One of my students wrote an essay on Jo Jung-rae, who is a famous and well-known author in Korea. A friend of mine read his epic ten-volume Hangang (The Han River) back during my second year here, and spoke of it with praise, but also seemed to find reading it onerous. Interestingly, she was studying Japanese at the time and her boyfriend told her to study it (but, then, he was studying Japanese then, too, and was quite good at it).
That’s ironic, because according to the essay my student wrote about his epic, Hangang, and about the author himself, he is filled to the brim with hate for Japan. Dokdo used in the standard way — “Japan has declared Dokdo is theirs”, he quotes him as saying, without any effort to define who “Japan” is — and claims that Koreans have suffered the worst of any colonial people. I swear, sometimes I think people who think this way need to go live in to the Congo for a year or two.
Well, googling for confirmation of some of the things in the essay, I happened across Antti’s post regarding Jo Jung-rae on holocaust and the Japanese occupation, and found some pretty disgusting claims:
How many Jews were killed by the Hitler government of Germany during the Second World War?According to the Jews the number was three or four million.
So how many of us Koreans were massacred and killed by the Japanese during the 36 years of Japanese colonialism? Is it three million? Or four million? Or is it six million? Unfortunately that estimate has not been made public or official. My estimate is between three and four million. With the writing of Arirang, I am going to make that figure concrete.
That task is one of the objectives of writing Arirang. With the fact that three or four million of us Koreans were killed by the Japanese, I’ll present a question to the readers and to the whole nation.
A school class of 60 children are getting five lashes on their palms. Which child of the 60 feels the most pain? I have made this question to several people, and all have immediately answered that it’s the first child. But it’s a wrong answer. The correct answer is the last child. It is because the first child is freed of the fear of lashing after receiving the strokes and can be at peace while the other children are lashed.However the 60th child has to feel the fear each time the children before him are lashed.
A hint for this answer can be found also in a proverb. “The one who is caned first is the luckiest.”
The Jews were killed on for three years, but Koreans were killed during a period of more than ten times of that, 36 years. Which people suffered more?
Even though we suffered horrors ten times more than the Jews, how is it possible that we still don’t know many of us Koreans died?
And how do we feel the tragedy of another people, Jews, as if it was our own and detest the German army while wanting to avoid talking about own tragedy, forgetting and avoiding it? Was it because the times were different? Or was it different?
When naked Jewish girls were dying in gas chambers, the girls of our people were getting gang raped in Southeast Asian jungles as troop following corps in a similar manner. So how have we become such ignorant masses?
We have been subjected to two kinds of mass hypnosis. First, we have been hypnotized by the Jews who have made numerous novels, movies and TV dramas to tell about their suffering for the whole world. Second, we have been hypnotized by the pro-Japanese, who seized every sphere of the society after the liberation and with their organized plot have made the talk about Japanese occupation sound ignorant and stupid.
Jews have maximized their suffering and while securing their self-esteem, and have used it as a power to develop their future. In reverse to them, we have been guilty of living in shame. But to know the history correctly, nothing is too quick or too late. Because nation is immortal.July 1994, Jo Jung-rae.
The mind boggles.
By the way, wasn’t the Holocaust more like six million Jews? That’s the number I seem to recall, and Wikipedia notes it’s the most commonly given one, though scholars range from 5 to 7 million. You’d think someone with such a “passion for history” might have bothered to look that one up. Unless, of course, he did, and then just made up a number in its place to fit his theory. Either way, I’m a little nervous about the way he’s seen as someone who can speak authoritatively about history. If he distorted this fact, so openly, and was not called to task by the public, what else has he distorted in ways that people are simply receptive to? How many other falsifications has he held up as fact? It sure doesn’t help to instill trust in his knowledge and/or intellectual honesty.
In any case, the interesting (and somewhat off-putting) story that I found in the student paper was that Jo, who apparently is the bestselling author in Korea, has a heck of an estate coming to his son and daughter-in-law. But, you see, writing his novels was really hard. He ended up in the hospital for a while after writing Hangang, after all. So, you, in order to ensure that his daughter-in-law appreciates the inheritance, he’s told her that she cannot receive it unless she copies out his ten-volume epic Hangang out by hand.
