The “Comfort Women” & Contemporary Forms of Sexual Violence Against Women
Organizers: BC ALPHA, AWWA, AKCSE
Tuesday, 25 March 2014 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EDT)
Vancouver, BC
An Evening Workshop:
The “Comfort Women” and Contemporary Forms of Sexual Violence Against Women
During and in the years leading up to World War II, the Japanese Army mobilized more than 200,000 women from across Asia into sexual slavery. The victims were euphemistically referred to as “Comfort Women,” and the rape centers as “Comfort Stations.” Since 1991, survivors have publicly come out with their stories to demand justice in the face of denials by the Japanese government, and have led one of the longest standing protests in recorded history. Their movement has been a catalyst in international efforts to raise awareness about sexual violence against women in times of both conflict and supposed peace.
Through presentations and small-group discussions, we will explore the “Comfort Women” issue as not merely an historical phenomenon but as a manifestation of systemic oppression that is directly connected to contemporary forms of sexual violence against women worldwide.
Keynote Speakers
(Bios and Presentation Abstracts Below)
Dr. Leonora Angeles
Associate Professor of Community and Regional Planning and Women’s and Gender Studies
Angela Lytle
Executive Director, Women’s Human Rights Education Institute
Centre for Women’s Studies in Education, OISE/UT
Jude Lee
Women’s Global Solidarity Action Network, Founder
The Korean Council for Women Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan, International Committee Member
Featured Speakers
Jassy Bindra
Human Trafficking Coordinator, RCMP
Katie Streibel
Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter
Suzanne Jay
Asian Women’s Coalition to End Prostitution
Anastasia Gaisenok
Project Coordinator, Justice Education Society
Heather Evans
Education Director, BC ALPHA
Carly Teng
MA Candidate, Asia Pacific Policy Studies, UBC
Program
6:00-6:10 Introduction and Overview of Program
6:10-6:30 Background on “Comfort Women” – Heather Evans and Carly Teng
6:30-6:50 Jude Lee – Beyond “Comfort Women”: Military Camptowns in South Korea
6:50-6:55 Q&A
6:55-7:15 Dr. Leonora Angeles – The Sexual Slavery of “Comfort Women”: Forced Intimate Labour During Wartime
7:15-7:45 Facilitated Small Group Discussions & Pizza Break
7:45-8:05 Angela Lytle – Intersectional Discrimination, Systemic Oppression, & the Politics of Trauma: Japanese Military Sexual Slavery is Not ‘Just an Historic Issue’
8:05-8:10 Q&A
8:10-8:40 Presentations and Panel Discussion: Jassy Bindra, HIlla Kerner, Suzanne Jay, Anastasia Gaisenok
8:40-8:45 Closing Remarks
8:45-9:00 Action Items & Unstructured Discussion
Keynote Speaker Bios and Abstracts
Dr. Leonora Angeles
Associate Professor of Community and Regional Planning and Women’s and Gender Studies
The Sexual Slavery of “Comfort Women”: Forced Intimate Labour During Wartime
“Wars waged by men, based on militarist and/or ethno-nationalist agendas, often consider women’s bodies as “fair game” in the war booty collection of warring parties. At the core of exploring the links between militarism, nationalism and sexual slavery in the case of Filipina, Korean, Indonesian and other Asian “comfort women” during World War II is the need to examine how women’s bodies and feminine identities are exchanged, “valued” and appropriated for the “intimate labour” they provide. While there are some differences between contemporary forms of “intimate labour” (e.g. care work, domestic work, foreign brides, sex trafficking) and this form of wartime sexual slavery in terms of the circumstances and conditions under which women’s bodies are priced, commodified and degraded through violence, they share common foundations in the social acceptance of gendered injustice and oppression that capitalize on women’s vulnerabilities. There are historical continuities between this war-time phenomenon and the contemporary forms of “violence against women” suffered by migrants from the very same countries of origins as comfort women, now doing various forms of paid, unpaid and forced forms of intimate labour in Japan. Current campaigns to cast the injustice suffered by Asian comfort women as “human rights violations” and seek redress for this injustice should not lose sight of resurgent citizen-activism and active solidarities between women in Japan, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines.”
