One of the last of South Korea’s “comfort women”
Kim Bok-dong 1926-2019
Kim Bok-dong spent 25 years campaigning for justice for the tens of thousands of women who were forced into sexual slavery by the occupying Japanese army before and during the Second World War. Although she did much to draw attention to the atrocities perpetrated on the “comfort women”, she died last month, aged 92, still furious that the Japanese government had not (she felt) properly atoned for this institutionalised mass rape.
Kim Bok-dong was born in Yangsan, in what is now South Korea, in 1926. Korea was then a Japanese colony, and when she was 14, officials came and took her away. They told her mother she was being conscripted to work in a textile factory. Instead, she was taken to work in one of the “comfort stations” established to “service” Japanese troops. Designed to deter soldiers from raping civilians, and stop them getting venereal diseases, “comfort stations” were military brothels – but it is estimated that 200,000 “comfort women” were not prostitutes but slaves, who were beaten, raped and degraded day and night for years. Many died. “On weekdays I had to take 15 soldiers a day,” she later recalled. “On Saturdays and Sundays it was more than 50. We were treated worse than beasts.” At one point, she and some other girls drank strong alcohol in an attempt to kill themselves, but they were found unconscious and had their stomachs brutally pumped. When she awoke, she vowed she would live, so that she could bear witness.
Yet when she returned home aged 22, she lied even to her family about what happened, said The Times – only telling her mother, to explain why she would never marry. She said nothing until 1992, when other “comfort women” started to talk. “Articulate and outspoken”, with bright eyes but an indelible air of sadness, she became one of South Korea’s most vocal campaigners for justice for “comfort women”. In 2015, Tokyo did issue an apology, but many felt it was inadequate, as senior Japanese politicians continued to insist that many of the “comfort women” had been working voluntarily. She left her estate to a fund to help victims of sexual violence in war, and at her funeral, mourners carried the yellow paper butterflies she had used to symbolise the freedom that she wanted for herself and other women like her.