Comfort women who serviced U.S. Soldiers in South Korea after the Korean War

Comfort women comprised of the women that had been forced into sexual slavery during the war between Northern and Southern Korea. These were the women who had been abducted or lured by pimps with the promise of a better life outside their countries just to be taken to brothels and military camps to offer their services to soldiers. They were grouped according to the countries they came from in order for them to serve junior and senior officers when the need arose. Given that prostitution was a lucrative business during the war, especially when the soldiers were not in the battle field, no country nor humanitarian group, at that time, revolted against the prostitution business, which was equal to human trafficking. During the Second World War, most of the prostitutes lured from Japan and the Philippines were used to entertain the soldiers who viewed them as a tool for happiness when they were not in the battlefield. Under various entertainment agencies, the South Koreans wooed women and used their native women to help in servicing the United States military troops who were assisting their country during the time of war. This was done to make sure that the soldiers could feel that the life in South Korea was satisfactory. The prostitutes who serviced the United States soldiers were labelled as the Western Princesses since they were around the Gichijon areas which comprised of the United States military camps. In the camps, the Korean women were given to the lower ranking officers whole the women from Japan were given to the high ranking officials. This showed how the Japanese viewed the Korean citizens in contempt and that has been the case up to date since there has been tension between the two nations during the resolving of the issue. For the Philippine comfort women, they were labelled as juicy girls. To the comfort women, such names felt humiliating since, according to them, they felt they had been made to understand that they were performing their patriotic duties and hence no need for the labels which dehumanized them. Given that South Korea as a country had permitted this business, it was easy to ensure that the American soldiers remained in the country and supported them in the war against North Korea. This was done by ensuring that they had enough comfort women around who would satisfy the desires of the soldiers. With time, the soldiers started mistreating the comfort women and took them for tools and not for the human beings they were. As a result of this, the women were mistreated by the soldiers, sexually assaulted and dehumanized. A culture that gained support from the South Korean and Japanese governments and that was silently supported by the United States government. 

The United States had joined South Korea as an ally since the North Koreans, who were communists, had crossed the 38 parallel over to the non-communists from South Korea. The United States had joined the war as an ally to South Korea since they were out to support democracy and foster better foreign relations in Asia. All these was in an effort to curb the communism that was being spread into Asia from countries that were supporting the policies of the Soviet Union. This meant that the North Koreans were interfering with the American interests. The women had come from countries such as China, the Philippines and Korea, which meant that the South Korean government had to acquire them through outsourcing through their entertainment agencies, or by abducting them. Other methods that were used to get the women included abduction from their homes or being lured with promises of better lives in South Korea where they had been promised jobs or better education. Given that women were very useful in the battlefields, convincing them that were going to be dignified and get dignified jobs was an easy task. This is because women understood that the soldiers needed people to cook for them, wash their clothes and nurse some of their injuries. Being used as comfort women was not something that had crossed most of their minds, and therefore they became easy to lure with promises of better lives. This trick was mostly effective for the girls who had come from poor family backgrounds. Eventually, the young girls and the adult women found themselves working in the military stations, out of duress, to meet the soldiers’ sexual desires. 

Therefore, the comfort women were people whom the government recognized and used them as tools for pleasure during the time of war ("Confronting memories of World War II: European and Asian legacies", 2014) .At one point in time, the government tried explaining the forced prostitution as a way to curb the raping that had been going on in many villages within Japan and Korea. To explain their actions of forcefully abducting women and forcing them to become comfort women, the military officials excused their act as a way of trying to curb rape and therefore, to them, confining women in the military stations was a way of offering protection to their female citizens. However, if the stations were meant to protect the women, the military had failed in their job since the women were exposed to constant sexual assault and the senior military personnel turned a blind eye to what was being done by their subordinates. The women, who had been brought in to get protection, were turned into items of sexual pleasure and the system made no effort to bring down the rise in the rape cases. The military leaders, therefore, had done this to curb sexual violence, and also to solve the rape cases that were being reported from time to time. In one of the reports filed on the issues of the comfort women was estimated that there were over 120 million cases of sexual assaults committed by the soldiers in the span of the World War. 

Additionally, it would be important to note that South Korean officials held the women in custody forcefully. They also went ahead to encourage the soldiers to spend more money for them to acquire more prostitutes in the brothels and bars. In order to ease communication, the South Korean officials arranged for the women to learn English classes within the military camps. This was until the women were declared unfit for the soldiers after the outbreak of a sexually transmitted disease which was due to the promiscuity going on in the brothels and military camps. Curbing the rising cases of sexually transmitted diseases was also used as another excuse for the existence of the comfort women in the military stations. 