The monstrous egotism that stands behind assigning such a task simply baffles my mind. And that he would make his daughter-in-law — not even his own flesh and blood — do it, is just deeply off-putting… if this story is actually true. I mean, who does he think he is, the Yahwhist? She’s not supposed to have any career or aspirations of her own? She has to copy out what he’s already written, word-for-word, or else her husband is cut off from the family fortune? I can’t find any information online about this, of course, so it might be some apocryphal story that my student found online and included in his writing. (And, shockingly to me, he offers this as a positive example of the author’s “appreciation for hard work”… where, really, if it is true, it strikes me as just an appalling demand for deifying regurgitation, yet another onerous demand for respect from, oh yes, the one person it’s always okay to treat like crap, the daughter-in-law.)
Anyway, as I say, I don’t know if this is an apocryphal story, and I don’t even know if the daughter-in-law completed the task. The student hints that she undertook it, but then refuses to tell whether she completed it, urging me to look online for the answer.
Ugh. I think this is one of the first fiction books reviewed by my students to which I am not going to reply, “I wish I could read it!”
(And yeah, I know, Antti likes the series, and I know the author and the book are different, but… yeah, no, I just don’t think I could get into it, knowing what I know.
Gord — before you start accusing others of not doing their homework, you should do yours. You cannot just rely on common sense or on the Internet’s version of common sense these days, Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia is NOT an academic source! Anyone can contribute; you don’t need to be an academic historian with decent credentials and a reputation to preserve.
And what you will find, as soon as you start to look into it, is that the figure for the number of Jews killed varies enormously.
To take but one example, in Cecil Roth’s A History of the Jews, the author states: “Since 1939, perhaps as many as 6,000,000–certainly well over 4,000,000–Jews had perished out of the 9,000,000 who once lived in the lands through which the Nazi fury had swept–between one-quarter and one-third of the Jewish population of the world” (408).
So there is scholarly confirmation — Cecil Roth was a Zionist at Oxford University — for a figure of four million. And what to make of this anyway: a 2,000,000 person leeway? That is enormous, by any standards.
Indeed, from what I understand, the most academically respected figure is actually 5.1 million, which is the figure put forward in The Destruction of European Jewry by Raul Hilberg.
The main point here is somewhat different: Japanese war crimes have never been subject to the same scrutiny as German war crimes because Japan rapidly became an ally again of the US after World War II. Japan has never paid reparations for its misdeeds in the way that Germany has.
Tony,
I knew that the number varied enormously, and noted that. I’m currently enormously busy right now, grading tons of papers, so yeah, I took the shortcut on Wikipedia. I do view Wikipedia with some skepticism, though less than you: I think that a lot of people do check over the editorials, including a lot of Jewish people concerned with misinformation. I expect that the page on the Holocaust would be one of the most closely watched on the site, actually, and the most hotly contested in terms of editorial debate. I don’t know, but I’d guess. And the fact that “anyone can contribute” doesn’t mean that just anyone does. Most people never do. I would guess the number of people who repeatedly spend time working on it have at least some interest in keeping it sensibly objective. So: I don’t trust it 100% but it’s a useful reference when you have little time for other sources.
But as I noted, the figure does vary between 5 and 7 million, and the most commonly cited figure is 6 million.
Now, then: a LEEWAY of 2 million is a much more understandable thing than an UNDERSTATEMENT of 2 million, if you ask me, especially when one is claiming that ones nation suffered more because it took longer and more died. What he’s saying is that prolonged colonial sufferings are “more painful” than a short, highly effective and almost-continent-wide attempt at genocide.
That is what seems to be his main point: he seems to be saying that the Jews were lucky, and he explicitly says that the Koreans suffered ten times what the Jews suffered. I don’t know about you, but to me, that seems to be less about the nature of the analysis of Japan’s war crimes, and more about the promulgation of a special place for Korea’s claim as a victim, which seems to him to be possible only if the victimhood of the Jews in the Holocaust is discarded.
And that’s just a brief dissection. The Holocaust was three years, he says, but as one Korean commenter (IIRC) at the original post noted, the legacy of anti-Semitism has lasted for nearly a couple of millennia. The killings and sufferings of Jews in that period of time would be comparable, in many ways, to what he’s considering the sufferings of Koreans.
