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North Korean 'comfort woman' recalls traumatic past
April 28, 2005
A pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan opened old wounds Wednesday when it printed
the gruesome recollections of a North Korean former “comfort woman” pressed
into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army.
The story of 83-year-old Park Yong-sim in the Choson Sinbo, the mouthpiece of
the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, included claims that the
Japanese occupiers killed a Korean girl who refused to do as she was told,
boiled her in a cauldron and fed her to other comfort women as meat soup.
It was the first part of a series entitled "Uncovering Japan: Testimony of
victims of forced conscription."
"One day, the Japanese bastards said, 'You girls haven't been eating enough, so
today, we'll treat you to meat soup,' and they gave us meat soup,” Park
recalled. “We didn't know why they gave it to us, but we ate it all, and when
we did, the bastards burst into laughter, saying the soup was made from the
meat of a Korean girl." Park said her captors told her they had killed and
boiled a disobedient Korean girl.
Park was captured at age 17 in 1938 and forced to work as a prostitute for
Japanese soldiers. Her mother died early, and she was raised by her stepmother
and her father, a miner. At age 14, she was sold off as a maid to a suit shop
in Nampo, South Pyongan Province, and in March 1938, a Japanese policeman
appeared and offered to introduce her to a good employment opportunity. She
demurred, saying she needed to ask her parents, but he forced her on a train
that took her to Nanjing, China.
She said some 500m from the Japanese Army barracks there was a military
brothel. Park had to provide sexual services to about 30 Japanese soldiers a
day. The Choson Sinbo said she was taken to several brothels in China until
liberation, when she returned home with the help of a Chinese person. It said
she had a hysterectomy and has been living in daily psychosomatic pain.
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Korea's
former 'comfort women' to launch campaign
1-20-2005
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