Fact: The first woman to break the taboo

The first to break the taboo was Kim Hak-soon, in 1991. Of Chinese origin, she was captured when she was 15 years old by Japanese troops in Beijing and forced to prostitute herself in military brothels in Andong, Beijing and Chulbyuk-jin before being released after the Japanese defeat, in 1946. Like many other 'comfort women' -the euphemism used for decades-, Kim was condemned to poverty: there were few who got married after the war, fearful that their partners knew their past , and the majority was condemned to infertility by the injuries produced by 10 hours of daily prostitution, in many cases. In 1990, when democracy loomed over Korea, ending decades of military dictatorship, it decided to reveal its terrifying past, awakening a society that until then had ignored the fate of its women during the war. According to some historians, the phenomenon of 'women of comfort' could amount to the Holocaust in terms of prostitution and rape in times of war : sexual violence on an industrial scale, organized and regulated, with the female collective as the sole recipient of torture, confinement and sexual brutalization.

The Japanese command authorized the system to minimize violations on the battlefield -which generated resentment towards the occupiers- and to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, but due to the lack of prostitutes, women with promises of employment in factories were attracted, paying their relatives or even kidnapping them. The identity of the slaves was canceled: they were assigned a Japanese name that was written on the tablets, at the entrance of each brothel . The uniformed ones chose a name and paid to those who ran the brothel - often military, sometimes sympathetic - to have sex with them. Some survivors reported that they could have 30 contacts per day. In the mornings it was the turn of the soldiers, in the afternoon the officers. "They provided them with passports and identity cards to move them through their colonies in convoys and military ships, they were part of the military inventory, perishable goods," explains the director of the House of Share, Ahn Shinkwon. They passed from one base to another as long as the military doctors considered them suitable: otherwise, they were usually executed. An estimated 40% of them committed suicide after the Second World War, lost and traumatized in strange lands when the Japanese left the bases, unable to return to their places of origin. Lee Ok-sun was captured with 18 years and taken to a Japanese airfield in Yenji (China) where she was raped by soldiers. From there she was displaced to other military brothels: after the war, she stayed in China until June 2001, the House of Sharing located and repatriated her to Korea to house her in the residence. Today, the old lady is an icon of women's comfort struggle. He receives in the residence with an unthinkable vitality for his 92 years of age: at his side, the combative Kang Il-chul, with 91 years, recites his claims before a group of local politicians. Beside her is Park Ok-sun, 95, forced to prostitute herself for four years: she did not return to Korea until 2001. In total, nine survivors live in the residence. "Of the 239 survivors who made themselves known, about 50 have passed through our refuge," continues the director. According to Shinkwon, only about 30 victims returned to Korea after the war. "Many died without knowing how to return, others committed suicide or were killed, there are testimonies of forced suicides and, above all, of terrible travel conditions: of the 36 comrades of the barracks of Park Ok-ryun, only two survived the hardships of the return "

Once back, in the context of the Korean War and the dictatorship, denouncing its past only amounted to social stigma. "The majority died in indignity and poverty, a good part remained in their host countries, they suffered the double misfortune of being forced into the sex industry, subjected to the most atrocious hardships and then abandoned to their fate. terrified thinking that if someone knew their past, they would be abandoned again, repudiated by society, "continues Dudden. In 1991, the courage of Kim Hak-soon led many others to denounce in a demonstration that, in its origins, was only frequented by victims, putting an end to half a century of silence protected by the North American protection to Japan, which caused that Tokyo He was embroiled in his denial of History. In the last 26 years, the protest has been held every week : Yoon Mi-hyang herself has been attending for 14 years. "The government should have started the agreement required by the grandmothers, not one more comma or less, as it is worded, it must be invalidated," he says. The demands of the 'halmoni' can be read on the butterfly-shaped banners that raise the schoolchildren in the demonstration; "Official apology." "Legal Compensation"; "Let's raise monuments to your memory"; "Let the truth be known"; "That war crimes be admitted"; "That those responsible be punished"; "Let it be written in textbooks." "Our intention is also to raise awareness about a problem that continues to affect the whole world, the systematic abuse of women in times of war, grandmothers are so old that they can not come, so it's only fair that we continue to come in their name. "explains Yoon. "At the beginning there were only victims, the type of attendees changed over time, as consciousness spread, only students began to come from 2015, before the problem was known, but we must accept our history to create a future best". The historical memory seems guaranteed by the youngest protesters. A girl of no more than 12 years carries a banner with the motto "let's give pride and human rights back to grandmothers". Another holds another card where it can be read: "Japan must apologize". "We can not stand it, we want to apologize now," they shout from the podium, chanted by the audience, the school children who have taken turns speaking.

Since the grandmothers denounced the violations, the dispute has poisoned relations between Tokyo and Seoul. Japan considers them simple prostitutes who charged for their services. "After the first protests, the Japanese government published the Kono Declaration in 1993, where it accepted responsibility, apologized and promised to include the matter in its history books, but no compensation was provided," explains Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki, from the National University of Australia, by 'email'. "In 1995, a fund was created that was funded by private donations, not by government money: some former 'comfort women' in Korea felt that this reflected the inability of the Japanese state to take responsibility, and what is worse, a setback arose at that time. A violent reaction, which tried to prevent the 'comfort women' from being named in the lessons of Japanese history.A key figure in this movement was Shinzo Abe.As Prime Minister, Abe has not been able to rescind the 1993 Kono Declaration, because this would cause a diplomatic problem with South Korea and the United States, but it has done everything in its power to undermine its credibility in the eyes of the Japanese public. " For Morris, the background of the problem is that Japan denies a documented reality. "The position of Abe's government is that there are no official documents showing that 'comfort women' were forcibly recruited, which is historically completely misleading, although very few survived the war, there are official Japanese documents suggesting the possibility of forced recruitment, and there is a great deal of other historical evidence (testimonies of victims, testimonies of eyewitnesses, including allied prisoners of war, sworn testimony of court cases, etc.) that show that tens of thousands of women were recruited for the 'comfort women' system by various methods, including deception, threats and force, and the agreement signed in 2015 did nothing to prevent Japan from continuing to deny what happened, which is why it is rejected by most of the South Koreans. "

According to the surveys, 75% consider that the dispute has not been closed; 53% of Japanese share that opinion. For those responsible for the House of Sharing, part of the problem lies in the historic protectionism of the United States to Japan and in the emergence of a Japanese revisionist right, capable of reclaiming the imperial past and defending the war criminals, protected by Abe. "When groups of Japanese students announce on social networks that they intend to visit us, the campaign of the rightists is so aggressive that they are often forced to cancel the trip," Shinkwon explains. "Individually, many accept what happened but at the governmental level, the reality of sexual slavery is denied."