‘Comfort women’ museum to open in May

By Kirsty Taylor and Kim Young-won
A museum to highlight the plight of Korea’s “comfort women” is to open on May 5.
The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan is opening the 2.3 billion won facility in Seoul. It aims to alert the world to the ongoing fight for a proper apology from Japan for the sexual slavery imposed upon other nations’ women during World War II.
An estimated 50,000-200,000 women from Japan’s occupied territories, including Korea, were forced by the Japanese government to provide sexual services for its soldiers during the conflict.
Korean survivors of the euphemistically named “comfort women” system have campaigned for years for an apology and compensation. In 2003, the halmeoni (grandmothers) proposed the museum to help people learn from their experiences to help ensure such acts would never be repeated again.
The Korean Council assisted them, and after years of work the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum is set to open in the Seongsan neighborhood of Seoul’s Mapo District next month.
As well as educating on The Korean Council’s work and victims’ stories, it will also include a section dedicated to work to help survivors of rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The special exhibit will display information on Congolese woman Masika Katsuva’s sanctuary for rape survivors and children born of rape in the eastern part of the civil war-torn nation.
Having suffered brutal violence, as many thousands of women have done in her country since 1996, Masika now runs a sanctuary for other survivors called “Listening House.”
Although the most recent Congolese war officially ended in 2003, regional conflicts still abound. More than 400,000 women are raped in the country each year according to one study published in The American Journal of Public Health last year.
The Korean Council will make a 20 million won donation to Masika’s foundation, Association des Personnes Desherites Unies pour le Development, to mark the museum’s opening.
Freelance director Fiona Llyod-Davies, who has worked in the DRC for over 10 years and made a documentary about Masika’s work called “Fields of Hope,” is to collect the first donation and show her film on the opening day.
The council and the halmeoni also aim to raise a total of 500 million won through various campaigns and launch a fund to help their African sisters.
Two halmeoni, Kim Bok-dong and Gil Won-ok, both now in their 80s, have pledged to donate any reparations they are eventually paid by the Japanese government to the fund, to be named The Butterfly Fund.
President of The Korean Council Yoon Mee-hyang said that the comfort women felt a sisterhood toward the Congolese women, sharing their pain and sorrow.
“During 21 years of movement for the comfort women in Korea, The Korean Council has received quite a large amount of help and support from international groups.
“We wish the Congolese women can also have hope in their minds with help from outside. We insist the violence against women stop and women’s human rights be protected,” she said, adding that she hoped that the help from Korea could draw international attention to and help protect Congolese women threatened by rebel troops.
“We understand how painful the situation in Congo is, since we went through similar violence. The halmeoni now work as women’s rights activists, and peace activists. We hope that women in Congo overcome the difficulties and be free from sexual violence.”
For more information on the Korean Council go to www.womenandwar.net
(kirstyt@heraldcorp.com)