Rutgers University Press Korean "Comfort Women": Military Brothels, Brutality, and the Redress Movement (Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights)

Arguably the most brutal crime committed by the Japanese military during the Asia-Pacific war was the forced mobilization of 50,000 to 200,000 Asian women to military brothels to sexually serve Japanese soldiers. The majority of these women died, unable to survive the ordeal. Those survivors who came back home kept silent about their brutal experiences for about fifty years. In the late 1980s, the women's movement in South Korea helped start the redress movement for the victims, encouraging many survivors to come forward to tell what happened to them. With these testimonies, the redress movement gained strong support from the UN, the United States, and other Western countries. Korean "Comfort Women" synthesizes the previous major findings about Japanese military sexual slavery and legal recommendations, and provides new findings about the issues "comfort women" faced for an English-language audience. It also examines the transnational redress movement, revealing that the Japanese government has tried to conceal the crime of sexual slavery and to resolve the women's human rights issue with diplomacy and economic power. Review "Korean "Comfort Women" comprehensively clarifies the role of international movements with historical accuracy and a sincere commitment to holding Japan responsible for its actions. Moreover, this book provides a detailed description of the histories and politics of the past and present as it asks readers how redress of the comfort women issue can be achieved from the perspectives of politics and justice."-- "Mobilization""This book provides the most complete account yet of the historical situation of Korean 'comfort women' and of current efforts to seek redress for the survivors. Drawing upon a vast trove of first-person evidence and displaying a rigorous commitment to factual evidence, the author creates an invaluable record of past war crimes and present-day activism." --Margaret D. Stetz "author of Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II" About the Author PYONG GAP MIN is a distinguished professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, as well as the director of the Research Center for Korean Community. He is the author of five books and the editor or co-editor of fourteen books, including the award-winning Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles and Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations.