The irony is that Germany, which is often hailed as a “model” country for past liquidation by providing compensation to victims of wartime forced labor through government-industry collaboration, did not even include women forced into sexual slavery in the category of victims entitled to such compensation and still does not recognize their legal victim status.

Written by Choi Jae-in (The translator of 『Fifty Years of Silence』 by Jan Ruff O'Herne)

Notably, the Batavia Court Martial adjudicated a case involving the Japanese military’s exploitation of Dutch women as “Comfort Women.” This stood as the only trial that addressed perpetrators who abducted women for the purpose of forced prostitution among post-World War II war crime tribunals under international law.

This article foregrounds the long-overlooked sexual violence perpetrated against Jewish women during the Holocaust. It calls for fuller integration of survivors’ testimonies of sexual violence into our understanding of Holocaust history and prompts recognition of the ongoing reality of conflict-related sexual violence today.

The history of the Rohingya genocide in the world’s largest refugee camp and the hope nurtured by women amid an ongoing struggle for survival.

This is where the validity of the questions posed by this tangible AI interactive testimony content to the viewer lies: bringing up issues again about what to ask, not what to listen to. That’s because asking well must be accompanied by the constant consideration of the questioner. This, of course, would be to restore asking within the process of listening, not a reconversion or return to asking. 

Being simultaneously vulnerable, damaged, in the midst of anger, yet refusing to be consumed by that anger, courageous, and a fighter is the unique struggle of victims. Paradoxically, victims possess a special dignity in the minute possibility of becoming all of these beings at once.

On November 12~14, 2015, an international people’s tribunal was held in The Hague, the Netherlands for the crimes against humanity that had occurred in Indonesia in 1965.

Patporn Phoothong

In this conversation, Freedom United Executive Director Joanna Ewart-James and Kyeol examine how modern slavery is sustained by social and institutional systems, how collective action can drive meaningful change, and how historical awareness can deepen our understanding of injustices that persist today.

The Japanese military “comfort women” have been a subject of transnational feminism that criticizes the patriarchy of war and talks about peace and a symbol connected to the unfinished issue, sexual violence against women.

Kang Jeong-sook majored in the women's history of modern Korea, and currently works as a researcher at the Centre for East Asian History at Sungkyunkwan University. She contributed greatly to the early studies on the ‘Comfort Women’, by investigating the truth of the ‘Comfort Women’ issue, recording the testimonies of the ‘Comfort Women’ victims, etc. while working at the Korean Institute of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery and the Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization.