Korean Women under Colonization
Korean Comfort Women and Colonial Power
As noted in the previous section on Japanese imperialism, Korea was extensively shaped by Japanese occupation. This was also manifested in the way that Japan treated Korean individuals as lower on the social hierarchy compared to the Japanese. As Min notes, the "Japanese government considered the Korean people- whether men or women- mainly as instruments to be expended for its war purpose", which suggests that the Japanese believed that the land of Korea, along with the people, were not only expendable but rightly Japanese property for them to use as they pleased (Min 944).
This is evident when looking at the Korean comfort women that were "abducted, raped, and mobilized by the Japanese Imperial Army to serve as sexual slaves at various 'comfort stations' within the empire from 1932 to 1945" (Ching 59). While the exact number of Korean comfort women is unknown, many experts assume that there were around 200,000 women that were taken to be "comfort women" (Min 938). The brutal conditions that the women were exposed to led over 70 percent of the women to "peris[h] before the end of the war" and the remaining survivors to bear the physical and mental trauma from their experience (Ching 60). The comparison of power between Japanese soldiers, who used comfort women as they pleased, and the Korean women, who were forced to remain in these stations, reveal the power dynamics at play. Not only were the Japanese men in complete power over what they could do with these women, the women themselves had no power to leave or voice to object to what the soldiers commanded them to do.
Korean Women and Gender Hierarchy
The example of Korean comfort women not only suggests the power dynamics at play between Japanese soldiers and comfort women, it also points to a larger gender hierarchy that was prevalent both in Korea and Japan. Ching makes it clear that the comfort women are an example of "patriarchal colonial capitalism" where violence and the abuse of power come into play because of bigger societal hierarchies that allow for these ideas to be normalized in society (Ching 61). In the case of Korea and Japan, "gender, class, [and] rac[e]" were all factors that led to power imbalences (Ching 61). The Japanese felt that it was their right to control Korean women because of their gender and race, which reveals that all of these structures existed and were "embedded in everyday life" (61).
Further, these ideas were seen when Korean comfort women came back from sexual slavery in 1945. Instead of support, they were shamed and abandoned by their families. Min expands on this when he mentions that the "patriarchal ideology in Korea played a key role in preventing [comfort women] from maintaining normal family lives" (Min 947). Because of the double standards based on gender and the expectations placed on women, comfort women were discouraged from marriage and deemed "undesireable" because of their experiences. The women were also heavily silenced and unable to speak out about their experiences in the military comfort system because of patriarchal customs that diminished womens' voices (Min 947).
Korean Women under Colonization
