The New York Times recently published an obituary for Kim Bok Dong, a Korean woman who dedicated her life to advocating for former “comfort women”—women who had been forced into sexual servitude for Japan’s World War II military. This article discusses Kim’s life and her significant impact on reflecting on and redressing this dark moment in history before her recent passing.
Kim Bok Dong, a tireless, magnificent advocate for the women she knew were raped and battered, sexually exploited by the Japanese army in the years before and during World War II, died on Feb. 14 in Pusan, South Korea. She was 93.
Her death was announced by the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. In 1992, Ms. Kim was a co-founder of the council, and she went on to preside over it from 1994 to 2013.
She and her co-founders drew international notice to the wartime “comfort women” system by bringing lawsuits against the Japanese government, which until then had consistently denied that the victims of forced sexual slavery had numbered more than a few dozen, if that.
Ms. Kim was among the victims not taken to China, Taiwan or the Philippines, but by the Japanese army into areas now part of North and South Korea. She was 15 at the time; she said she was forced into service in 1939 and imprisoned in a comfort station in Hongchul-dong, an eastern suburb of the Korean capital of Seoul, until 1942, when she was released as her captors prepared to relocate the station to another country.
Kim Bok-dong’s active participation in the rehabilitation activities for the victims of wartime sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army started with her devotion to her mother’s dead friend. She started joining the daily prayer ceremony where her mother’s friend used to pray by herself. She taught the old lady’s prayer to her neighbors and held a spin-off prayer ceremony on Sunday out of her small factory producing sausages. By April 24, 1983, more than 100 women started coming to the Sunday prayer ceremony, led by Mrs. Park Yu-shin, the woman who lived through that nightmarish experience.
Kim Bok-dong joined other surviving victims when “The Victim”, a Volunteer Organisation for the Former Korean Comfort Women, started assembling wartime sexual slavery survivors to build a database as solid as possible. In June 1991, she was among the seven women who marched in front of the Japanese Parliament, and later that year she backed the legal battle for compensation and a formal apology from the Japanese government.
Her court case would go on for more than a decade, concluding in 2005 with Japan’s newly elected liberal government as well as the victim’s lawyers seeking reconciliation. The plaintiffs in the case sought reparation for physical pain and psychological trauma, actions that would either punish or grant clemency on behalf of a formerly sovereign entity, 60 years after the suppression of comfort women activities.
Kim Bok-dong didn’t ask for money, just for the truth about what happened to her and other surviving victims. The Japanese government’s response to the court cases would have to take apart a myth the Kwantung Army had fabricated in July 1938, thirteen years before her initial incarceration. The ministry insisted that those who escaped couldn’t speak of “comfort women” because they simply did not exist.
Bok Dong’s tireless advocacy continues to shape the truth on this dark and painful moment in Korea’s history, for which she became a symbol not only for the survivors, but for all affected by the crimes committed during the war. Through her efforts and those of so many others, Kim Bok Dong helped to co-create a culture of reconciliation in Asia, helping so many to heal from the wounds left by some of the darkest moments in human history.
‘Comfort Woman’ Survivor Dies at 93 Advocating for Victims of Tokyo’s Wartime Brothels
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