Changing politics of East Asian colonial and wartime memory in UNESCO

I. IntroductionAs of March 2016, more than 29,000 North Korean defectors are settled in South Korea (Ministry of Unification 2016); this group comprises 0.06% of the country's population. The number will exponentially increase if South and North Korea decide to integrate or unify their economies.According to the previous studies, North Korean defectors encounter difficulties when they resettle in South Korea (Jeon 2007; Yi et al. 2007; Yoon 2009). Despite government subsidies, unemployment rate and income considerably differ between South Korean citizens and North Korean defectors. In 2015, the unemployment rate of South Korean citizens was 3.6%, whereas that of North Korean defectors reached 4.8%; moreover, the average monthly wage of defectors was 1.55 million won, which was only 44% of the average monthly wage of South Koreans at 3.49 million won (Korea Hana Foundation 2016; Statistics Korea 2016). Additionally, the separation between these two groups and the differences in their economic and political experiences for 70 years may cause disparity in various aspects. A number of North Korean defectors experience mental or psychological trauma when settling in South Korea.The successful resettlement of North Korean defectors in South Korea is important for the welfare and integration of the two countries. The capability of North Koreans to adapt successfully and quickly to South Korean society can significantly reduce reunification cost. Otherwise, reunification cost and social discord between North and South Koreans can increase dramatically. Social conflicts may also indicate a possibility of political instability of reunified Korea.Important systematic studies on the adjustment of North Korean defectors in South Korea remain lacking. Even studies on the adaptation of immigrants have not reached a consensus on the key determinants of their outcomes (Yang 1994; Safi2010). Factors, such as self-selection of immigrants and the characteristics of their origin and settlement countries, complicate the issue. Apart from these challenges, research on North Korean defectors faces severe deficiencies in terms of data, which is detrimental for conducting quantitative research. Researchers also often fail to obtain sufficient information on the variables of defector experiences in South and North Korea. For example, the surveys of Korea Hana Foundation, the official institution that assists North Korean defectors in South Korea, only cover issues on their experience in South Korean society.The present study uses data of North Korean defectors obtained from a three-wave survey administered by a team of researchers from the Economics Department of Seoul National University. The survey was conducted in August 2011, May 2014, and June 2015 with respective participants of 132, 161, and 191.1 Seoul National University implemented the first wave, whereas Nielsen Korea conducted the last two. The sample of the first wave was constructed via snowball method through personal contacts. The sample population of the first wave is defectors aged 20 or older who leftNorth Korea within a year before the survey. The samples for the second and third waves were stratified by age, sex, and year of entry in South Korea. These samples were randomly drawn from the population of North Korean defectors aged 20 or older who lived in South Korea. Gang survey methodology was applied for all three waves to facilitate interviews with defectors living in the Metropolitan Seoul Area, including Gyeonggi Province.These surveys are unique questionnaires that include a comprehensive number of variables that may affect the adjustment of North Korean defectors to South Korean society. Experiences while living in North Korea and after arriving in the South were specifically explored. Economic variables, such as income, status of labor market participation, and subjective perception variables are also included in the survey.We contribute to existing literature in the following aspects. …

This concluding chapter reflects upon the decades-long decline in the status of Japanese women that has gone mostly unnoticed by the global feminist movement. It suggests that Japanese activists have attempted to strengthen their position through forging connections with South Korea’s feminist movement, and the chapter notes a range of ways in which Japanese and South Korean feminists have collaborated. The chapter advises that feminists elsewhere should take the lead shown by Korean feminists in overseas efforts of solidarity, and it notes the many recent successes of the South Korean feminist movement. While South Korean ‘comfort women’ advocacy and anti-prostitution campaigning have been major areas of borrowing and collaboration by Japanese feminists, more recently the movement draws inspiration from Korean feminism across a span of ideas and topics, which the chapter touches upon in its second half. Even with support from South Korea, however, the chapter lastly returns to the task facing Japanese feminists in terms of exercising influence and reach in a country with a long history of institutionalised prostitution and pornography, and yet with limited feminist achievements in areas such as spy-cam filming. The chapter urges greater attention and support from feminists abroad in service of the efforts of Japanese feminists like those described in the book’s 6 chapters.KeywordsGlobal sisterhoodSexualisation of Japanese womenSuccess of the South Korean feminist movementAjuma BooksSouth Korean anti-prostitution activism4B movementAnti-beauty movementTokyo Summer OlympicsSpy-cam filmingJapan’s domestic pornography industry

The former so-called ‘comfort women’ occupy a preeminent position in South Korean memory of colonialism. Their historical sexual subjugation at the hands of Japanese imperial forces has, in many respects, become emblematic of the brutality that characterized Japan’s colonial regime on the Korean peninsula (1910–45). Despite that their primary victimization occurred in the 1930s and 1940s, the ascendant status of comfort women in national memory was only attained in recent decades. This chapter argues that central to their ascent in South Korean memory was the development of a comfort women advocacy movement and its effective framing of victimhood. Leaders of the movement coaxed the reluctant victims forward, framed and politicized their plight, and ultimately transformed public perceptions of their colonial adversity. The agency of the movement was facilitated by the structural transformation engendered by South Korea’s democratic transition in the late 1980s, and a subsequent global normative shift toward the protection of women from violence. This chapter draws on fieldwork undertaken in South Korea from 2009 to 2012, including interviews conducted with the victims and movement leaders. The chapter begins by delineating the contours of marginalization of the former comfort women in post-liberated South Korea. It then traces the emergence of the advocacy movement and analyzes its framing strategy. Next, it turns to assessing the impact of this strategy on national memory. Finally, and to further illustrate the centrality of the movement in shaping memory, the chapter examines the counterfactual case of former comfort women in China, where a full-fledged domestic advocacy movement has yet to emerge.

Left-wing nationalist-populist movement and identification: A psycho-political analysis of the “comfort woman” statue movements in South Korea

South Korea's oral health care non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have played a crucial role in South-North relations, although a formal intergovernmental relationship is difficult to establish and also easily breaks down. Humanitarian assistance by NGOs in the oral health care sector is an area that receives wide support from South Korean society for its urgency and for its appeal to humanity. This humanitarian assistance started in the late 1990's and continued to grow until the late 2000's. This assistance continued throughout the tension between the two administrations that resulted in a radical decrease in overall assistance from South Korea to North Korea. However, concerns remain about the transparency and efficiency of NGO activities. In this article, the NGOs and their major activities are delineated, and South Korean legislation is examined. A current act, the Law on the Development of South and North Korean Relations serves as a basis for governmental regulation and support of NGO's. Humanitarian assistance in the oral healthcare area is directly related to the oral health of the North Korean people, and it should not be influenced by political changes. Long-term planning and close discussions between NGOs, their North Korean counterparts, and the South Korean government are needed. NGOs need to overcome their shortcomings such as a lack of expertise and shortage of financial support. For this, NGOs must improve their administration transparency and professionalism.

During World War II, several thousands of women were forced into sexual slavery, known as ‘comfort women’, by the Imperial Japanese Army in comfort stations throughout Asia. After the war, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East was established in 1946 to prosecute the Japanese war criminals, however, it was the ‘victor’s justice’ and failed to adequately prosecute crimes related to the ‘comfort women’. The truth of ‘comfort women’ remained untold in public until the victims started to speak about their experiences at the establishment of the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. Kim Hak-soon, a Korean ‘comfort women’, was testified about her experiences, and it resulted in encouraging other ‘comfort women’ to share their own experiences in 1990s. On the other hand, the Japanese government has continuously denied state responsibility for the ‘comfort women’. In addition, between 1991 and 2001, the ‘comfort women’ from South Korea, China, the Philippines, Taiwan and the Netherlands filed 10 trials against the Japanese government in Japanese courts, however, all the cases were eventually dismissed. In 1996, the Japanese government established an Asian Women’s Fund to provide compensation, medical welfare and letters of apology to the ‘comfort women’, however, the Fund has been criticised by the United Nations due to the lack of the admission of state responsibility. The debate over the ‘comfort women’ lasting to date has shown the complexity of the legal and political issues, causing continuing sufferings to the ‘comfort women’. This research will analyse the historical context of the ‘comfort women’ to identify the reason why these victims are still not able to obtain their rights to reparation and an effective remedy. It will also examine to what extent the development of international law on sexual slavery can contribute to enhance the right to justice and the right to reparation of the ‘comfort women’. I argue that the Japan’s acknowledgement of violations of international law and the inclusion of a victim-oriented and gendered approach into the reparations are crucial.

With the recent Russian invasion, China’s rise, and North Korean missile launches, there is an increased importance for the United States to strengthen its East Asian allies, South Korea and Japan. These two countries, however, have a long history of disputes that resulted from the legacy of the Second World War. One of them is the comfort women issue. More than 200,000 teenage Korean girls were taken by Japanese soldiers as sex slaves during the 1930s and 1940s. They are called comfort women. In December 2015, the South Korean and Japanese governments reached an agreement to resolve the issue of comfort women, getting an apology from the Japanese government. However, the surviving comfort women showed resentment toward this agreement and condemned the Korean government for reaching the agreement with the Japanese government. Why do the comfort women and many South Koreans reject this agreement? Also, two different understandings of the identically written accord have brought social conflict in South Korea. Where do these discrepancies in understanding the same accord come from? Applying the three conceptual frameworks—emic and etic approaches in cultural anthropology, the inclusive and restricted models of conflict resolution, and different levels of reconciliation—this paper analyzes the discrepancies in how people analyze and approach conflict resolution and highlights the importance of the cultural anthropological approaches in conflict resolution and reconciliation.

Reviewed by: Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress by Elizabeth W. Son Jennifer S. Oh (bio) Elizabeth W. Son, Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress (University of Michigan Press, 2018), ISBN 978–0–472–03710–0, 267 pages. The Japanese military’s sexual enslavement of women during World War II, also known as the “comfort women,” is a key example of gender-based war crime that has not been properly addressed in both national and international arenas. In her book Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress, Elizabeth Son provides a rich documentation of how survivors of the Japanese military sexual slavery and their supporters have attempted to redress the “comfort women” history through various forms of performances. One of the central themes of Son’s book is the role of performance in enacting “restitution for grievously unspeakable violence outside state parameters” and the “relationship between art and activism.”1 Son views these performances as “redressive acts,” which she defines as “embodied practices that involve multiple audiences in actively reengaging with traumatic pasts to work toward social, political, cultural, and epistemological change.”2 The book covers four different forms of “redressive acts”: the weekly Wednesday Demonstrations held across from the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea; the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery held in Tokyo from 8 to 12 December 2000; theatrical works on the Japanese military sexual slavery; and lastly memorial building projects in South Korea and the United States. Each chapter covers one of the redressive acts and raises distinct questions on the relationship between performances and justice for violence committed against women. Chapter One explores the transformative role of performances by tracing the effects of the Wednesday Demonstrations on survivors of the Japanese wartime sexual slavery and the Korean society. Specifically the chapter asks, “What happens when survivors and thousands of their supporters repeatedly gather to perform demands of redress”? The Wednesday Demonstrations began in 1992 as a weekly rally demanding justice for the atrocities committed against women by the Japanese military. The [End Page 233] Wednesday Demonstrations have played a pivotal role in educating the public on the history of comfort women, generating domestic and international support for the cause of seeking justice for Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, and changing the perception and relationship of survivors with one another and with the society. These effects “go deeper than formal diplomatic forms of redress.”3 Chapter Two studies the relationship between performance and law, pointing to the limitations of the existing legal framework in bringing justice to survivors of the Japanese military sexual slavery. The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery served as a symbolic public legal event to adjudicate the issue of war crimes committed against women by the Japanese military, something that national and international judicial systems had failed to do. One key question of the chapter is “How was the Women’s Tribunal both a rehearsal for a future legal performance that will probably never happen and a public enactment of justice?”4 The Women’s Tribunal offered a supportive platform for survivors to offer their testimonies, strengthened transnational network among survivors and supporters, and generated global publicity and awareness of the issue. While the Women’s Tribunal lacked legal authority, the process through which it reached a guilty verdict “reaffirmed the value of redressive measures outside state parameters.”5 In Chapters Three and Four, the memory of survivors and activists emerge as a prominent theme, raising questions on the relationship among performance, memory, and redress. Chapter Three offers a lengthy description of four theatrical works that performed in different countries: Comfort Women (2004), Nabi (2005–2009), The Trojan Women: An Asian History (2007), and Bongseonhwa (2013, 2014). These works address memories of the comfort women within a fictional setting, and at times have brought about harsh criticisms from survivors who question the accuracy of the performance content. Chapter Four illustrates how the building of memorials such as the bronze girl in Seoul (South Korea) and Palisades Park (New Jersey, United States) evoke a sense of attachment among the public to the survivors and their...

