`Comfort Women' as Unfading Flowers

Raped, shamed and silenced, hundreds of thousands of women from Korea and other countries were forced to serve in Japanese military brothels during World War II. Who can be justly blamed for the woes of these so-called ``comfort women''?

While the usual answer is Japanese colonial authorities, a novel argues that in fact it is the cowardly men of the male chauvinistic Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) who were unable to protect their own women from imperial Japan (1910-45), and the Korean government, which neglected the victims for over 60 years, that should be chastised before others.

Wu Bong-gyu, whose novel ``Nunggot (Snow on the Branches)'' was selected by The Korea Times' sister paper Hankook Ilbo as the representing piece for Korea's 50th Liberation Day, has brought ``Chinese Pink: The Spirit of a Downtrodden Joseon Woman'' for the country's 63rd year of independence.

The book pays homage to the victims and their unimaginable suffering and courageous survival. They are likened to ``paeraengiggot''(Chinese Pink or Dianthus chinensis), a light purple flower shaped like the upside down paeraengi hats worn by lowly Joseon commoners. While trampled and exploited, the women persevered and keep their heads up like wild flowers that don't wilt.

But ``Chinese Pink'' goes beyond the scope of conventional works dealing with this particular subject, and scrupulously criticizes Korea's own disregard for the victims since 1945. The novel begins by pointing out that using the euphemism ``comfort women'' endorses colonial Japan's efforts to conceal the horrid nature of the institution.

The victims themselves understandably prefer the expression over the more precise ― and explicit ― term ``sex slave''. Yet the women's shame and that of the Korean bystanders who employ it to ease their own guilt, the author seems to argue, are two different things. Korean readers will find themselves feeling far less comfortable than perhaps Japanese ones.

The novel reads more like an allegorical fable or song than a graphic historical drama, and rings with ``Arirang,'' the quintessential Korean folk melody evoking ``han,'' or pervasive sadness ― bidding farewell to a loved one, and making the arduous journey across mountains and the road of life.

Images of cascading mountaintops and the smallness of man in the bosom of Mother Nature suffuses, yet the novel by no means beautifies the tumultuous period. In the center of it all stands a female protagonist, Ok-a, who, more saint than human, understands the secrets of the universe and maps out her own destiny.

Adopted by Hoe-san, a Buddhist monk, Ok-a grows up enjoying an independence, education and respect most Joseon women were deprived of. Ok-a's muse is none other than Nan Sul-hun (1563-89), an esteemed Joseon poet known for dying at the young age of 27 after an unhappy marriage to an intellectually inferior man. She, like Ok-a, perished, her towering talent unable to blossom because of her gender.

When Japanese officials begin ``recruiting'' youths for labor in factories, mines, etc., Ok-a, unable to stand her romantic feelings for Hoe-san, voluntarily leaves to work in a factory in Japan. There, she refuses to be saved by I-gu, a man desperately in love with her, and ends up getting sent to a military brothel as punishment for teaching other Korean women ``hangeul'' (Korean alphabet).

At the brothel, Ok-a's beauty strikes the fancy of high-ranking generals. While she could have avoided serving up to 100 men a day by accepting their advances, Ok-a refuses. What drives her is not the conventional force of Korean nationalism, but her own rules of transcending boundaries set by nations and people. She derides the Joseon men, who, preoccupied with continuing their own skewed Confucian legacy, had allowed their country to collapse and their women to be exploited. She even goes as far to admire the fierce loyalty of Japanese soldiers for their homeland.

Moreover, the book paints Korean modern history in a few lines about a remote Korean village: ``1940: A man clubbed to death a female tiger caught in a trap. 1945: Four women were sent to Manchuria by Japanese troops. 1950: Three North Korean soldiers were shot to death while eating. The village housed just three homes.'' Korea surrendered powerlessly to Japanese imperialism like a trapped tiger and had to helplessly watch its people be torn away from home.
``Chinese Pink'' continues on to the rise of ``Great Leader'' Kim Jong-il, another name for Joseon's male chauvinism, and Syngman Rhee, not as South Korea's first president, but as a nameless Hawaiian immigrant capitalizing upon desperation.

Demonstrators, including former "comfort
women'' or World War II sex slaves, take part in the 827th regular rally
demanding justice in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, Aug. 20. / Korea
Times File

Following Japan's defeat in 1945, the surviving sex slaves were abandoned and many, uninformed of forthcoming attacks by UN forces, died. Those who survived were often unable to find their way home or committed suicide. Those who did make it through the years have only recently dared to speak of the past.

Civil organizations on behalf of the women demand that the Japanese government acknowledge the sexual slavery and examine the truth; apologize in the form of a national assembly resolution; include facts in school history manuals; construct an archive center and a monument to console the spirit of the dead; and punish those responsible for the slavery.

Unbending the women may be, but flowers are bound to perish with time. Until just action is taken, habitual sadness will linger, clawing at an already downtrodden soul.