I agree, by the way, that the postwar repercussions for Japan were quite different than the postwar repercussions for Germany. But I don’t think that that is what is at the heart of this comment above. No, what’s at the heart of it is another claim for special-victim-status which, this time, relies on subtracting (at least) two million Jews from the murder of the Holocaust, and saying they were lucky because it was over quickly, and claiming that sustained colonial rule is worse and more dehumanizing than an intense and highly efficient genocide.
And worst, he says that this is partly the Jews fault for speaking loudly about this attempted genocide.
It’s deeply sad that the Western world was less than interested in the Korean plight after the war. The West should have cared. The West didn’t. But I still don’t think the outright, systematic murder of 5 or 6 million people ought to be reduced to 3 million, and then dismissed as nice and clean and quick, when compared to the deaths of people under colonial rule over a 36-year period. And by the way, how many massacres are claimed in Korea? How do we know he’s not inflating numbers there, as he deflated them in relation to the Holocaust?
I get the vague feeling this guy would count people dying of old age as being killed by the Japanese too, if it’d help him win an argument.
Wow. This Jo Jung-rae fellow is revolting.
Gord:
You accept a double standard: Koreans are not allowed to have a special-victim-status; Jewish people are.
The point Jo Jung-rae is making is that there were two Holocausts, if you like: one in the West and one in the East. The only one that gets sufficient air time is the one in the West.
As a Westerner, you know the most commonly cited figure for the number of Jewish victims of the Nazis and you are willing to defend this highball figure in spite of authoritative scholarship (including by Jewish historians) that suggests it is substantially lower than 6 million. Hilberg suggests it is 900,000 victims lower.
On the other hand, you do not know even “a commonly cited figure” for the number of Korean victims of the Japanese imperialists, and yet you dispute the testimony of a Korean who argues for the seriousness of these war crimes. You dispute this man’s testimony without undertaking any kind of historical research of your own on the subject because you are “enormously busy right now” and because you explicitly believe that this is “more about the promulgation of a special place for Korea’s claim as a victim” than about “the nature of the analysis of Japan’s war crimes”.
This is not serious commentary.
Tony,
I said Jews have a right to special victim status? No I didn’t. I don’t think *anyone* has a right to it, and in fact I feel that Israeli special-victim status is overused as an excuse for the kinds of things Israel does that I disapprove of. I disapprove of Jewish-special-victim status too. I think the world would be better if we all stopped vying for special victimhood, actually.
And I didn’t “defend” a highball number. I stated it as the most commonly cited one. I was noting that if Jo had cited that, it might be more understandable. Where he got the number 3 million is beyond me. A common misstatement might be understandable, but demoting it to a little over half what you give as the most academically respected number? What’s up with that?
And on the other hand, I don’t know a commonly cited figure for wrongful civilian deaths in Korea during Japanese occupation but, did you notice, Jo didn’t cite one either? Eh? He asks: “So how many of us Koreans were massacred and killed by the Japanese during the 36 years of Japanese colonialism? Is it three million? Or four million? Or is it six million? Unfortunately that estimate has not been made public or official. My estimate is between three and four million.” And then notes that his estimate is four million. But you know, he’s not an authority on this either: he’s a friggin’ novelist! I wouldn’t turn to James Mitchener for a lesson in history on the subject he’s written about, nor would I turn to Greg Bear for a serious account of the possibility of punctuated evolution.
I admit that there’s some possibility that highball number claims in connection to the Holocaust have been made for political reasons. And I am also very much open to similarly highball estimates having been made in Korea, both on purpose, and also by the more difficult task of defining “wrongful deaths” when an explicit machinery of genocide hasn’t been set up. It’s probably much harder to establish a number in Korea for many reasons. Which means that skepticism is warranted. Especially since it’s a fact of life that certain kinds of scholarship in Korea are verboten right now. People can be fired for the politics of their academic statements, especially when it comes to statements pertaining to the presence of the Japanese in Korea, and given the kind of nationalism that is unarguably present here, I think one would be right to view such claims with skepticism.
