Comfort Women Essay

In my early and middle childhood, I spent my time in the beautiful place called, Seoul. In its environment, I have normally studied the history of the Korean Peninsula as part of my life, as a Korean. During learning a knowledge of the history of the Korean Peninsula, I found out that there is a one disastrous history of Korea. The disastrous history is about “military comfort women” during World War Two when Korea was under Japanese rule. In fact, a ‘comfort woman’ is an inappropriate word for the female victims; a ‘sex slave’ is the correct term. Although the sex slave is the right term, people use the ‘comfort women’ because it is well known by many people and sounds smoother than the sex slave. When Korea was under Japanese rule, …show more content…
The first comfort stations were built in Shanghai in 1932 under by Lieutenant-General Okamura Yasuji. He was the original proponent of the comfort stations. When Shanghai had tremendous rape reports by Japanese troops, Yasuji requested comfort women to the Japanese government in order to decrease rape reports. After that, the comfort station system was completely planned and systematized. There were three types of comfort stations. The first type was generally used for the military. The second type was managed by civilian operators, but it had to be supervised by the military. The third type was open to the public use, also the military was priority. In addition, regulations on the use of comfort stations were restricted, but the regulations were basically in a simple form for military use. For example, drinking alcohol was prohibited. They were paying at reception in order to obtain a ticket and condom and being on the entry time. The government of Japan, thereby, had to have been involved in this issue and cooperated with its military and police to successfully build the comfort station system. That was to say that the government of Japan was an operator of the comfort station system. However, the government of Japan did not fully acknowledge their crimes that they created the comfort stations in 1993 after the Korean woman’s groups issued a …show more content…
Once the government of Japan had sent comfort women to comfort stations; the Japanese military sexually enslaved the comfort women in order to fulfill the sexual gratification of the Japanese soldiers. For instance, comfort women had to deal with a sexual intercourse forcibly everyday with Japanese soldiers. Ahmed explains, “In turn they were forced to “service” anywhere from ten to thirty men each day, both during daylight hours and at night” (Ahmed 125). In other words, the large numbers of Japanese soldiers were lined up in front of the comfort stations, waiting for their turns to have sex with comfort women. A Japanese soldier who was in charge of taking care of comfort women usually tied them up with a rope to proceed massive rape. Even the Japanese soldier gave comfort women the minimum foods to barely obtain the daily needed nutrients, such as vitamins, fats, and minerals/ comfort women had to only focus on surviving. Moreover, there are some who feel severe sense of pain on rainy days, and they could not even conceive because they were seriously physically injured in the comfort stations. Comfort women were often beaten and sometimes stabbed with a knife by Japanese soldiers. Once comfort women got injured, they had to believe that the injuries healed naturally. They would not be treated at