Migration 15

After two weeks we were sent to the comfort station. It was a wooden barracks with up to six separate rooms (…). The rooms were tiny, with sheets and blankets on the wooden floors. Soldiers kept coming and going – even after midnight.

Quoted in Rheinisches JournalistInnenbüro; recherche international e.V. (2008: 111). Original from Hwang Kum-Ju (2002/2003): Script for the Korean Council for the rehabilitation for victims of violence during WWII as well as Interviews on 20.10.2002 and 03.12.2003, Seoul. The Year (2002) is an approximation.

Hwang Kum-Ju (born ca. in 1920) was a Korean forced into prostitution in a brothel for Japanese soldiers. She had been promised work in a factory, but was instead deported to Manchuria.

Forced migration in Asia is often associated with Japanese colonial rule. By 1910, Korea had been fully colonised by Japan, with colonial rule ending in 1945 with the end of World War II and Japan's surrender. During World War II, Korean women were abducted and enslaved as forced prostitutes for the Japanese army. According to estimates by Asian NGOs, between 1932 and 1945 the Imperial Japanese Army abducted a total of 200,000 women from Korea, China, the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, East Timor and Indonesia and sent them to work in military brothels. In 1991, the Korean Council was formed to investigate the sexual abuse of conscripted women by the Japanese military. In 1993, the Japanese government apologised, but rejected claims for compensation (Rheinische Journalistinnenbüro & recherche international e.V. 2008: 109).

*Rheinisches JournalistInnenbüro & recherche international e.V. (2008): Die dritte Welt im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Unterrichtsmaterialien zu einem vergessenen Kapitel der Geschichte. *Björn Jensen (2015): Forgotten Sex Slaves – Comfort Women in the Philippines. Dokumentarfilm, 46min.

2002