Cartoons on former sex slaves to go on show in Korea

Dozens of cartoons that portray Korean women forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II will be displayed in South Korea following a successful exhibition in France, organizers said Friday.

The Korea Manhwa Contents Agency will hold the exhibition in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, from Feb. 18-March 16, featuring more than 20 cartoons and videos narrating the story of the victims of Japan’s sexual enslavement, according to the organizers.

The cartoons were drawn by established South Korean cartoonists such as Park Geon-woong, Kim Geun-sook, Shin Ji-soo, Lee Hyun-se and Park Jae-dong to raise the world’s awareness of the sex slavery issue.

The exhibition, organized by the agency, gained media spotlight earlier this month at the Angouleme International Comics Festival in France, which drew more than 17,000 visitors from Jan. 30 to Feb. 2, despite Japan’s vigorous lobbying efforts to block the event.

“The event succeeded in letting the world know the reality of Japan’s wartime sexual enslavement of Asian women as cartoon industry people from around the world and French citizens crowded the exhibition venue all through the festival period,” the agency said in a release.

“Back here, we decided to reexhibit them to help Bucheon citizens acquire knowledge of how the former comfort women were hurt and how cruel the Japanese military was.”

Historians say up to 200,000 women, many of them Korean, were coerced into sexual servitude by the Japanese army at front-line brothels during World War II when the Korean Peninsula was a Japanese colony. Of the 237 Korean women who reported themselves as former sex slaves, 55 are still alive.

For more information, visit www.komacon.kr.

By Suh Ye-seul (sys@heraldcorp.com)