However, even given all of that, I do hold that claiming Japanese colonization of Korea a “Holocaust” is blatant misuse of the term. Sorry, but no systematic genocide was carried out there. The Japanese didn’t openly seek to kill all Koreans. They DID try to deracinate them, and that was awful; they DID seek to exploit them, and that was awful too. And most of this didn’t get much attention from the West, which is also awful. I am sympathetic to all of that. I think Japan got off way too easily.
However, colonial subjugation is a near-universal experience over the last few millennia. I’m not saying, “Get over it, Korea,” because that would be callous. I am saying that seeing it in perspective would help people to avoid overblown statements. Colonization has been with us throughout modern historical time. Many, many people have suffered from it.
Highly effective genocide, on the other hand, has not. Highly effective genocides (or deracinations) have occurred, of course. The original inhabitants of Southeast Asia aren’t there anymore. But within modern memory, not so many, and the most publicized one, unfortunately because it involves white people, is the Holocaust. The Nazis didn’t seek simply to subjugate and exploit Jews, to deracinate them. They sought to eliminate them from the face of the earth. That, to me, suggests a categorical difference.
It doesn’t justify special victim status for Jews. It denotes a categorical difference between the Japanese colonial experience in Korea, and the Holocaust. I should think that would be obvious to anyone. Korea’s situation would probably be more comparable to the experience of, say, India.
Jo is ignoring that and saying that Korea’s colonial experience is the same as or worse than the Holocaust.
As for whether this is serious commentary, I would like you to note that as I have mentioned before on my blog, I am VERY busy now and have no time for research. I also haven’t posted this publicly, since, after all, I do wish to do some more research on the subject… and because the politics involved in the subject urge caution. Anything more certain will simply have to wait until later on in the summer, though. If you have any reputable and consistent sources on the subject, you can feel free to recommend them.
In the meantime, this is not the Marmot’s Hole. Cordial disagreement will get your farther than sniping at me. The tone of your most recent comments has been, well, less-than-cordial.
I don’t require you to agree or praise me, and I welcome criticism. But statements like “this is not a serious criticism” verge on rudeness. Come on, play nice, even if you think I am a fool. I promise that I do at least attempt not to post lies and stupidities.
Gord:
You say both: “I disapprove of Jewish-special-victim status too. I think the world would be better if we all stopped vying for special victimhood, actually.”
And:
“[The Holocaust] denotes a categorical difference between the Japanese colonial experience in Korea, and the Holocaust. I should think that would be obvious to anyone.”
But the use of the term “Holocaust” is precisely a special victim category! Check out the scholarship, beginning with Wikipedia, if you like.
There you will see that many Jewish historians deny the use of the term “Holocaust” to cover any victims of the Nazis except Jews. What is more, many Jewish commentators cite the killing of Jews during the Second World War as uniquely horrific, despite the fact that there were 60 million deaths, of which at best only ten per cent were Jewish ones. You echo this, which is not surprising since most Westerners do, and it is then not surprising that non-Westerners do not share this common sense, and you end up disagreeing with them.
As far as playing fair goes, here is what I wrote:
“This is not serious commentary.”
Here, by way of contrast, is what you write about your Korean novelist:
“How many other falsifications has he held up as fact? It sure doesn’t help to instill trust in his knowledge and/or intellectual honesty.”
I guess I misjudged: I took your freewheeling criticism of Jo as the marker for what was acceptable for people submitting comments.
Tony,
Using the term “Holocaust” doesn’t mean I favour the Jews as special victims. Maybe commonsense is not so common sensical, but I’ve usually heard people use the term to include all the people who were slaughtered in the Nazi’s eugenics campaign — including gypsies, homosexuals, undesirable artists, and so on. And to be fair, the majority of people there were killed because they were Jewish.
The War’s millions and millions of dead were uniquely horrific too… they constituted the largest numbers of dead from any war ever. That is uniquely horrific, as the most numbers of combatants killed in any war. It’s impossible to imagine, the scope blows the mind.
And the Holocaust was uniquely horrific too, because it was the biggest and most effective genocidal campaign to date. But the difference is that the Jews were not enemy combatants. They were citizens killed by their own nation, or by the nation occupying their home nation, often with the active cooperation of their nationstate or the citizenry.
The biggest always gets (temporary) uniquely horrific status. Deal with it. We remember the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and, further back, the Black Plague, for a reason.
