Posing a Question
During the second Sino-Japanese, Pacific War (1937-1945), the Japanese military established and operated comfort facilities to provide sexual services for their soldiers, to prevent sexually transmitted diseases for their soldiers, and to prevent the leaking of military secrets. The Japanese comfort woman system is based on a long history of sexual dominance and pillage of helpless women by the state, men, patriarch and sex traffickers. This comfort woman system did not disappear with the defeat of Japanese imperialism but rather it expanded in the form of civilian comfort women, Korean comfort women, and US comfort women well into the 1960s.
With the emergence of the comfort woman issue in 1999, activist groups and researchers who worked on the issue were not aware of the entire history of the comfort women in Korean history. They have produced incorrect theories and fantastical images that dominate the minds of most Koreans. They do this by only dealing with the history of Japanese comfort women during the second Sino-Japanese Pacific War, without any mention of the long history of the comfort women system.
Gisaeng system of the Joseon Dynasty
During the Joseon Dynasty from the 15th to the 19th century, a wide range of women of the lowest class, such as a maidservant at private residences and that of the government facilities were treated like slaves. The men who owned or dominated during this period frequently abused their positions to satisfy their sexual desires. A Gisaeng played the role of singing and dancing at government banquets or events, as well as providing sexual consolation to the leaders of counties and prefectures. They even provided this entertainment for guests of honor. This was called bed service. The civil maidservants also provided bed service when an honored guest came and stayed.
King Sejong of the early Joseon Dynasty established the rules and order of society. This strict social class structure determined that the daughter of a prostitute inherits her mother’s social class as a prostitute. The Gisaeng system of the Joseon Dynasty had a strong system of military comfort women. In 1435, Sejong ordered the establishment of Gisaeng for the reception of soldiers working in the border area. The Gisaeng practice then quickly spread nationwide, and the total number of establishments quickly reached well over 10,000. The military comfort women system of the 20th century has its historical origins in the Gisaeng system of the Joseon Dynasty.
Even with the steady decline of Gisaeng into the 18th century, the practice continued until the defeat of the Joseon Dynasty in 1910. A detailed introduction of this system of sexual control overs the Gisaeng and the civil maidservants by the Yangban (upper class) was never mentioned. The Yangban class’s control of Gisaeng and maidservants severely influenced the chastity and marital ethics of the lowest social class. This served as a historical template for the comfort women system that developed afterwards.
The licensed prostitution system during the Japanese colonial era
Modern European countries, such as France and Germany, operated a licensed prostitution system with the following main requirements: prostitute registration, sexually transmitted disease screening, and the business district concentration system. The licensed prostitution system usually had the goals of the military comfort women system: to boost morale of the National Army and to prevent sexually transmitted infections. Meiji Japan also implemented the licensed prostitution system, imitating European countries. The Japanese licensed prostitution system was transplanted into colonial Joseon in 1916. The women who engaged in licensed prostitution were divided into social classes and occupations: prostitute, Gisaeng, hostess, and maid. Prostitute referred to a woman who was a full-time sex worker.
In order for a woman to offer herself as a prostitute, it was necessary to obtain a permit by submitting a sales permit application by a business manager (pimp) of the licensed quarter (red-light district) to the jurisdiction police station. The residence of the prostitute was limited to the red-light district. The prostitute had regular checkups, twice a month, for sexually transmitted diseases. When quitting the prostitution business, they returned their permits to the chief of police and received a permit of closure. The licensed quarter manager reported the operating income of gold to the chief of police. The licensed quarter manager had various facilities, such as rooms, kitchens, closets, and washrooms.
The recruitment and placement of prostitutes were carried out by a broker (arranger), who obtained the business license and put up a business name separately. A nationwide network and a hierarchy of retail-wholesale-central markets were established among the agents. In addition to the examination of the licensed prostitution system in 1916, a red-light district was designated in 25 major cities across the country. In the same year, Japanese prostitutes totaled 2,077, and Joseon prostitutes totaled 774. Since then, the number of Joseon prostitutes increased gradually, surpassing that of the Japanese in 1940. In 1929, the total number of tourists who visited the red-light district numbered 560,000, of which 450,000 were Japanese.