Dr Leonora C. Angeles is Associate Professor at the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning and Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. Before coming to Canada, Dr Angeles is an active member, volunteer and consultant to a number of Philippine-based women’s organizations in the 1980s and 1990s. She wrote the Philippine Country Report “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Women and Sex Trafficking in the Philippines” for the 1993 UN Satellite Meeting on Sex Trafficking in Asia. She has supervised a number of graduate student research projects on the topic of intimate labor and gender issues.
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Angela Lytle
Executive Director, Women’s Human Rights Education Institute
Centre for Women’s Studies in Education, OISE/UT
Intersectional Discrimination, Systemic Oppression & the Politics of Trauma: Japanese Military Sexual Slavery is Not ‘Just an Historical Issue’
In order to understand the many nuances of the social, political and cultural realities that supported the existence of systematized sexual slavery for the Japanese military during the Asia Pacific War/World War II, and immunity for these actions in the post-war period up until today, it is crucial that we understand that this issue is not something that happened in an isolated historical past, but as a particularly acute example of the systemic oppression and intersectional discrimination that continues to exist all around us. Insights from radical feminist perspectives on trauma, which seek to understand the experience of trauma within its socio-political context, and perspectives from human rights-based understandings of intersectional discrimination and the right to reparation will highlight the complexity of this issue, seeking to open the way for making connections that call us to situate our work on this issue within the greater context of ongoing gender discrimination, colonialism and systemic oppression.
Angela Lytle is the Executive Director of the international Women’s Human Rights Education Institute (WHRI), a joint program between the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education (CWSE) at OISE/UT, and the Fundación Justicia y Género of Costa Rica, focussed on education and activism using the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). After working in Japan as a high school teacher, she spent several years living in South Korea, where she worked with the support movement for survivors of sexual slavery, and she has continued to do educational and activist work around this issue. She is a feminist activist and educator, and is currently conducting her PhD research on embodied learning and feminist human rights education.
angelasabrina.lytle@utoronto.ca
www.learnwhr.org
www.politicsoftrauma.com
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Jude Lee
Women’s Global Solidarity Action Network, Founder
The Korean Council for Women Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan, International Committee Member
Beyond “Comfort Women”: Military Camptowns in South Korea
Suddenly, the peace statue located in the Glendale Park, New Jersey has become a source of controversy. To keep it or not is the main topic in major Korean news outlets. The “Comfort Women” issue is rarely inserted into headline news. This statue, called the “Statue of Girls” in Korean, was built on the occasion of the 1000th Wednesday Protest, a protest that has been held since 1992 when the then Japanese Prime Minister visited Korea demanding the settlement of the “Comfort Women” issue. It has been 22 years since the first Wednesday Protest began. During this time, the registered numbers of survivors have decreased from 243 to 50, and the conservative Abe government outright denies the “Comfort Women” system.
After the Japanese Imperial government surrendered in 1945, the US military came to the united Korea. As soon as the US military withdrew in 1949, the Korean War broke out and was the central reason for the US military returning to Korea. Now the US military has occupied Korea for more than 60 years, with more than 60 military bases in South Korea. In order to cater to the US military, the South Korean government has facilitated two different forms of sex service, “blanket troops” and “military camptowns.” As the South Korea economy has grown, the demographics of women in those services have changed. The South Korean government has started issuing an “entertainment visa” under the category E6, mostly to Russian and Southeast Asian women (specifically Filipino women). In this way, the South Korean government has proactively expanded and stabilized the sex industry around US military bases.
This presentation highlights the similarities and differences between the South Korean government helping and operating the US military camptowns and the Japanese Imperial government establishing and expanding the “Comfort Women” system. By doing so, it will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the South Korean government’s passivity in terms of settling the “Comfort Women” issue, as well as revealing the oxymoronic attitude the South Korean government has been taking on the US military camptown issue. Further, from the social justice activism undertaken by the two major “Comfort Women” organizations, the House of Sharing and the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, we can study possible methods with which to tackle the US military camptown issue.