The Japanese government, through the advice of their doctors, saw it fit to permit the sale of their women to the Korean government whom they believed would offer better health and sanitary conditions in their backyard. This was used as an excuse to condone the trade, and it only served to increase the rate of the sexually transmitted diseases within the brothels and military camps. At some point, the comfort stations were established to reduce the rate of the sexually transmitted diseases, which the military doctors believed came from the brothels, but this failed since the rate of sexual activities remained the same amongst the soldiers. When the venereal disease, a sexually transmitted disease, broke out, the comfort women in the war zones were held illegally and forced tests were conducted on them to determine if they had the disease. For those who had contracted the disease, they were thrown out of the stations without the remuneration for the services that they had offered. To them, this was an insult to their services since by that time, they had already adapted to their jobs and were now offering their services as patriotic citizens. At some point, their bodies did not belong to them button the government and that is why they would give their services without rest or complain. Therefore, being thrown out of the camps was a sign that the government was only using them to acquire the American currency-the dollar, which was still a strong currency during the World War. The aim of running the brothels was to ensure that the South Korean government had enough money to run their state affairs. This made them feel disrespected and dehumanized. The disease had therefore exposed the women to a lot of problems since if one had been diagnosed with the disease, they were left for the dead, and without any treatment. 

Ideally, the women did not own their bodies but they were being used by the government to make money for the government to run its internal affairs and sustain the troops during the time of war. Years later, the government was sued, by the women, for misusing them in an act that was disguised as a show of patriotism. The women who had survived the ordeal explained what they had gone through during the period of the war in the hands of pimps and the soldiers respectively. 

In their testimonies, the Korean women had contracted the Venereal Disease due to the number of women they slept with in a day. Some of the women slept with up to 50 men in a day. This kind of sexual indulgence had caused some women bleeding in their private parts and it was therefore no surprise that they had been exposed to many chronic illnesses. Eventually, the camps became sites that were breeding chronic sexually transmitted diseases. When it was realized that the girl had infected many soldiers with the disease, her private parts were burnt using an iron bar while several of her colleagues were buried alive after it was established that they had been infected with the disease. The reason why the ladies got such treatment after it was discovered that they had the disease was because the disease weakened the armies since it laid off men for a period of up to one month and this exposed them to attacks from their enemies since they would be weak. The disease was also not taken kindly since it was one of the reasons why some soldiers could not receive their pay since it had been used to cater for their treatment while in hospital. In the army, the disease was treated with contempt since it was termed as having the enemy within a soldier’s pants which caused humiliation. All in all, sexual slavery caused humiliation and it robbed the women off their dignity up to their points of death. 

Ideally, the government of South Korea was engaging in the trade of comfort women to ensure that they had enough money to trade with the Americans and other allies during the war. This, in turn, would ensure that state affairs ran in a smooth manner and that the American troops were also taken care of in a bid to show loyalty to their allies. In one of the court rulings that earned the comfort omen an apology from the government, the government ruled that the South Korean government was running the brothels and managing the prostitutes so as to boost the morale of the United Sates troops as well as maintain their international alliances with various armies. In 1969, for example, the sex workers had earned the South Korean government 70 million US Dollars yet nothing was paid to them. With time, this was proof that the government did not look out for its citizens, and particularly the women whom were offering their services to the soldiers. This is what prompted the victims of the sexual assaults to come out and tell of the government ills and their dissatisfaction with how they had been treated during those days. Most of the women testified of how they had been taken from their homes in a forceful manner, for purposes of prostitution. This was despite the government defending itself from the accusations by saying that the women had consented since they hoped that they would have better lives within the military stations. The surviving victims, in their testimonies, revealed of how them and their colleagues underwent brutality in the hands of the soldiers to an extent of being beaten up in the event that they had failed to follow the instructions given to them by their clients-the soldiers (Hedwards, 2017) . They explained that this was done to make sure that they had enough fear in them to make them afraid of running away. 

Also, the South Korean and the United States governments supported the existence of comfort women because the South Korean government had made sure that it had registered all the local and foreign prostitutes. This made them appear as a country that upheld human rights since it had placed the women under the Social Bureau that dealt with the registration of comfort women. Through their registration, whether forced or voluntary, the documents were proof that the girls and the women had agreed to take part in their respective jobs in the bars, brothels and military camps. By doing this, the South Korean government was making sure that it maintained proper relationships with the Western European powers and other countries in the United Nations whom they hoped would support them as they fought in the Second World War if they showed that they had dignified the lives of their people and that of foreigners. By doing this, also, they ensured that the dollars made by the comfort women or those spent by the American soldiers would be used to develop their country and also ensure that the soldiers lived in comfort. This created competitive economy since it showed that the South Koreans were now ready to maintain ties with the United States by trading using the American dollar (Ku, 2015) . Therefore, despite exposing the women to sexual slavery disguised in the form of job opportunities, the South Korean government, in liaison with the United States government felt that they were doing the right thing since the women were fulfilling patriotic duties by keeping the soldiers happy. 