The early licensed prostitution system was characterized as Japanese-style prostitution for Japanese people, and the early licensed prostitution system, like other European countries, had a strong military comfort women structure. It was closely related to the red-light district and the Japanese military bases. For example, the red-light district in Seoul Shinmachi, which was built for the first time in the nation, was located within the headquarters of the Korean Army’s headquarter and its vicinity. The red-light district of Nanam in North Hamgyong Province and Hoeryeong serviced mainly Japanese military customers stationed there. The red-light district in these border cities had a strong structural resemblance to the Gisaeng Barrack system during the Joseon Dynasty.
As mentioned above, the recruitment and arrangement of the prostitute was the responsibility of the arranger and the broker. They approached the patriarchs from the lower class and provided a large loan amount, along with some sweet talk, and had them stamp their written consent on their daughter’s employment. In the Japanese-style family system, established early on, the head of family had the right to decide any change in status of any family member.
The establishment of the “head of the family system” historically granted poor (lower class) patriarchs the right to sell their daughters. Their daughters were incapable of resisting them and were often dragged to the arrangers in tears. The phenomenon of selling daughters, by the head of poor households, peaked during the Great Depression in 1930-1931. Until 1945, the phenomenon decreased as the economic growth of the colony and the life conditions of the lower class improved. In addition to the spread of primary education, the improvement of social awareness of women’s human rights also served as a factor in this improvement.
Offshore entry of the prostitution industry
After the Manchurian Incident in 1931, the Korean hospitality industry, with hostesses, entered Manchuria. In Manchuria, there were no licensed quarters that accepted prostitutes. In 1940, the total number of Korean hostesses who entered Manchuria was 4,476, and there were 599 hospitality establishments, an average of 7-8 per business. In Manchuria, the Korean hostess industry was a second-class prostitution industry, with the lower-class Japanese as its main customers.
It was the same in Taiwan. The Korean prostitution industry that entered Taiwan was not that of hostesses but of prostitutes. In 1940, the number of Korean prostitutes was 940, occupying a quarter of the total number of Taiwanese prostitutes. When the Japanese military occupied Shanghai in 1931, the total number of Korean women that entered that area was 913, and more than 90% were engaged in the prostitution industry. In addition, more women served as prostitutes in the red-light district, than as a cafe waitress.
In 1937, the war between Japan and China broke out (The Sino-Japanese War). After that, the number of Koreans engaged in various occupations increased sharply, as they entered the Chinese jurisdiction following the Japanese army. In 1942, the total number reached 16,000 households and 100,000 people; some of them engaged in the prostitution industry. In 1941, in the case of North Korea, 362 households and 1,292 women belonged to the prostitution industry. Eleven of these facilities were Japanese military comfort facilities, and 219 were comfort women. The Korean prostitution industry also actively entered Japan. In 1935, the number of Korean prostitutes, hostesses, Gisaeng and waitresses, who spread into different cities of Japan, reached 1,735. Since 1937, the demand for Korean prostitution increased, as a large number of Korean workers moved to Japan.
In 1941, the total number of prostitutes, hostesses, Gisaeng and waitresses in Joseon reached 9,580. As seen in the above-mentioned case of the Chinese jurisdiction, the Korean women’s entry into offshore Manchuria was also a process of sending the Japanese military comfort women. In 1941, war broke out between Japan and the United States (Pacific War). Thereafter a procession of comfort women was sent far into Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
Japanese military comfort women system
In 1937, the Japanese military installed comfort facilities in most military camps, from the Black Dragon River on the north side of Manchuria, to the Pacific Islands; from Pharaoh and Rabaul in the south, to the Burmese front in the east. The women who were accommodated there began to be officially called comfort women.