“위안부” 제도를 넘어: 한국에 위치한 미군기지촌
미국 뉴저지 주에 위치한 글렌데일 공원에 세워진 소녀상에 대한 의견이 분분하다. 철거 할 것이냐 말 것이냐에 대한 뉴스가 거의 매일같이 한국 언론을 장식하고 있으나 뉴스 속에서 당사자인 할머니들의 목소리는 이제 들을 수 없다. 한국어로 소녀상 그리고 영어로 평화의 동상으로 불리는 이것은 1,000차 수요시위-1992년 당시 일본 총리가 한국을 방문했을 때, “위안부” 문제를 해결하라고 일본대사관 앞에서 요구 한 첫 시위-당시 일본대사관을 마주보는 자리에 세워졌다. 22년이 지난 지금, 등록한 한국 국적의 생존자들의 수는 어느새 243명에서 50명으로 줄었으며, “위안부”와 관련된 아베 일본정부의 부인은 계속되고 있다.
1945년 일본이 세계 제 2차대전에서 패망한 후, 미군이 한국(남북한)에 입성하게 된다. 1949년 미군이 철수 후, 한국전쟁이 발발하자 미군은 1950년 이후 현재까지 60개가 넘는 미군기지를 보유, 60년이 넘는 세월 동안 한국에 주둔하고 있다. 한국전쟁 발발 전과 후에 한국정부는 미군을 접대하기 위해 소위 담요부대라고 불리는 형태와 기지촌으로 불리는, 두 가지 다른 형태의 성 산업을 채택하게 된다. 한국의 경제 위상이 높아지면서, 이곳에서 일하는 여성들 그룹에도 변화가 생겼으며 이를 위해 한국정부는 엔터테인먼트 비자인 E6를 1994년부터 러시아 및 동남아시아 여성들 (특히 필리핀) 에게 발급하기 시작한다. 이렇듯, 한국정부는 주도적으로 미군 기지촌 주변에 성 산업을 확장시키는데 적극적인 역할을 해왔다. 그리고 이는 아직도 현재 진행 중이다.
이 번 발표는 현재도 한국에서 성업적인 미군 기지촌 주변의 성 산업이 진화되고 있는 과정 속에서 한국정부의 역할이 일본 식민제국주의 정부가 “위안부” 제도 창설 및 운영을 하는 과정에서 취했던 역할과 유사한 점과 그 차이점은 무엇인지 조명한다. “위안부” 문제해결에 있어 피해국의 입장에 속한 한국정부가 미군 기지촌을 통해 가해자/열 성적인 조력자로서의 역할을 수행하고 있는 사실을 드러내는 것은 “위안부” 문제 해결에 소극적인 한국정부의 태도를 이해하는데 매우 효과적이며 일방적으로 일본정부만을 비난하는 한국정부의 모순적인 태도를 동시에 드러내는데 반드시 필요한 작업이다. 또한, 일본 식민제국주의 군대에 의해 창설 운영되었던 “위안부” 제도와 이를 해결하기 위해 노력하고 있는 대표적인 두 단체인 나눔의 집과 정신대대책협의회의 활동을 통해 미군 기지촌 문제의 해결책을 모색해 볼 수 있다.
Jude Lee has been working on the “comfort women” issue since 2008, mainly focused on the contexts of racism, capitalism, and androcentric militarism. She also connects this issue to US military camptowns in South Korea today. She’s an International Committee Member of the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan, and has represented the Korean Council at the United Nations. She is the main translator for the book Over There, published by Duke University Press.
Organizers
BC ALPHA, AWWA, AKCSE
BC Association for Preserving and Learning the History of WWII in Asia (BC ALPHA) is a non-profit organisation dedicated to fostering understanding, redress, and reconciliation related to the tragedies of WW II in Asia. For more information on BC ALPHA, visit www.alpha-canada.org.
UBC Awareness for WWII in Asia Club (AWWA) is the only youth-led group in BC that focuses on the often overlooked history of WWII in Asia. Through community events, on-campus gatherings, and outreach activities, members learn about and raise awareness for social justice issues, historical controversies, and peace. Visit their Facebook group here.
Association of Korean-Canadian Scientists and Engineers (AKCSE) is the UBC chapter of an international non-profit organization founded in 1986. It provides a network of support and resources for the professional development of students interested in science and engineering. Visit their Facebook page here.
