If you are in Korea on a Saturday when they are giving tours in your language, go to Nanum. Yes, I am telling you to go to Seoul despite my last post. Yes, it will take most of your Saturday. No, it will not educate you on architecture or history before 1950. Yes, it is well off the beaten path. And yes, if you buy postcards there you will have trouble deciding who to send them to.
It is, however, possibly the most important thing to do in Korea.
So what is Nanum? It's the "House of Sharing." House of sharing what? The war past. But not the usual numbers-and-brutality war past. Very specific pasts. Very disturbing pasts.
It is a house where a few surviving halmonis (elderly women, lit., "grandmothers") tell their tales of being abducted and forced into sexual slavery in World War II.
But they weren't abducted by just anyone. They were abducted under orders of the Japanese government. (For those who don't know, Korea was a Japanese colony in the years before WWII.)
The Japanese government does not admit that this happened.
Despite numerous scholars (mostly Japanese, employed by mostly Japanese universities) finding and following paper trails to show that the girls were accounted for, like property, within the Japanese army, despite further paperwork showing the minimal medical care (designed to keep them alive and little more) was provided by the army, despite the testimony of Japanese soldiers that the rapes were government-sanctioned, and despite the living testimony of these halmonis, the Japanese government will not admit that official responsibility exists for the systemized kidnapping and rape.
The Japanese government, much like an insurance company, has offered money without admission of liability.
That money was rejected.
Some Japanese officials have made their denials particularly stern, sticking to the story that the women were willing prostitutes who followed the camps of soldiers to sell themselves.
The women tell a slightly different story. One of being taken at gunpoint by Japanese soldiers (sometimes, sadly, both Japanese and Korean soldiers). One of having their arms burned for sport by the cigarettes of high-ranking officials. Of serving fifty (50) soldiers in a day at the rate of ten minutes a soldier and the next soldier waiting, pants disengaged, outside the door.
As stated, the paper trail corroborates the women's version and refutes the Japenese government's denial.
Though the living women who have cut through the shame to tell their story are few, the trails (of paper or soldier testimony) of abducted women are in the thousands--spanning several countries and no doubt hundreds of casualties.
The Nanum grounds (donated by a buddhist organization just a few years ago) also house a museum that stores documentation of the official nature of the abductions and rapes, as well as disturbing recreations of their quarters.
The museum ends with the artwork of the halmonis, which you can purchase in postcard or book form. But as said, the face of the person to whom you sent a painting postcard would not likely rise, if that person was capable of empathy.
Luck permitting, you will then meet a halmoni. Health failing, the days of live testimony are growing rarer and rarer; failing live testimony, you will watch a DVD with their testimonies contained therein.
When I went, I was lucky enough to be invited into the house afterwards. To meet women whose bodies had been through multiple transplants (due to untreated diseases years ago), whose wrinkles were many, yet who still were spry enough to demand money when the tour guide suggested a photograph, and who insisted I sit as they stand and offered me tea.
Every Wednesday they protest outside the Japanese embassy. Just this year, the State of California passed a resolution acknowledging their suffering and officially demanding an apology from Japan. George W. Bush had the audacity to accept an official apology from Japan, and the number of people--Korean, Japanese, or otherwise--who are demanding that apology be redirected to those who were offended is growing. After a few hours spent (and a donation of your choice), you can join their ranks.
Wow, incredible and sad, all at the same time.
ReplyDeleteForgive, but never forget.
ReplyDeleteHow good to have these ladises remaining to tell their stories. Those who suffered here and in the holocaust are few in number now and rapidly dying off.
It is good to realize that they are people and not numbers.
Forgive...Never Never Never Forget.
Kristin (using TLs acct ID with her permission)