The system of Japanese military comfort women or comfort facilities had considerable continuity with the previous licensed prostitution system. In Japan, Joseon, Taiwan, Manchuria, and Shanghai, where Japanese troops were stationed before 1937, the existing red-light district, cooking facilities, and cafes were designated as exclusively military comfort facilities. As a result, the existing prostitutes, hostesses, Gisaeng, and waitresses changed their status to comfort women.
After 1937, when the Japanese occupied territory expanded to the Chinese jurisdiction, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, Japanese and Korean prostitute dealers recruited women and set up various hospitality establishments around the military. These were designated as comfort facilities. Among the comfort stations, some were installed and operated by the Japanese military as part of the military’s facilities, but the number was few, and even those were usually entrusted to private companies after a certain period of time.
In either form, the Japanese military had detailed control over the management of the comfort facilities. The date, time, fee, and action in the comfort facilities had to follow predetermined rules. The comfort women were regularly screened for sexually transmitted diseases, and their outgoings were limited to two times a month. From the facility, a contraceptive tool and rice as a meal were provided by the military’s supply department.
The comfort facilities’ business owners regularly reported the operation status of the comfort facilities to the Japanese military or the administrative authorities of the occupied areas, on a monthly basis. This included reporting the income and the repayment of the loan per each comfort woman. The management guidelines and control of the Japanese military comfort facilities, the relationship between the business owner of the comfort facilities, the comfort women, the sex work and income of the comfort women were not much different from those of the licensed prostitution system that had existed in the past. In other words, the issue of comfort women in the Japanese military was a form of military mobilization and reorganization of the existing licensed prostitution system.
However, that doesn’t mean there was no difference: the intensity of sex work of the military comfort women was higher than that of civilian prostitutes. For example, the average number of tourists that the prostitutes received in Depan, Japanese in the 1930s was 2.5 per day. In the case of Joseon, there was not even one. By comparison, the average number of comfort women was five. When the Japanese military comfort facilities were established in 1937, one in every 150 soldiers was serviced by the comfort women. From that, one can estimate the intensity of such sex work.
As the intensity was high, the comfort women’s income was also high. According to the U.S. prisoners’ interrogation report, South Korean comfort women who went to Southeast Asia differed from person to person but earned 300 to 1500 yen per month. According to several other records, they usually reimbursed their 1,000-yen loan within a year. The monthly wage of workers working at a textile factory in the 1940s was around 40 yen.
Another difference was inevitable due to the nature of the military comfort women’s environment. Their operating environment was dangerous. Unlike those who were placed in the rear, the comfort women were placed at the front, where it was especially dangerous. They moved with the military and were exposed to danger from air strikes and shelling. In the Southeast Asian and Pacific Islands, when the Japanese army was routed and retreated in disorder, the situation of the comfort women involved was unspeakably miserable.
The error of some conventional wisdom
Since the Japanese comfort women issue become widely known in 1991, the movements groups and researchers who have been engaged in the issue have dealt with the issue as an anti-Japanese national movement for South Koreans. As mentioned earlier, it is the cutting off the head and tail of pre and post history. This has led to an error in widespread conventional wisdom.
The first was that the number of Korean comfort women was determined to be 30,000, and as high as even 200,000 women. This theory, which is still in history textbooks, is built solely on fantasy without any evidence. There are some credible grounds for the total number of Korean comfort women, and as mentioned above, 1 for every 150 Japanese soldiers were covered by the comfort women. The proportion of Koreans among former comfort women (Japanese, Chinese, and Southeast Asians) was about 20 percent. The same estimate is possible from the total amount of sak provided to the Japanese army over the year.
Also, there is other regional information. As mentioned above, the number of Korean comfort women who worked in Hwabook, North Korea in 1941, was 219. The total number that were in the Chinese jurisdiction is estimated to be about 700. According to U.S. military records, about 800 Korean comfort women crossed Southeast Asia and the South Pacific after 1942. The total number of comfort women who have been active in Joseon, Japan, Manchuria and Taiwan seems to have fallen short of these two regions. From this information, the presenter estimates the total number of Korean comfort women was around 3,600.