I don’t disagree with Jo disagreeing. He has the right to do so. The right to disagree is not the right to make up numbers, Tony. I cited a common number that was one million higher the most commonly accepted academic number, but well within the range of numbers bantered around among academics, in part for which you responded that I was obviously not serious.
Jo cited a number two million below the most academically respected number, and then implied that the Jews had inflated the number for political gain, whilst saying that Korea gets to claim special victim status for itself because an undetermined number of Koreans died by the hands of the Japanese during occupation, and also said that the Jews were lucky because at least they were killed quickly and cleanly, for which I pointed out falsification and intellectual dishonesty.
If you want to say that the two statements are equivalent, then go ahead. But it’s foolish.
Besides, Jo wants to look at victimhood? Okay, let’s look at victimhood. There’s not one record of a Japanese raid on a village in which women were kidnapped and made into comfort women. Not one eyewitness account. Those poor girls who ended up being gang-raped in the jungles of South East Asia… who sold them to the Japanese? Apparently, some were pimps. A minority were not, and were tricked into this or sold into this life. Who tricked them into coming to places where the Japanese rounded them up and shipped them off? Ah, you see, history is interesting, as long as you get to ignore the embarrassing parts. That’s right, research by the way of anecdotes by some of these survivors suggests that they ended up in Japanese hands because relatives and sometimes even parents sold them off. Why isn’t Jo castigating THOSE quislings, or the patent sexism that made that kind of action imaginable? And why do you think those women, whom we all agree are victims, weren’t on the agenda for decades at a time?
(Note: this is what I’ve been told by other people. I haven’t managed to find a book on the topic and of course nothing critical in this was has been available in any of the libraries I see, because I live in Korea. However, I’ve been told by several people who’ve got differing sources. If you have better research, do offer it.)
Why doesn’t Jo castigate the dictator who allowed Japanese sex tourism to thrive after the normalization of relations with Japan? Ah, yes, right… he was buddies with people who were buddies with Mr. Park, that’s right.
I’m sorry, but you’re not going to sway me by telling me I echo most Westerners and don’t listen to Easterners with enough respect. I know plenty of Easterners who’d say Jo was so full of shit it could be smelled from Jeonbuk. This is not an East versus West thing, it’s a nationalist self-pity thing, and it turns my stomach. (It also turns my stomach when Israel uses it to as implicit justification for all kinds of outright illegal and nasty behaviour.)
Here’s an interesting post from Foreign Dispatches on the rule of Japan, and how the popular Korean version doesn’t quite match up with what you tend to hear from people.
And yeah, I guess you misjudged. When I start claiming numbers of people 60% of the most commonly accepted numbers (or 50% of the most commonly cited number) died in Japanese-occupied Korea, and when I start cutting the number in half and and claiming about how so many more died in Scotland, and how much worse it was for Scotland since they lorded it over us for so much longer and continue to do so now, then you can come in swinging an axe as I did with Jo. Until then, yes, please try to be civil.
I’m very curious about your comments on the comfort women. Please post your sources!
And to think I pulled up this blog entry because I was trying to put off a little longer something that would be upsetting to me.
(The daughter-in-law bit was just awful.)
Tony,
I won’t be responding any more here, mostly just because I am short on time and have a week before I leave, but I will note one thing: the one friend I am still in touch with who talked about the book mentioned a title, and when I googled the title, it turned out to be a novel. She says it’s not a novel, but, well, maybe she’s remembering the introduction, or maybe she’s conflated it with something else she read. She told me there was also another book with a different title which she couldn’t remember, that said a lot of the same things. I was a little disappointed, considering how authoritatively she had told me of what she remembered from the book, to discover this uncharacteristic mixup, but I do know she’s smart enough to distinguish a novel from a study, and assume therefore she’s misremembering what book was the study.
That said, my interest is now piqued and I too want to make sure I know more of this before I actually make any kind of public post on the subject. Therefore, I’ll be doing some research later this summer, once I return from the six-week Workshop I’m attending. I trust you can wait till the end of summer for more info. If not, go ahead and do some research of your own, and let me know what you discover.
The old ruse, eh! State something totally outrageous and then claim you can’t locate the source for it.
At any rate, good luck with your research, Gord.
Tony,
No, I actually called my friend and asked her for information, and she told me something that was patently mistaken.
