Remembering the 'comfort women': connected histories and the politics of solidarity

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Date
2021-02
Authors
Park, Gyunghee
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University College Cork
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Abstract
At the height of Japan's military campaign and territorial expansion during World War II, the Imperial army and its colonial government in Korea coordinated the management and organisation of the largest known network of militarised sexual slavery in recorded history. But for over 40 years, it appeared that the world had forgotten its existence. Following the re-emergence of the so-called ‘comfort women’ in the late-1980s, scholars and activists alike have since grappled with questions of what it means to acknowledge the ‘comfort system’ as history, and how we may begin to remedy the exclusion of its victims from our memory. In an examination of the ‘comfort women’ memory movement in South Korea and the United States, this thesis looks at the ways in which state and local actors have attempted to remember the ‘comfort women’ and seek out justice on their behalf. On this account, the author asks not only what it means to reimagine the ‘comfort system’ as having global-historical significance, but also explores the narrative logics that underlie commemorations and inform individual understandings of what it means to act in solidarity with its survivors.
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Keywords
Asian history , World War II , Second World War , Memory , Anticolonialism , Trauma , Imperialism , Colonialism , 'Comfort women' , Postcolonialism , Internationalism , Solidarity
Citation
Park, G. 2021. Remembering the 'comfort women': connected histories and the politics of solidarity. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.