Throughout man's existence there have been things that just naturally seem to go together. Peanut butter and jam, perogies and cabbage rolls, tool and die, rock and roll, rub and tug, love and marriage, sweet and sour, death and taxes, aces and eights, Simon and Garfunkel, politics and corruption, rape and pillage.
Every war that I know of has been a falsely labeled example of pillage on a grand scale. And I doubt there are any examples that didn't include rape with the pillaging. Maybe I'm using that pesky logic again but it seems to me the most fundamental and important of human rights is the right to live. Nothing is more sensible or inalienable. You can't even BE human without life so taking life away represents a violation of EVERY human right! The right to not be raped is also an important one, but there is no argument that can be made that will convince me it is on the same level as the right to live. So it follows that when soldiers are violating the most basic and important of human rights, life, and killing indiscriminately, it messes with their heads. So much so that it is an acceptable, (not in the sense of forgivable but understandable), leap of clouded reason to assume that the enemy's right to not be raped is also suspended under the same circumstances by which their right to life has been.
Why wouldn't it be? If there is a sign at a pool reading, "Don't pee in the pool," it just wouldn't be solid logic to assume that exchanging the water for acid or adding piranha WOULD be acceptable. However, if there were signs reading, "Adding piranha and/or exchanging the water for acid have been temporarily sanctioned by the ruling government to facilitate more efficient pillage," then a bather might make a sensible assumption that a little pee in the pool might not be frowned upon so much.
Seriously, how can one be expected to recognize the sense in moral and ethical decorum in regards to lesser issues while ignoring the most important? And how is it, then, I thought, that in Korea, the people seem to be concentrating on lesser offenses more than the major ones perpetrated upon them by the Japanese? So I have looked into it and, much like other expats who live here, I am immune to the training the average Korean receives on this point, so I thought I'd come up with a much more objective idea of the "comfort woman" phenomenon. It was interesting to study. And for a guy like me, who is not adverse to a good conspiracy theory, it was that much more interesting. I will not say there were no women mistreated by the Japanese here in Korea and forced into sexual services. That would be ignoring all the information I have read. But there were mitigating factors in this issue that made it actually less, rather than more of an issue in my estimation.
I have seen several examples of the Korean public consciousness in action during my years here and it works much the same as a wave. "Hanlieu" or "Hallyu" is a rough translation which literally means "flow of Korea." They apply it to their movies and music flowing all across Asia. I apply it to other things. I've blogged on them before. Like when there were some phony credentials found belonging to some foreign teachers here. The flow of skepticism was like a tidal wave, (for the purposes of this article, I won't say "tsunami."), across the nation. "EVERY foreigner's degree could be phony! Let's RE-verify them all!" So every foreigner went in and had their degrees verified at their expense. The end result was that even KOREAN credentials started getting checked. That was when they really found the witches they were hunting for. But the wave dissipated when the country realized that famous Korean museum curators, scientists, artists etc. were not the witches they were hunting for, because they weren't foreign.
Then the Canadian child molester. "All foreigners could be child molesters! Let's install cams in every classroom and have mandatory STD checks and criminal background checks!" FFWWWWOOOOOMMMM a new wave swept across the country. And it sort of worked! There were lots of child molesters caught on the cameras installed in Kindergartens, hagwons and such. Only they were filming KOREAN workers mistreating the kids. Crash! That wave dissipated.
One of the mitigating factors in the comfort women phenomenon that you find when researching is that a LOT of comfort women were pimped out by Koreans. And not just for the Japanese. For Americans too. Also, many of the comfort women were not coerced by the Japanese or by Koreans. A comfort woman could make, it is reported, 750 Yen a month. At the same time that stat was recorded, a house in Korea could be purchased for 1000 Yen. YEAH! And even today, if you ask a Korean woman what she looks for in a man, the most common answer is money. I don't think it would be completely out of line to wonder if the Korean gals were the same in the days of Japanese occupation and if, for at least some of them, they didn't have the best years of their lives! And STILL might be wealthy because of them. THIS is probably the most interesting take on the situation I found. Written by a Korean who lived and studied in Japan. Hmmm...
I have lived in two apartments here in Korea that were owned by an old couple. I was meant to assume the owner was the man but in fact, as I got to know them better, and they got to realize that confiding in me couldn't possibly hurt them, they told me that the woman owned the place. I have no doubt that across this land there is a SHITLOAD of real estate owned by couples with money from the wife's work as a comfort woman and a plausible back story of the husband's work as a plumber or whatever being what financed the purchase of the house. There are probably guys who married comfort women and never really had to work that hard for the rest of their lives. There ARE possible good things that came of the comfort women for both them and their fake breadwinner husbands. And they didn't have to come up with the cover stories until recently. Honestly, what was a man or a woman supposed to do to survive, much less own a home? But then, another wave sloshed across Korea: Christianity. FFFWWWWWOOOOOSSSHHHH!!! Now it's shameful to have done anything to co-operate with the Japanese during that time to survive, especially sinful things!
In Park Yuha's "Comfort Women of the Empire," it is reported that in 1995 compensation was offered by Japan. 61 surviving Korean comfort women who accepted it were named publically and shamed as prostitutes and traitors. FFFWWWWOOOOOMMMM!
To me the most disturbing thing I find when I look into the comfort woman issue is the Korean wave being used for mind control. Park Yuha's book was banned and she's pretty much persona-non-grata in Korea now, much like those comfort women who took compensation. But the Japanese do stuff like that too. I absolutely HATE people trying to force their beliefs onto other people! To keep them from hearing or seeing things that are just not good for them. I have to say, the Korean internet censorship is far more extreme example of this than that of Japan. It rivals China's internet spying! Korea has even repeatedly tried to force Japan to alter the content of the books they use in their schools. It is not entirely out of the question that the situation of the comfort women has been systematically exaggerated over the years and foisted, wave-like, onto Koreans so that it is taken as fact.
This is not in defence of any war time rapists in any country, but ever since coming to Korea in '97, I've heard far more about the comfort women issue than the Japanese attempts to wipe out the Korean culture as well as the people. It's hard to get an accurate number but 5,400,000 Koreans were conscripted for labour at the beginning of Japanese rule in Korea. And the Japanese have an uncanny knack for maltreatment of conscripted labourors. Throughout Asia the Japanese have become known for this. The Burma-Thai railroad - probably around 60,000 people died from Japanese maltreatment. In Indonesia, 300,000 up to 1,500,000. 1-200,000 dead in Manchuria. This is not even including people who were just, plain massacred by the Japanese. Just forced labour deaths. In Korea the total can only be estimated but it's somewhere between 270,000 and 810,000.
That's a mind-boggling number of people! Mind boggling! And added to the number of people massacred it's even higher. Now, Japan HAS made reparation payments. Here is a list. It's probably important to note that it was compiled by a Japanese person. But even so, if you took the number of people who died during forced labour to be a reasonable figure of half a million people, (somewhere in the middle of min and max estimates), the total of 500,000,000 dollars Japan paid Korea would equate to approximately a thousand bucks a death. Not including the ones where were just stabbed or shot or killed in other brutal manners that soldiers are commended for using. The internet has some grisley photos that I'm not going to post here.
And even if it were given directly to the families of the people who died, (which, of course, it wasn't), it occurs to me that this is an incredibly low sum of money. It is most likely that this has occurred to every Korean person who is aware of this stat as well. So it is my informed opinion that, yes, the comfort woman story is a true one, though more than likely exaggerated by Koreans in order to get a little bit more reparation money from the Japanese. Simple as that.
So let's see, 46 former comfort women remain alive. The new settlement is for 8.3 million. That works out to $180,434.78 per lady. If that money were to go directly to the comfort women, (which, of course, it won't), that just might be a more realistic number, but nowadays with people being sued for millions of bucks for spilled coffee, it doesn't seem like it's even close to fair. I think the more important part was an official, on record appology.
Again, not in defence of rapists anywhere, but it seems to me that I've heard of this being done by soldiers of many countries in many wars. And I can understand the complaints of the Japanese when they say it is a bit unfair to single them out. Let's see, countries who have had their OWN comfort women during war time... starting with the Vikings, Saxons, Gauls, Romans, all the way to Germans, Russians, Americans, Brits, French, Chinese, and... wait for it... the Koreans. It seems there are cases of Korean soldiers raping Vietnamese women during the Vietnam war. And there are more than 46 remaining survivors. Sure, the stories of the Vietnamese could be exaggerated. Maybe they are seeing the money Korea is getting and they want a chunk of it. Who knows?
The point I want to make is two-fold: It seems like an army doesn't just run on its stomachs, as Napoleon famously said. He was close, but a few inches high. Every time there's war, there seems to be comfort women for the soldiers. What would pillaging be without the rape? In none of these situations will we ever know the entire truth or be able to gauge the proper compensation. But the major point is, a little bluntly, why bother? Why doesn't anyone see that this is just one symptom of a far greater problem? Why don't we put as much diplomatic effort into a solution to the problem that CAUSED all these women to be raped? And I don't even think that's war. I think it's greed and selfishness. I bet if you asked any true rape victim comfort woman from any war what she would do with a massive, multi-billion dollar settlement, she probably wouldn't want to waste it on bangles and bon-bons. She'd give it all away to ensure that no more greedy assholes start any more wars that invariably will lead to future people suffering the same trauma as she did. It ain't the rape we should be so concerned about, it's the pillaging.
Leastaways, that's what I reckon.
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