![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
Until recently, the most important investigation on the issues of the “comfort women” was carried out by the Japanese government in the early 1990s. In the meantime, data from the Government-General of Korea (1910-1945) were never comprehensively investigated. As for the comfort women-related data from occupied China, even access to these has been difficult. To overcome this situation, a group of researchers that included us, recently formed a research team and began investigating data at the National Archives of Korea, the Shanghai Municipal Archives and Nanjing Municipal Archives, in China. This paper analyzes the significance of the new findings we made at these archives. Compared to the documents found by the Japanese investigation in the 1990s, our findings, in China in particular, give much more detailed information about the wartime recruitment and operation of “comfort women” and the military comfort stations.
Abstract in Korean
그 동안 위안부 관련 자료는 1990년대 초 일본 정부가 자신의 산하기관을 통해 조사, 공개한 것이 가장 중요한 부분을 차지해왔다. 반면에 위안부 관련 업무를 집행했던 조선총독부 자료는 전체적으로 조사된 바가 없었다. 또 점령지 중국의 자료에 대해서는 그 접근조차 쉽지 않은 상태였다. 이러한 상황을 극복하기 위해, 필자를 비롯한 몇몇 연구자들은 조사팀을 구성하고 관계기관과 중국 당국의 협조를 얻어, 한국과 중국의 자료를 조사하기 시작했다. 이 글은 한국의 국가기록원과 중국 상하이, 난징 등에 관한 자료조사 결과 발굴한 자료의 의미를 분석한 것이다. 새로 발굴된 자료는 위안소 설치와 위안부 동원 현황 등에 관해 일본 정부의 자료에 비해 직접적인 내용을 담고 있다. 그렇기 때문에 앞으로의 조사와 연구에 많은 기여를 할 것으로 기대한다.
Keywords:
Notes on contributors
LEE SinCheol is a research professor at the Center for East Asian History, SungKyunKwan University, Korea. He authored the books, The North Korean Nationalist Movement Studies, published by Yuksabipeongsa (Seoul) in 2008 and The Dispute of Modern and Contemporary History between Korea and Japan, published by Sunin (Seoul) in 2007.
HAN Hye-in is a visiting scholar at the Center for East Asian History, SungKyunKwan University, Korea. She authored the papers, “Act of employment under the general mobilization and mobilization of Japanese military sexual slave: focused on discriminative operating system between Japan empire and colonial Chosun” (Sarim No. 46, 2013) and “The Extent of damage and the principle of compensation regarding compulsory mobilization before and after the Treaty” published in The Review of Korean History, Vol. No. 113 in 2014.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2013S1A5B8A01055234).
Notes
1. The police in Korea discovered in 1939, organized employment-scams and trafficking of women in which Korean women were sold and sent to China and other places. Compared to similar incidents during this period, this case received unprecedented social attention. This gave the colonial authorities the latitude they needed to probe and secure information, which they may otherwise not have been able do, regarding organizations and methods involved in human trafficking in Korea. Ultimately, the information and data thus obtained provided the backbone on which the wianpu recruitment regime was built.
2. The“government-directed service” here refers to a ferry operation subsidized by national or local government, or by the military. The operation and maintenance of such a ferry service was controlled by the government. There were two such ferry lines to and from Korea and Taiwan. One left from Wonsan (now in North Korea), and the other from Inchŏn.
3. Ye'changki (yeki and ch'angki, or ‘artist-kisaeng ’ and ‘prostitute-kisaeng ’), chakpu (a tavern hostess(es)), and yŏkŭp (a woman (or women), usually young, who works in a bar or a similar business as an ‘errand girl’) are terms that come up repeatedly in this paper. These are terms no longer used in modern Korean. Where appropriate they are translated as “kisaeng and prostitutes,” “bar hostess,” and “bar girl,” respectively. This translator associated the term ‘chakpu’ with prostitution and ‘yŏkŭp’ with “an employee” – translator.
4. A recently published paper has shown that mobilization of women to serve in the Japanese military comfort stations was carried out as part of the National Total Mobilization regime (Han, Citation2013). The Jilin Provincial Archives in China also announced existence of historical materials supporting this argument.
5. On June 1, 1990, at the Upper House's cabinet committee meeting, the committee member Yoshioka Yoshitono raised a question in a session for asking questions to the government. He first pointed out that the former Minister of Transport Arabune Sheijuro had stated in a lecture delivered on November 20, 1965 that 14,200 Korean comfort women had died. Yoshioka then asked if the government still has the documentation. The basis of the former minister's statement has not yet been revealed.
6. Apart from the documents produced by GGK, the administrative wing of the colonial government, NAK also has most of the documents transferred from the other branches of the colonial government, such as the police, the prosecution office, and the court. However, documents from certain local police agencies, particularly at the level of county and town, have not yet been transferred to NAK, which calls for further investigation in the future. The relevant military documents from the colonial period are also kept at the Institute for Military History Compilation and by the Army Archival Information Management Group at the Army Headquarters. However, the size of their colonial-era archive is not very large.
7. This and the other similar-looking document numbers that appear in this paper are numbers assigned by NAK.
8. According to this Report, Japanese brokers came to Korea in early May of 1942 to recruit comfort women.
9. Pinkang refers to “a red-light district” in Chinese. It originates from the red-light district called Pinkang-li in Chang'an (now Xian), the capital city of the Tang dynasty.
10. The citations used in this paper have been provided by a Yonhap News Agency reporter who reported on the Jilin Provincial announcement of the historical archive.