

activism and in theatrical works like Aida Karic’s, I want to follow another echo of her

testimony in the activism of Kim Bok-dong halmeoni and in memorial projects. Not too long after Kim Hak-soon halmeoni’s public testimony, Kim Bok-dong halmeoni decided to come forward with her testimony in 1992. She also actively participated in the movement and traveled the world to give her testimony and to demand justice.

As part of their activism, Gil Won Ok and Kim Bok Dong halmeonidul started the Nabigigeum [Butterfly Fund] in 2012 to help female victims of sexual violence during armed conflicts. During protests and on trips abroad to give their testimony, they encouraged supporters to make donations to the Butterfly Fund and for supportive organizations to hold fund-raising events. In 2013, Kim and Gil halmeonidul donated the money they had raised to rape victims in the Congo and to the Vietnamese survivors of sexual violence committed by Korean soldiers during the Vietnam War. As survivor-leaders, they crafted new identities for themselves as advocates for justice, not just for themselves, but also for other women who had been traumatized by sexual violence. Through their activism, they were helping to grow a global living justice.

During one of her trips abroad, in 2013, at the dedication ceremony for the installation of the Statue of Peace in Glendale, California, I had a chance to witness Kim Bok-dong halmeoni invite others to join her in sustaining this living justice. Here is an excerpt from my book about this moment:

Kim Bok Dong’s speech was the most powerful performance of the day. Dressed in a

hanbok with a white jeogori and black chima, Kim was the living embodiment of the [Statue of Peace]. Her outfit was both a reminder of her age when she was forced to become a sex slave and a powerful gesture of reclamation of that lost time. Elegantly clad and speaking in clear, steady words, Kim declared, “As I’ve been traveling, I have been

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saying that if Japan does not come forward and apologize, then I will go around the world and build memorials. But I am really happy that the city of Glendale is installing this memorial.” Building a memorial is a call for redress and an act of redress itself. “The

memorial is a representation of the past history, so I ask you to try to protect and maintain the peace memorial here,” said Kim. “I urge you to join me in the effort to pressure Japan

to stop making senseless remarks but instead to make a straightforward apology, an official apology for us, and to also help us make this world war-free, because if there is war, there will be victims like us, and that inevitably happens. I hope our descendants can live in a peaceful world.” Kim invoked the language of protection for the memorial and for the future of her descendants, echoing the use of the term by Lee Yong Soo and Gil Won Ok. In inviting others to join her in her fight for justice, she also articulated a broad horizon of peace for future generations.9

A couple of years later, Kim Bok-dong halmeoni traveled to Chicago in 2015 to give her public testimony. The organization that sponsored her visit was KAN-WIN, a Chicagobased organization founded in 1991 that supports Asian American and immigrant survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence. KAN-WIN runs a twenty-four-hour support hotline and provides transitional housing, counseling, job skills training, financial management training, legal workshops, support groups, children’s programming, and social gatherings

for survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence. They are the main organization in Chicago that supports the global social movement in support of survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery.

Since the 1990s, KAN-WIN has organized testimonial events with survivors, solidarity protests, educational workshops, and art exhibits, among others. As they explain in their vision statement: “As advocates for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence,

we at KAN-WIN are dedicated to ‘comfort women’ advocacy. Our vision for a better world aligns with the spirit of the ‘comfort women’ survivor-activists, who in demanding their own justice, cry for the justice that is due to anyone who has experienced sexual violence.”10

9 Son, Embodied Reckonings, 171-172. 10 KAN-WIN “Comfort Women” Justice Advocacy, “KAN-WIN Statement on ‘Comfort Women’

Advocacy,” accessed on August 2, 2021, https://www.comfortwomenjustice.com/uploads/5/1/4/6/51462959/kw_cwadvocacystatement.pdf.

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KAN-WIN not only joins the larger call for official redress, but they also help expand the landscape of justice by actualizing social and cultural redress through education, remembrance, and solidarity building.

For example, on Global Action Day, KAN-WIN organizes #ComeSitWithHer performances, whereby they bring the Statue of Peace to downtown Chicago and encourage participants to sit next to the statue in solidarity. In asking passersby “will you

#comesitwithher,” KAN-WIN invites participants to remember the history of Japanese military sexual slavery and to reflect on what it means individually to become an ally. Whenever I sit in the chair or watch others sit next to the statue, I know that we are answering Kim Bok-dong halmeoni and Kim Hak-soon halmeoni’s invitation to continue their fight for justice.

Conclusion

As survivors, activists, and supporters continue to advocate for the full actualization of official redress, we further help enlarge the horizons of justice by continuing the work of remembering and honoring survivors’ experiences, teaching others to honor the dignity of all survivors of gender-based violence, and working towards a world free from genderbased oppression and violence. Feeling the echoes of Kim Hak-soon halmeoni’s testimony from thirty years ago, we all sustain a living justice.

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