The second was the premise that the officials of the Japanese Government General of Korea or the Japanese army took or kidnapped virgin girls or even housewives of Joseon. This compulsive hypothesis, that was invented in a book called “My War Crimes”, was a sales gimmick by Japanese Seiji Yoshida in 1983, which later proved to be a lie. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun played a big role in spreading the theory and eventually apologized for the misinformation. Japanese left-wing scholars who led the study on the comfort women of the Japanese military have also dismissed this theory as unfounded.
Nevertheless, this compulsive hypothesis is still being played in South Korean movies, theaters, dramas and dominates the historical consciousness of South Koreans. There are a few reasons for this. One, was the confusion between comfort women and the Korean Women’s Volunteer Labour Corps. Korean Women’s Volunteer Labour Corps referred to the female laborers that were mobilized to the munition factories at the end of the war. However, when the Japanese military comfort women issue broke out, South Korean activist groups and media, even researchers, confused the two for a long time.
The recruitment of comfort women by the Japanese military was basically through patriarchs of the poorest class, who guided their daughters into prostitution. In some cases, a runaway girl who escaped from her family, where poverty and violence were rampant, or who was led astray by her friends, were caught by the arranger.
In any case, the organizers sent the comfort women to each region, meeting the formal requirements asked by the licensed prostitution system at the time. It was an inherent historical and cultural phenomenon in that era. If we hold somebody responsible for their actions from today’s point of view, it is a crime that the state, patriarch, men, and prostitute dealers would all be defined as accomplices.
The third is the theory of sexual slavery, which was also made up by Japanese scholars and imported into Korea. The key element of the theory of sexual slavery is that the comfort women had no freedom of action and choice. A Japanese scholar who spread the theory claimed that the sex slaves were, from the beginning, prostitutes under the licensed prostitution system, which is the background of the military comfort women. It is true that a small number of prostitutes were tied to slavish conditions, due to their heavy indebtedness to their pimp, but it is difficult to generalize them.
According to a nationwide survey about the Joseon prostitution industry in 1924, the annual closure rate of prostitutes was 45%, and the average period of continuous service was only about two years. There are several records that report the same for Japanese military comfort women.
The commander of the Southeast Asian Japanese army allowed the return of Korean comfort women who repaid all their loans. As a result, in 1944, 15 out of 20 comfort women, who worked at the comfort facility called Singapore Noodle Club, managed by a Korean, returned to Korea within a year. The choice of return was the right allowed to most comfort women except for a small number, who were placed on the front line when transportation was cut off.
Comfort women among us
After liberation, the U.S. military government abolished the licensed prostitution system in 1946. However, the comfort women system, in fact, continued to exist until 1966. The Korean government classified women who worked as dancers, prostitutes, entertainers and harlots according to the tradition of the previous licensed prostitution system.
Due to the division and poverty caused by the war, the total number of women in these brothels reached 110,642 in 1955, of which 61,833 were comfort women. Considering that the number is only for South Koreans, the scale expanded more than 10 times compared to 1940. Furthermore, in 1965, the total number of comfort women was 250,964.
It was an era when the massive unemployment was widespread in rural areas and women had no opportunity to work. In 1964, the monthly income of comfort women, who worked in Seongdong-gu in Seoul and Gunsan-si, was 1.5 to twice as high as that of female employees engaged in the manufacturing industry, in the same year. As a result, many women were engaged in a hospitality business for long or short term prostitution and became the subject of STD screenings. In 1966, women in their 20s who underwent a sexually transmitted disease screening reached 8% of the female population of the same age group.
During the Korean War, the Korean army set up and operated a special comfort band based on the former Japanese army. The total number of women belonging to them was about 700. Their sex-work intensity averaged 6.3 times per day, slightly higher than the Japanese military comfort women. As soon as the war ended, this special comfort band was dissolved.