Additionally, the women underwent a lot of humiliation especially when they had to service more than one soldier. This, according to the victims’ testimonies, made them suffer from mental trauma since they felt that they were engaging in what they had not signed up for. In the event that they would complain about what was being done to them, beatings would follow, so as to ensure that they remained silent. The trauma was also felt by the young girls, who were as young as 13 years since they were not yet mature. This, according to the courts, translated to rape since the soldiers were having ex with minors and without their consent. This was also an abuse of human rights since the government had engaged in child and human trafficking which was hidden under the context of greener pastures in form of working in hotels and higher education for the women whom they had acquired from different parts of Asia, especially Japan and the Philippines. However, after the ill treatment their host country, the comfort women never got any justice since neither the Japanese government, nor the South Korean government admitted to any violation of human rights. This made the women view the society and the government as entities that were willing to go beyond certain lines, even if it meant violation of human rights, to get something achieved. To them, their human rights and denial of health care was done to make sure that the soldiers were always happy and so that South Korea could please the Western European powers. 

Throughout this paper, the struggles of the comfort women in their quest for justice after the war is clearly outlined in a bid to understand how the governments involved dealt with their plight. The remaining victims, were left humiliated and ashamed and surviving in their communities became a challenge to most of them. This is because they had been left poor by their own government which had promised to pay for their services. They were also left to deal with the scars of their ordeals and most of them had acquired permanent body marks which left them with psychological trauma. Their issue was that as much as the government focused on keeping the Unite States troops happy, they were supposed to be remunerated for the services they offered as comfort women in the brothels and military camps. Their constant cry for an apology ad compensation from the Korean government, and not the United States government has been in courts and it is only recently that their plight has been listened to (Vine, 2018) . Many of those women, now old women, feel the pain and discomfort of old age with poverty since their grandchildren are unable to take care of them since they also have their needs to take care of. Over the years, they have hoped that the Japanese and the South Korean governments will come into an agreement that will see their lives change for the better despite being old. The fact that the respective governments assumed that it was paramount to supply sex to their soldiers is a sign of ignorance from the government since they did this in violation of basic human rights. 

Over the years, the remaining victims of the sexual assault from the World War 2, through the assistance of various activist bodies have been seeking justice for themselves. This is because they felt that the Japanese government, which had given them away to the South Korean government ought to have apologized, formally, and offered them compensation for the atrocities committed against them. They also wanted to be recognized within the Japanese society and the South Korean communities, from which they had come. This is because they were being treated as social outcasts due to the nature of their past by people who were not aware or were ignorant of what the women had gone through between 1932 and 1945.What these women needed is to be recognized in the Asian continent for the role they had played during the militaristic period and for the sufferings that they had undergone. Their plight, according to a number of them, ought to be symbolic and their stories should be told by somebody in order for their resilience to be appreciated. 

Since time immemorial, prostitution has been one with many military groupings. This brings about a myriad of health issues that range from sexually transmitted diseases to lifestyle diseases. This is because most soldiers tend to seek pleasure from women who are out to make small amounts of money from servicing them by either cleaning their wounds, doing their laundry or by having sexual intercourse with them. Throughout the Korean War, the rate of the spread of the Venereal Disease was put at 183/1000 soldiers within the camps. This weakened the strengths of the armies and it as solely blamed on the comfort women. This made the comfort women feel bad since they felt that it was the sexual greed of the soldiers that had aided in the spreading of the diseases. Instead, it was the women who were blamed for it and treated as outcasts for the same. 

Most of the women recounted how they saw their colleagues get burnt and buried alive in the case that they had tested positive for the sexually transmitted diseases. In terms of their healthcare, the women felt that the South Korean government as well as the Japanese government had spoilt their future. This is due to the fact that they had to endure shots of medicine that made them unable to acquire pregnancies and when they did, they would miscarry. With the ‘606 shots’ in their body systems, they would not be able to get children even after the war in the event that they wanted to conceive. Most of them also, were infected by the diseases up to their intestines and this has been a lifestyle condition they have had to live with. Psychological trauma, also, has been a health condition that has caused depression to most of them who can recall all of their sexual encounters with the brutal soldiers. In an effort to air their plight and get the government to talk to them about their concerns, the women would hold weekly protests outside the Japanese embassy since their plight was no longer a matter that should be concealed in the 21 st century. 

