The Issue of “Womanhood”

The statement that “the Japanese military ‘Comfort Women’ issue is a matter of women’s human rights” has by now become common sense for anyone with a reasonable understanding of the issue. Yet at a time when misogynistic and anti-feminist forces are more emboldened than ever, while the media and political establishment seem more concerned with accommodating them rather than taking action against such forces, the assertion that “the Japanese military ‘Comfort Women’ issue is a matter of women’s human rights” is a principle that needs to be reaffirmed. This article examines what it means to consider the “Comfort Women” issue through the framework of women’s human rights in the era of “#MeToo,” the movement against sexual violence

Only relatively recently did the international community begin to pay significant attention to women’s human rights as a distinct area of concern. Following the end of the Cold War, the international community sought to recast human rights—which had been divided into “economic, social and cultural rights” and “civil and political rights” and used as a means of ideological competition between the two blocs—as universal values. It was in this context that women’s human rights began to emerge as a distinct category, alongside issues relating to race, ethnicity, and religion. More specifically, the concept of “women’s human rights” was explicitly recognized and articulated at the Second World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993, and the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995.

Perhaps the most widely recognized statement concerning women’s human rights is “Women’s rights are human rights.” At the 1995 Beijing Conference, Hillary Clinton, then First Lady of the United States, delivered a speech in which she declared, “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” Citing examples of “violence against women,” including wartime sexual violence, dowry-related killings, and female infanticide, all of which continue to occur around the world, she argued that “women’s rights” cannot be discussed separately from universal human rights.

Although human rights by definition include women’s human rights, it is necessary to speak of “women’s human rights” as a seemingly tautological distinction because women experience forms of discrimination and violence that are historical and structural, arising from the very condition of “being women.” Sexual violence, prostitution, and domestic violence against wives are prime examples. These forms of violence go beyond violence against individual women; they also function as institutions that subordinate women as a group. Of course, there are often various cultural and procedural interventions operating between individual women and institutions that oppress women, mechanisms that induce women to appear to consent to their own subordination. This is because “womanhood” is also constituted through gender-role norms. At the extreme end of this spectrum lies the wartime “comfort station” system. Therefore, to conceptualize the “Comfort Women” issue as a matter of women’s human rights is to maintain a structural and critical understanding of “womanhood,” which stands in stark opposition to “manhood.”

The testimony of Kim Hak-sun, a victim of the Japanese military “Comfort Women” system, was a landmark “event” in Korean society. It took place in 1991, more than three decades ago. Her testimony emerged against the backdrop of the late 1980s, when women’s movement organizations were growing and their activities were becoming increasingly visible amid Korea’s transition toward political democratization. In particular, cases of sexual violence perpetrated by the police during the democratization movement came to light through the victims’ active efforts to bring their experiences into the public sphere, including hunger strikes in prison. These efforts helped foster a critical public awareness of sexual violence. It was only through these developments that Kim Hak-sun’s long-held wish could finally be realized: “Now that my husband and children are all gone, I want to find somewhere to pour out the grief and resentment I have suppressed for so long.”^[1]

Just as it was only after the end of the Cold War that women’s human rights could begin to receive serious attention as universal human rights in the international community, it was not until the 1990s that conditions in Korea were created for Kim Hak-sun’s testimony to be heard. This is also why many people remember Kim Hak-sun’s testimony as the “first,” even though other “Comfort Women” survivors had come forward in various publications before her. Hye-in Han explains this by noting, “At the time, Korean society did not know what concrete steps it could take to restore these women’s human rights.”^[2] Perhaps those who heard the victims’ pleas at the time lacked the human rights framework necessary to recognize and understand their pleas. In this sense, Kim Hak-sun’s testimony was the first survivor testimony to be heard within a paradigm of women’s human rights that critically examines “womanhood.”

The international framework of women’s human rights as universal human rights was likewise shaped by listening to the experiences of women around the world, including those in the Third World, about the “violence they experienced as women.” Although it belongs to the same historical moment, Kim Hak-sun’s testimony, strictly speaking, predates the 1993 Vienna Conference. In particular, at the 1995 Beijing Conference, wartime rape during the civil wars in Rwanda and Bosnia, as well as sexual violence against women in armed conflicts, emerged as major concerns.^[3] The universality of women’s human rights has continued to be questioned and challenged through sustained criticism of and challenges to the global feminism centered on white, middle-class women in the First World, and remains an evolving process.

The issues of the universality and relativity of human rights, and of individual women as bearers of human rights and women’s human rights as a collective political concept, were thus brought together by mutually shaping and reinforcing one another. As the idea of three generations human rights illustrates, the human rights paradigm has continually expanded from civil and political rights to economic, social and cultural rights, and ultimately to third-generation solidarity rights. If women’s human rights and the Japanese military “Comfort Women” issue are inextricably linked in this way, in what direction should they shape and advance one another?