The official titles of the comfort women of the Korean military were as follows: “Yangsakshi”, “Yanggongju” and “Yanggalbo”. The total number has not been investigated, but it was estimated at about 10,000 in the early 1960s. It is assumed that in the 1950s, the number was several times larger.
The monthly income of US military comfort women was three to four times higher than that of the private comfort women. The monthly cost of living was also high, because in many cases they had a cohabitation agreement, where their sex partners work was fixed. As a result, in 1964, in Gunsan City, the average intensity of sex work of civilian comfort women was 5.5 times a day, while that of the US military comfort women averaged only 1.7 times.
Summarizing this great deal of information, as the history of comfort women unfolded in Korea after liberation, the situation of comfort women was nothing better than that of the Japanese military comfort women or the prostitutes of the licensed prostitution system under Japanese colonial rule. To be brutally honest, the sex worker’s rights, income level, health status, and pimp relationship were much worse.
The life of comfort women, who were not controlled and protected by state power, was too miserable to mention. Here, let me introduce the damage of pregnancy and miscarriage. The Japanese forces strictly forced soldiers to wear sak when they visited the comfort facilities. As a result, the Japanese comfort women’s accidental pregnancy were controlled to a very low rate. Abortions were forbidden by law, and accidental pregnancy usually resulted in either suspension of work, returning home, or natural childbirth.
On the other hand, the US military and the South Korean government did not control the sexual reproduction of the comfort women. This led to a wide range of accidental pregnancies. Accidental pregnancy led to artificial miscarriage due to the pimp’s compulsion that lacked human rights awareness. In 1964, 132 people in the Gunsan-si base camps and 68 US military comfort women experienced artificial miscarriages. 49 women experienced artificial miscarriages three or fewer times, 15 women experienced it four to seven times, and 4 women experienced it more than 15 times and some even 20 or more times
In 1967, among the 305 civilian and US military comfort women who worked in Wonju City, 254 of them experienced pregnancy. Accidental pregnancies were treated as artificial miscarriages without exception. 148 people experienced artificial miscarriage once, 75 women experienced it twice, 27 women experienced it 3 times, and 4 women experienced it 4 times.
Until the 1960s, 600 to 700 mixed-race children were born annually in the military camp town. Korean society and the government treated them as congenital disabled people, and that is why most of the mixed-race children were adopted to their father’s country, the United States.
Many women in the camp lost their motivation to live and took medicine or jumped into the railway line, mostly due to the shock of adoption, pregnancy and miscarriage. A cemetery was formed around the famous military camp town for the comfort women that did not have family or friends, and until now is a sorrowful sight for all visitors. These historical tragedies were caused by a low level of human rights awareness by contemporary Korean people.
Inspiration
In 1991, as the so-called “Japanese military comfort women problem” arose, female activists, targeting women in the military base camp, also campaigned for governmental responsibility and demanded compensation. However, the movement was shunned by the Japanese military comfort women movement group. Furthermore, it has not received any response from South Korean society.
The presenter sympathizes with the moral justification of the movement but does not cheer for it, because of this great contradiction. If the demands of the movement are just, they cannot ignore the responsibility and compensation for a much wider number of civilian comfort women, which were as poor as the US military comfort women. This is because almost all Korean men of the same age are defined as accomplices and have to be held accountable. How many Korean men would sympathize with that?
The Japanese military comfort women issue was free from such morality, hypocrisy, and contradictions, as anti-Japanese tribalism, that was shared by Koreans, brilliantly concealed such hypocrisy and contradictions. However, the tangible and intangible costs that have been paid by the South Korean political social culture for the last 30 years is difficult to weigh.
The essence of the political body of the state is, in one word, justice. It is completely broken down. Does the state of reason that Koreans collectively embody have the ability to lead a modern nation? This is an ontological question that the current situation poses to every South Korean.