I don’t engage in ruses, because they’re childish and stupid. I took the word of a friend, and when time the came, she wasn’t able to offer me a creditable text. For this, you call me a liar? You know, I’d ban you for trolling, but I don’t care. If it gets you off, troll all you like. But be aware that you’re behaving like a troll, and don’t expect a civil response from now on.
And by the way, what I said was not “totally outrageous”. It’s much less outrageous than the claim that a ton of kidnapping raids were perpetrated on Korea for which records for none remain. You know, it’s a two-way street: you should be offering evidence for your claims, too. Contemporary Korean society is extremely credulous in general, believing in things like fan death or that kimchi cures SARS. I am NOT willing to take popular claims about comfort women at face value as a result. I haven’t any evidence about exaggeration, but considering the exaggeration I see about Dokdo, exaggeration about comfort women, so far after the fact, would be unsurprising in the least… in fact, I expect it.
IF the evidence shows something to the contrary, then fine, I’ll accept it. You accusing me of ruses here will not: it will only succeed in making me dislike you extremely.
Gord:
Here is a bibliography that might help in your future research.
Bibliography on Comfort Women
Asian Centre for Women’s Human Rights. 2000. From the Depths of Silence: Voices of Women Survivors of War. Quezon City: Asian Centre for Women’s Human Rights.
Chinkin, Christine. “Rape and Sexual Abuse of Women in International Law”. European Journal of International Law. Volume 15 (3) 1994. http://www.ejil.org/journal/Vol5/No3/art2.html#TopOfPage
Coomaraswamy, Radhika. “Reinventing International Law: Women’s Rights as Human Rights in the International Community”. The Edward A. Smith Visiting Lecturer Human Rights Program. Harvard Law School. September 1997. From the Gymnosperm. Database URL http://www.conifers.org/pi/ab/amabilis.htm
Dolgopol, Ustina. “Women’s Voices, Women’s Pain”. Human Rights Quarterly. 17(1) 1995. 127-154. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/human_rights_quarterly/toc/human_rights_quarterlyv017.html
Dolgopol, Ustina. Comfort Women: An unfinished Ordeal: Report of a Mission. Geneva: International Commission of Jurists. http://witness.peacenet.or.kr/e_comfort/library/god/god19.htm
Dudden, Alexis, “‘We Came to Tell the Truth’ Reflections on the Tokyo Women’s Tribunal.” pp. 591-602, Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4, December 2001
Hayashi, Hirofumi. “Survey of the Japanese Movement Against Wartime Sexual Violence” Peace Studies Bulletin, No. 20. June 2000. Peace Studies Association of Japan http://plaza18.mbn.or.jp/~modernH/13eng.htm
Hayashi, Hirofumi. Structure of Japanese Imperial Government involved in Military Comfort Women System. Prepared for the International Conference on Japanese Crimes Against Humanity. November 28-20, 2001. University of Riverside, California.
http://plaza18.mbn.or.jp/~modernH/13eng.htm
Hayashi, Hirofumi, “Japanses comfort women in Southeast Asia”. Japan Forum. 10(2) 1998. 211-19. http://plaza18.mbn.or.jp/~modernH/13eng.htm
Hayashi, Hirofumi, “The Japanese Movement to Protest Wartime Sexual Violence:
A Survey of Japanese and International Literature.” pp. 572-580. Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4, December 2001
McDougall, Gay J. International Legal Approaches toward the Issue of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery and the Liability of the Government of Japan. Seoul: Council for Korean Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. 1999.
Nakahara, Michiko, “‘Comfort Women’ in Malaysia.” pp. 581-589. Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4, December 2001
Positions Editorial Collective
1997 Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique. Special Issue 5(1). The Comfort Women: Colonialism, War, and Sex. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sajor, Indai, Lourdes (ed). Common Grounds: Violence Against Women in War and Armed Conflict Situations. Quezon City: Asian Center for Women’s Human Rights. 1998.
Totsuka, Etsuro. War Crimes Japan ignores: The issue of “Comfort Women”. Washington: University of Washington. 1999.
Yoshiaki, Yoshimi. Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II. New York: Columbia University Press. 2000
Other Readings
Berndt, Caroline M. “Popular Culture as Political Power: Writing the Reality of Sexual Slavery”. Journal of Popular Culture. 31(2) 1997. 177-87.
