“They feared that Japan’s proper wing would use it to help whitewash its personal consolation ladies history,” stated Ms. Kim, referring to historical feuds between Seoul and Tokyo over sexual slavery. It also blamed the federal government for the “systematic and violent” method it detained the women and compelled them to receive treatment for sexually transmitted ailments. Choe Sang-Hun examined unsealed authorities paperwork and interviewed six women who worked in camp towns round American military bases in South Korea for this article. In 1973, when U.S. navy and South Korean officials met to discuss points in camp cities, a U.S. Army officer mentioned that the Army policy on prostitution was “whole suppression,” however “this isn’t being done in Korea,” based on declassified U.S. navy paperwork. In interviews with The New York Times, six former South Korean camp town girls described how their government used them for political and financial achieve earlier than abandoning them.
When a sociologist, Kim Gwi-ok, started reporting on wartime consolation women for the South Korean navy within the early 2000s, citing paperwork from the South Korean Army, the government had the documents sealed. Last September, a hundred such girls won a landmark victory when the South Korean Supreme Court ordered compensation for the sexual trauma they endured. It found the government responsible of “justifying and encouraging” prostitution in camp towns to assist South Korea maintain its military alliance with the United States and earn American dollars.
Boycotts bring mixed results, and it’s unclear what critics had been seeking.
The subject stays way more taboo than discussions of the women forced into sexual slavery by Japan. After Bud Light’s gross sales slumped and the model discovered itself thrust into the nation’s culture wars, Anheuser-Busch, the beer’s brewer, introduced final week that two of its executives were taking a depart of absence. The company additionally said on Thursday that it would focus its advertising campaigns on sports and music. Under rules U.S. navy and South Korean officers worked out, camp town ladies had to carry registration and V.D. Test cards and to wear numbered badges or title tags, according to unsealed documents and former comfort women. Although the dollars didn’t go on to the government, they entered the economic system, which was starved for onerous foreign money.
In 1961, Gyeonggi Province, the populous area surrounding Seoul, thought of it “urgent to arrange mass amenities for consolation ladies to supply comfort for U.N. Troops or boost their morale,” in accordance with paperwork submitted to the court docket as proof. The native government gave permits to private golf equipment to recruit such girls to “save price range and earn foreign currency.” It estimated the number of comfort girls in its jurisdiction at 10,000 and growing, catering to 50,000 American troops. There have been “special consolation women units” for South Korean troopers, and “comfort stations” for American-led U.N.
She would discover the skipper Jean Kay was a wanted man, on the run from an infamous bank heist – and that by then he had been a hijacker, a mercenary, a soldier, and one of the last nice radical activists. It would be the start of an unlikely but lifelong friendship between the Australian novelist and the French outlaw.