When the comfort stations began to come up, most of them were based in Shanghai leading to the expansion of other comfort stations throughout Asia and South Korea by the Korean government which deceived the Philippines. This, eventually, led to increased sexual abuse for the women who did not consent to the demands of the soldiers. According to many women, most of them were not informed of the kinds of jobs they were being promised and they ended up finding themselves in brothels and cubicles in the military camps where they were forced to have sex. The women, despite being forced to have sex, in the comfort stations, were fed poorly, given new names and they were not allowed to talk about their past lives. Talking about their past or former names earned them beating that would result to injury or death. After the war, nobody ever talked about these crimes since the comfort women were not discussed in the open due to the nature of their former work as prostitutes, a job which was dreaded in South Korea and Asia at large. To them, this was hurting since they felt that they had only been used to boost the economy during and after the war. This was proven by how the government had invested in them by taking them through English classes and also praised them for “a job well done”. At that time, they were treated as patriots for serving their country at that capacity but after the war, those who lived around the military camps and beyond felt that they had been misused by the government for its selfish economic gains (Ward & Lay, 2016) . This, with time, led to the surviving comfort women placing a law suit against the government for failing to recognize their human dignity and failing to compensate them for all their troubles. 

When presenting their cases in the court of law, the South Korean women had protested against their forceful detention during the Second World War for sexual purposes. The women, together with other protestors who understood what the women were asking for, demanded that they get a public apology from the Japanese and South Korean governments for the human rights violations that they had gone through for the sake of their country. In this case, the comfort women, through their lawyer, argued that the government was acting hypocritically by offering the United States soldiers with comfort women while censuring the Japanese government for the same kind of system. The court, through a ruling that was declared as a ‘landmark’, ruled that the 57 comfort women be paid 450,000 Yens or USD 2,730-USD 6370 each, by the government for having been forcefully detained and violated by the soldiers who were three times their number. This, according to the courts, was an act of the state facilitating prostitution and sexual abuse of its own citizens by deceiving them about non-existent job and education opportunities. The High Court noted that the government had taken part in violation of human rights and promoting prostitution. This meant that the South Koran government, as well as the United States government had taken part in crimes against humanity. The Japanese government, under the leadership of Shinzo Abe, expressed more apologies for what they had put the comfort women through and they paid an additional 8 million dollars as a form of compensation. 

However, the women appealed this verdict since they felt that the government owed them an apology and it also ought town up to its mistake of being involved in sexual slavery and trade. According to scholars, the women were right in demanding an apology since the government had openly facilitated sex trade and the law enforcement agencies had turned a blind eye on those who actively engaged in the trade. Therefore, the South Korean court should not have sanitized the South Korean officials since they were doing exactly what was being done in the Japanese military camps. Therefore, the court ruling had failed to acknowledge that the dignity of women ad civilians had been trampled on by the South Korean government during the time of war. Instead, they placed these atrocities on the Japanese government, which by this time, had institutionalized sexual slavery as part of its military operations. Therefore, the Japanese government, the United States and the South Korean governments ought to have been held responsible for these mistreatments and they owed the comfort women an apology for what they had put them through. Trying to justify such an act by pointing fingers at Japan is hypocritical since three countries engaged in and condoned the sexual harassment of women during the Second World War (Kim, 2016) . 