The Issue of Women’s Liberation

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, who early on criticized Eurocentric feminism for analyzing the realities of Third World women in a monolithic manner “under the Western gaze,” has argued that women around the world should engage in anti-capitalist practices.^[4] Many experts, too, have expressed concern that “if human rights are reduced to a specialized rights system, they may be diminished into micro-level intervention techniques detached from macro-level social change.”^[5] The perspective underlying women’s human rights, which continues to evolve, likewise needs to move beyond the confines of narrow laboratories and courtrooms devoted to the promotion of rights and take a more active interest in violence against women in connection with the expansion of global capitalism.

In this regard, an anecdote worth considering appears in The Subsistence Perspective by Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen (trans. Kkumjimo, Dongyeon Press, 2013). The book’s subtitle is A Cow for Hillary. A few months before the Beijing Conference, Hillary Clinton visited Bangladesh to learn about successful cases of women achieving self-reliance through the Grameen Bank’s microcredit program for women. While meeting with women in a rural village in Bangladesh, Hillary was asked by the rural women, “Sister, do you have a cow?” When Hillary replied that she did not, the women reportedly took pity on her, saying, “Poor Hillary! She has no cow, no income of her own, and only one daughter.”^[6]

This is a heartening anecdote that reveals the pride Bangladeshi women take in actively participating in the development process and living self-sufficient lives, rather than remaining merely recipients of aid. Yet the contrast between a Bangladeshi woman who owns a cow and Hillary, who does not, seems somehow too simplistic. They appear to symbolize economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights, respectively. We should also consider what benefits the economic system derives from setting these two against each other. The Grameen Bank’s success, achieved through high interest earnings, raises the question: at whose expense have these profits come, and where have they been reinvested? Why is a development strategy that increases the number of women in debt being presented as a strategy for the liberation of poor women? Are the cases of violence against women that Hillary mentioned at the Beijing Conference problems that stem solely from cultures that oppress women? Ultimately, the confrontation between Hillary and the Bangladeshi women remains a contest between “economic, social, and cultural rights” and “civil and political rights.”

Kim Hak-sun was barely making ends meet at the time, living on rice and 30,000 won in subsidies she received from the local district office, as she was a Social Assistance Recipient under the National Basic Livelihood Security Act, plus the money she earned from an employment promotion project. One day, she stumbled upon an atomic bomb survivor, Lee Maeng-hee, at Dongdaemun Methodist Church. Kim Hak-sun eventually revealed her past when she heard that Lee Maeng-hee had also led a difficult life after suffering from radiation exposure in Japan. Lee Maeng-hee advised her to talk to a women's organization. Eventually, she decided to reveal her experience to a women's organization. Kim Hak-sun later mentioned that she would not have made that decision if she had a family. That was how Kim Hak-sun’s testimony on Japanese military “Comfort Women” emerged in the world on August 14, 1991.^[7]

When considering the “Comfort Women” issue through the framework of women’s human rights, we cannot overlook this scene. Why do the two victims of colonial rule appear in the form of poor elderly women? We need to ask how violence becomes institutionalized and through what processes women come to be excluded.

Hyo-jae Lee, who served as honorary representative of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (hereafter, the Korean Council), devoted considerable space in her article, “The Development of the Movement to Resolve the Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women’ Issue,” to describing the Korean Council’s efforts to support survivors in the early years of its activities.^[8] Activities such as events held to honor and comfort survivors, welfare programs for survivors, and campaigns calling for the enactment of special legislation to ensure the livelihood of survivors of the Japanese military “Comfort Women” system were efforts to provide economic support to those who had been neglected and excluded as Korean society pursued economic development in the decades following liberation.

During the Park Chung Hee administration, Korea received $300 million in grants, $200 million in loans, and $200 million in credits from Japan under the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea, through the Agreement on the Settlement of Problems concerning Property and Claims and Economic Cooperation between the Republic of Korea and Japan. This contributed to Korea’s economic growth. However, at a time when women’s human rights had not yet gained recognition as an international issue, it was hardly conceivable that any of this money would have been allocated to “Comfort Women” victims. Subsequently, following the democratization of Korean society, “Comfort Women” survivors were provided with living allowances, access to rental housing, and medical benefits as part of welfare programs, rather than as compensation for the harm they had suffered. This raises important questions about how we should ask when considering the issue from the perspective of women’s human rights.

Kim Hak-sun’s testimony is also a testimony that reveals the pathways and positionalities that were excluded from the processes of economic development and from the social formation of society. Perpetrators and a society that refuse to acknowledge the harm suffered by victims manifest that refusal through the social exclusion of those victims. We have witnessed numerous cases of victims being ostracized, dismissed from their jobs, passed over for promotion, or demoted following sexual assault “incidents” or in the aftermath of “#MeToo.” Victories in court have not necessarily translated into social victories for women. In such harsh circumstances, who would not be afraid to testify about their victimization and risk becoming a victim?

If the concept of women’s human rights has enabled women, as oppressed people and victims, to make their experiences of harm visible both in Korea and in the international community, it is now time to seek a social reordering grounded in that concept. The issue of reparations, grounded in the values of women’s human rights, must go hand in hand with strategies for social redistribution. The feminist ethic of listening to victims' voices may be synonymous with a politics that recognizes the illegitimacy and violence of the growth we have achieved and seeks to reshape society around those who have been excluded.