Boling, David. “Mass Rape, Enforced Prostitution, and the Japanese Imperial Army: Japan Eschews Legal Responsibility?” Columbia Journal of International Law. 32, 1995: 533-90.
Cho, Sangmie ed. Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military. New York: Schellstede Hornes and Meir. 2000.
Cinco, Celeste. Surviving War: a review of Common Grounds: Violence Against Women in War and Armed Conflict Situations, Indai Sajor, ed. Women in Action: Isis. 1999. http://www.isiswomen.org/wia/wia399/vaw00007.html
Dennis, Michael . “The Fifty-second Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights”. American Journal of International Law.91(1) 167-77.
Fernandez, Ida Mae V. ed. International Symposium of Filipino Comfort Women. Quezon City: Institute of International Legal Studies, University of the Philippines Law Center. 1994.
Fukai Haruhiro and Shigeko Fukai. “Japan in 1996: Between Hope and Certainty”. Asian Survey. 37(1) 1997. 20-28.
Go, Lisa. “Jugun Ianfu, Karyuki, Japayuki: A Continuity in Commodification”. Isis International. Information Pack- Series No. 3. 1992.
Kim-Gibson, Dai Sil. Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women. Parkersburg, Iowa: Mid-Prairie Books. 1999.
Lie. John. “The State as a Pimp: Prostitution and the Patriarchal State in Japan”. The Sociological Quarterly. 38(2) 1997. 251-63.
Piper, Nicole. “War and Memory: Victim Identity and the Struggle for Compensation in Japan”. War and Society. 19(1) 2001. 131-148.
Ryuji, Mukae. “Japan’s Diet Resolution on World War Two: Keeping History at Bay”. Asian Survey. 36(10) 1011-30.
Seaman, Natalie. “Historical Context: Japan’s Institution of Military Sex Slavery: 1937-1946″Rights and Democracy
Soh, Chunghee Sarah “Japan’s Responsibility Toward Comfort Women Survivors” ICAS Special Contribution, Institute for Corean-American Studies. No. 2001-0501-CSS.
Soh, Chunghee Sarah . “The Korean Comfort Women: Movement for Redress. Asia Survey. 36(12) 1996. 1226-40.
Soh, Chunghee Sarah “Uncovering the Truth about Comfort Women”. Women’s Studies International Forum. 21(4) 1998. 451-54.
Soh, C. Sarah, “Centering the Korean ‘Comfort Women’ Survivors” (Video Review of Silence Broken; Korean Comfort Women and Habitual Sadness: Korean Comfort Women Today), Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4, December 2001
Sullivan, Donna J. “Women’s Human Rights and the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights”. American Journal of International Law. 88(1) 152-67.
Watanabe, Kazuko. “Trafficking in Women’s Bodies, Then and Now: The Issue of Military “Comfort Women”. Women’s Studies Quarterly. 1999. 19-31.
News Articles
Hayashi, Hirofumi. “Why wartime documents destroyed” The Asahi Shimbun. July 18, 2002. http://plaza18.mbn.or.jp/~modernH/13eng.htm
Honda, Masakazu. “Asian Women’s Fund winds up, nothing solved”. Asahi Shimbun. March 16, 2002.
Huang, Sandy. “Japanese Legislators want apology”. Taipei Times. October 2, 2002.
Lee, May. “Japan’s Former Comfort Women Demand Justice”. CNN Interactive, World News. April 17, 1997.
Nakahara, Michiko. “Crying out for Comfort Still”. The Star Online. Monday, September 24, 2001
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Thanks for the list. I wonder why you didn’t just link to the original, though. Better form online to at least cite the source. Or did you think I’d reject it out of hand because of the agenda (spelled out here)? I won’t, but I also won’t consider it a full list of references.
Gord,
I am very surprised that you want to lecture me on “better online form”! But since you have, I will repeat my request for the source for your comments on the comfort women and their families.
Tony,
I didn’t “lecture” you on form. I just pointed out that linking is considered better form than copying-and-pasting. When you catch me copy-and-pasting, then you can tell me off. But this, this is your sniping, simpering, rudeness couched in an apparent inability to read what I’ve explicitly written above.