In a journal published by Kaitlyn Marshall on the human trafficking that took place during the Second World War, the treatment of women during and post-world war has been reviewed. This is in a bid to give ways on how to end human trafficking in various nations that have embraced it even in the 21 st century. According to this journal, the thousands of Korean women who had been taken to the Japanese and United States military camps to serve as prostitutes had never been recognized or apologized to since human trafficking and sexual trade had been normalized by the military ("Japan WW2 sex slave deal 'ignored victims'", 2018) . This is a gender inequality violation that had never been addressed by the countries that went ahead to become key allies in the war against military crimes. This, over the years, has undermined the testimonies of the comfort women who experienced this inhumane acts and the society continues to view them in a way that makes them feel humiliated for what was not their doing but their government’s doing. Since the Japanese have always taken their military issues seriously, they believed that providing their soldiers with comfort women from South Korea would aid in curbing the rising cases of sexual violence as well a sexually transmitted disease that engulfed many armies. The South Korean government, even after the Second World War, did not bother in engaging their citizens who had undergone sexual abuse since they felt that family and social honour was a priority as opposed to the well-being of the women who had been mistreated. The culture of the South Koreans, therefore, was one of the reasons that these atrocities were never highlighted early enough. The Japanese soldiers, also, through the permission of their emperor, felt that they were entitled the Korean women as a reward for their hard work. Consequently, the Japanese government felt that it could abuse the rights of the South Korean women since they were superior at that time. This led to the whisking away of the sex crimes and the comfort women were forgotten for over 50 years. When the comfort women spoke of the atrocities committed against them, the Japanese government failed to offer any apology since it maintained that it had not abused the rights of any South Korean during the World War. The rigidity of the Japanese government and their failure to offer an apology to the comfort women has continued to make the comfort women feel disrespected within the society. This is because, without an apology, that makes the South Korean acknowledge its mistake, the comfort women will always be viewed as prostitutes and this is dehumanizing since they will never be recognized in history as it should be (Kim, 2014) . The women also feel that they are part of a history that the South Koreans do not want to talk about since it is shameful and they are seen as fallen women who had agreed to take part in prostitution. 

In the current world, however, it would be ignorant to assume that armies do not still engage in sexual activities with comfort women. Most of the United States military bases and other military camps are surrounded by brothels and bars where pimps trade young girls at cheap prices to the soldiers. However, the trade of comfort women has continued to be modernize in a way that the soldiers can now ‘own’ a comfort woman-more or less like concubines (2018) . This is in order to curb the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases as well as reduce the rate of sexual abuses that soldiers may put the comfort women through. The European styles of cohabiting marriages became common among the soldiers where they leave the girls to the other soldiers who are coming to stay in the camp. Most of the issues that have come with the challenges that comfort women faced in the hands of the military organizations which have become common in the sex industry. And as the World War came to an end, the Korean government made it clear that foreign soldiers should keep off local women unless it was in the brothels and other entertainment spots. The government of South Korea, at that time, was reluctant in stopping the trade since the money changed around brothels was used to boost the economy of such zones in South Korea. The military and camp towns became a common and integral part of the South Korean economy since it was still a struggling economy. 

After the struggles of the activist groups and a couple of feminist groups, the Japanese and the South Korean governments agreed on a transnational litigation that saw the comfort women compensated and apologized to for the atrocities committed against them during the war. However, the blame game has continued over whom was more liable for the woes of the comfort women and the South Korean government has continually blamed the Japanese government for the misfortunes of these women. To some extent, the court cases and the erection of a monument in the honour of the comfort women has helped provide closure to their plight. This is because they now feel that they are honoured for who they are and they are no longer judged within their community for misfortunes brought on them by their own government. In the agreement between South Korea and Japan to solve the issue of comfort women who were being victimized due to their morality being in question. In the agreement between South Korea, Japan and the United States, the United States was the biggest winner while South Korea turned out to be the loser since they had nothing to gain from it while all other countries had a take away in form of good trade relations. To the citizens of South Korea, they felt that their government had traded off national honour for money at the expense of the dignity of their citizens. For the United States, they had strengthened their ties with Asian nations, and they managed to appear as a nation that is keen on upholding human rights. 

In conclusion, we can conclude that the issue of the comfort women was not an issue until recently when South Korea became a democracy. However, the women still remained to be a symbol of tragedy and a part of the history that nobody wanted to remember. This is because of the humiliation they had gone through in the hands of the foreign soldiers and the Japanese soldiers while in South Korea. These women and young girls, who had been forced to become comfort women to the soldiers faced the challenge of sexual assaults, rape, being burnt in their private parts and even being killed for contracting the Venereal Disease. These acts of inhumanity, despite causing emotional trauma and physical damage to the comfort women who survived through the World War 2, went undiscussed until later in the 21 st Century. Through the support of human rights groups, the comfort women were able to go to the courts and get compensation for what they had gone through. Despite being denied an apology by the governments involved, at least they had acquired a reprieved their poverty had been alleviated. They however kept agitating for an apology and the Japanese government has constantly apologized for its mistake. The United States government, on the other hand, has continued to remain silent over the issue and when they have spoken, they denied participating in any form of human rights abuse during the World War 2. The South Korean government has continued to sanitize itself from taking part in the issue and they have continued blaming Japan for the woes of its citizens. However, the South Korean government has ensured that its citizens, more so the survivors, are allowed to talk about their past experiences since it helps in their healing. Also, a statue has been erected to make sure the victims are remembered and honoured as heroines instead of being condemned and dehumanized. 

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