Korean Comfort Women – slaves or employees?

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Advertisement in Keijo Nippo (Seoul Daily), 26 July 1944

URGENT RECRUITMENT DRIVE FOR COMFORT WOMEN

Age requirements:    Must be between the ages of 17 and 23

Place of employment: Behind-the-lines comfort station attached to Military Unit X

Monthly pay:             300 yen (may authorize advance pay of up to 3,000 yen)

Working hours:         8:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m., subject to consultation

Apply to:                   Imai Agency, 4-20 Shinmachi, Keijo City, Telephone: East (3) 1613

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What’s this?

This is a job advertisement for comfort women in the newspaper, Seoul Daily, distributed in Keijo (Seoul) during the WWII when Korea was under the Japanese administration.

Do you notice the monthly pay? – 300 yen.

At that time, a Japanese Imperial Army sergeant was paid 30 yen a month.

An American historian Max von Schuler-Kobayashi frankly asserts as follows:

“As far as the comfort women were concerned, they were paid. The recruiters were all ethnic Koreans. People have conjured up an image of the Imperial Japanese Army rampaging through Korean villages, and hauling off screaming women. This never happened.”

An American Historian Accuses the Lies of Sex Slaves, “This is profanation of history!” 

 

Max also sent a letter to the members of the City Council of Glendale, California, who misunderstand the issue and have decided to put up a memorial to the "Comfort Women".

Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact also points out that poverty prevailed in those days, and just as at similar instances in history, a great many poor women found the pay so attractive that they were willing to accept the concomitant risks.

 “Since the Koreans insist that Korean women were coerced into prostitution, we must ask them why they did not rise up in anger. At the time ethnic Japanese represented only 2% of the population of the peninsula, and half the police officers were Korean. The Korean population was certainly capable of rebelling or rioting.

But there were no rebellions. There was no rioting. If there were indeed abductions of young women, did Koreans stand by in silence while their daughters, sisters and girlfriends were abducted by a small number of Japanese and forced into prostitution? The Koreans of that era were neither apathetic nor powerless. The absence of riots or rebellions proves beyond a doubt that there were no abductions.”

pp.117-119 of "A New Look at the Annexation of Korea" shows relevant newspaper articles from 1930s - 1940s.

It was definitely a sad time when women had to sell themselves to live and/or support their family. However, the Koreans who claim “sex slavery by the Japanese army” are in fact fooling themselves, and the world. Whatever sentiment they may have toward Japanese, falsification of history should not be tolerated.