Conversation with Artist Chang-Jin Lee about Her COMFORT WOMEN WANTED Project and More (1)

From Discovery to Commitment: COMFORT WOMEN WANTED

🧶 Kyeol : Thank you for taking the time to speak with Kyeol. Could you please introduce yourself and share the main themes and focus areas of your artistic practice?

🧶 Chang-Jin Lee : I am a Korean-born artist based in NYC. Because of my multicultural background, I am interested in diverse cultural and social issues. My work deals with subjects such as “Comfort Women,” gender, identity, individualism, sweatshops, 9/11, and Korean seawomen or Haenyeo.^[1] My art involves video, installation, drawing, sculpture, and public art. Many of my artworks focus on forgotten and underrepresented people, especially women and their stories.

🧶 Kyeol : Your work on the history of the “Comfort Women” is especially striking. How did you first encounter this subject, and what initially drew you to address it in your art?

🧶 Chang-Jin Lee : I first paid attention to the "Comfort Women" issue because of a front-page article in the New York Times in 2007. The article was related to the U.S. House Resolution 121, also known as the “Comfort Women” resolution, which was proposed by Mike Honda, a Japanese-American U.S. Representative from California who served from 2001 to 2017. The Asian community in the U.S. worked to pass this Resolution, asking Japan to take responsibility for the “Comfort Women” issue.

In the U.S. Congress, three “Comfort Women” survivors, two Korean and one Dutch, testified at that time. One of them said, "We used to get raped by fifty soldiers a day." Her shocking testimony provoked me to start my “Comfort Women” project. I thought I should look deeper into what really happened to these girls.

As I was growing up in Korea, I heard a little bit about the Korean “Comfort Women,” but didn’t really know much about it. In my initial research, I was surprised to find out it wasn't only Korean women who got enslaved, but many other Asian women, and even European women in Asia. I realized this wasn’t just a Korean issue, but an important international human rights issue that had been forgotten. I thought I should create awareness about “Comfort Women” globally through my art.

🧶 Kyeol : Could you tell us about your project COMFORT WOMEN WANTED?

🧶 Chang-Jin Lee : Sure. The project is a series of artworks, including billboard and poster displays, audio and video installations, and a recreation of a military comfort station.^[2] They are individual works, but together they tell a larger story. These are based on my interviews with survivors, visits to existing former military comfort stations, and research through historical books, photos, and references.

In the most iconic prints, there is a portrait of a young Taiwanese “Comfort Woman” survivor. Her name is Mei Chen. The photo was taken by a Japanese soldier during her enslavement at a comfort station. In my work, she is surrounded by gold leaf, like a saint’s halo in a Renaissance painting. I want to honor these women survivors’ courage to speak out.

In other prints, one image of a young woman around the time of her enslavement is contrasted with another of her in old age. A, a silhouette of an aged “Comfort Woman” against a black & white photo of her current home. With these, I wanted to explore the idea of home. Of those who survived, many never went back home because of their perceived “shameful past,” or they were ostracized from their families and communities. In a conservative society, chastity was considered the most important thing for women at that time. So here, I wanted to acknowledge their sense of loss.

In the video work, the “Comfort Women” survivors and a Japanese soldier talk about their experiences at the comfort stations, as well as their everyday hopes and dreams, and who they are as people. The women also sing their favorite traditional folk songs. This presents the women as individuals rather than as victims. These are the stories and voices of the survivors. The military comfort station installation is based on historical references and my video recordings of still-existing former comfort station buildings in China and Indonesia.

🧶 Kyeol : The title is quite eye-catching. What was the inspiration behind it?

🧶 Chang-Jin Lee : The title is a reference to ads that appeared in Asian newspapers during the war, such as the ads, “Comfort Women Wanted Immediately in a Large Scale," and “Military Comfort Women Wanted.” When there weren’t enough volunteer prostitutes through the ad campaigns, both Asian and European women in Asia were kidnapped or deceived, and forced into sex slavery. I thought the ads were an important historical reference because this is how it all began.

So I appropriated this method in reverse, presenting my work as public art in New York City in collaboration with the New York City Department of Transportation’s Urban Art Program, with support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The prints were shown as street phone booth posters in multiple languages in Times Square, Chelsea, Flatiron, Union Square, Koreatown, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, and Lincoln Center. I wanted to present my projects not only at museums and galleries, but also in the public realm, in order to reach out to the widest possible audience.

Reimagining Memory Through Art

🧶 Kyeol : The recreated military comfort station offers audiences a very particular and immersive way of learning about this history. Could you share more about the installation?

🧶 Chang-Jin Lee : In my initial research about this issue, I encountered some photos of military comfort stations. Then, I visited a sample comfort station room at the Museum of Sexual Slavery by the Japanese Army at the House of Sharing in Korea, 2008. So I thought I should look for still-existing comfort station buildings, if I could find any.

In 2012, when I met Professor Su Zhiliang of Shanghai Normal University who started the “Comfort Women” movement in China, he helped me to visit a couple of former comfort stations. Scholar Chen Ye says that in Shanghai alone, there were 158 comfort stations. The first one was called “Dai-Ichi Saloon,” the first comfort station ever in Asia. It was established in Shanghai in 1932.^[3] I briefly talked to a current resident of the building, and he showed me a Japanese wooden carving of Mount Fuji in his room. I also saw a guard tower. Another one was called “Mei Mei Li,” which is a huge complex of buildings. It covers three or four blocks. I heard Dai-Ichi Saloon was mainly for officers, whereas Mei Mei Li was mainly for ordinary soldiers.

I also visited former comfort stations in Indonesia. Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch during the war. One of the comfort stations was a Dutch officer’s home and the Japanese turned it into a comfort station. I went to see a place called, “the Blue House,” with Emah Kastima, an Indonesian survivor, whom I interviewed. She had been locked up there for almost two years during the war.

Based on all these visits and historical references, as well as photographs, books, and my own video recordings, I was able to create the artwork “Re-creation of a Military Comfort Station.”

🧶 Kyeol : What was your vision for the recreated military comfort station, and how did it function in practice during the actual exhibition?

🧶 Chang-Jin Lee : In 2013, I had a pre-inaugural exhibit at the AMA Comfort Women Museum in Taiwan, in collaboration with the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation. According to my historical research, welcoming and regulatory banners were hung at the entrances of comfort stations. In my artwork, these banners are hung from floor to ceiling, creating walls with text. During the war, entrance banners at military comfort stations welcomed and attracted soldiers. The text in Japanese says “Official Military Hometown Comfort Station.” Another one says “Japanese Girls Dedicating Their Hearts and Bodies in Service” (although, of course, the girls were not really Japanese). Yet another says, “Grand Welcome to Victorious, Courageous Soldiers.”

Inside the installation, videos of the former comfort stations are projected on different elements such as a kimono belt on a tatami bed, a window, and a washing bowl. On the walls, Japanese name plaques are hung. During the war, girls were forced to wear kimonos and use Japanese names. The artificial, made-up Japanese names contrast with their real Chinese names at the entrance to the exhibit. In this way, the exhibit explores the idea of erased ethnic identity.

I also exhibited a similar installation at the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History in Korea in 2017. Through this installation, I wanted people to see and experience a little of what it must have been like for young girls who got enslaved.

🧶 Kyeol : Regarding the films featuring “Comfort Women” survivors and a former Japanese soldier, what was your vision and intention in creating them? What led you to use survivors’ real voices and singing as central elements in the work?

🧶 Chang-Jin Lee : After my initial research, I decided to go to Asia to meet women survivors, and to hear their stories in different countries. I also thought it would be important to meet a Japanese soldier, to hear what he and other soldiers witnessed.

Between 2008 and 2012, with support from the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship and Asian Women Giving Circle, I traveled to meet 21 survivors in 7 different countries, including Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Filipino, and Dutch comfort women survivors, as well as, a former Japanese soldier.

I wanted people to understand the issue from a humanistic point of view. I thought that the women singing their favorite folk songs was especially important. Music is universal and intuitive, something that we all share and are moved by, even without understanding the language. The “Comfort Women” issue is so controversial and even toxic in Asia. I hope the survivors’ voices touch people’s hearts first, so they try to understand it, not as a Korean or an Asian-only issue, but as an important international human rights issue. I wanted people to remember the women survivors’ stories and also, their courage to speak out. The video is available on my website. I leave it open to anyone, so more people can learn about it, and watch it freely. It’s been seen by over 16,000 people. Many professors said they used my video in their classes to teach students about the “Comfort Women” history.