Unification of South and North Korean innovation systems

The comfort women issue commands the greatest attention among the public in South Korea. Although relations between Japan and Korea were formally normalized in 1965 and Japan has apologized several times to the South Koreans, yet the issue remains sensitive. South Koreans view the comfort women problem from an ethnonationalism framework but in reality, the issue is more complex. The comfort women issue is closely linked to contemporary human and sex trafficking. But, the relationship between the comfort women and human trafficking in the sex trade is not being taken seriously by Koreans. The findings suggest that prostitution over the years has a tremendous economic impact since Japanese occupation to the present. More concerning, it contributes to human trafficking that plays an even larger role in the South Korean economy. The scope of this article only covers during the Japanese occupation of Korea till the early 2000s when the South Korean government finally realized the extent of the sex trade involving Korean women in and out of Korea.

The objective of this paper is to analyse how the issue of “comfort women” affects Japan’s relations with its neighboring countries, namely South Korea and the Philippines, using qualitative methods, and constructivism as the conceptual framework. “Comfort women” or “jugun ianfu” in Japanese, and “wianbu” in romanized Korean, is an euphemism used to describe young women from all across Asia who were forced to please the Japanese troops sexually during World War II. These young women were deceived, lured, or kidnapped and then confined in “comfort stations.” Initially, the Japanese government denied that they had systematically confined these so-called “comfort women” and distributed them to comfort stations to be sex slaves, and rejected demands for a formal apology and war reparations to the victims. This had outraged South Korea and the comfort women survivors. This paper suggests that Japan finally admitted its role in the establishment of comfort stations in 1993, and has been trying to make amends with these countries. The process of making amends remains a persistent controversy, with Japan seeking to turn over a new leaf and many South Koreans and Filipinos striving to not let the tragic history be forgotten.

The rise of non-state (international, private, and transnational) actors in global politics has far-reaching consequences for foreign policy theory and practice. In order to be able to explain foreign policy in the 21st century, foreign policy research needs to take into account the growing importance of nonstate actorss. A good way to do this would be to engage the literature on globalization and global governance. Both fields would benefit from such an exchange of ideas because their respective strengths could cancel out each other’s weaknesses. Foreign policy research, on the one hand, has a strong track record explaining foreign policy outcomes, using a broad range of theoretical concepts, but almost completely ignores non-state actors. This is highly problematic for at least two reasons: first, foreign policy is increasingly made in international organizations and intergovernmental and transnational governance networks instead of national institutions like foreign ministries. Second, the latter increasingly open up to, and involve, non-state actors in their policymaking procedures. Thus, if foreign policy research wants to avoid becoming marginalized in the future, it needs to take into account this change. However, systemic approaches like neorealism or constructivism have difficulties adapting to the new reality of foreign policy. They stress the importance of states at the expense of non-state actors, which are only of marginal interest to them, as is global governance. Moreover, they also conceptualize states as unitary actors, which forecloses the possibility of examining the involvement of non-state actors in states’ decision-making processes. Agency-based approaches such as foreign policy analysis (FPA) fare much better, at least in principle. FPA scholars stress the importance of disaggregating the state and looking at the individuals and group dynamics that influence their decision-making. However, while this commitment to opening up the state allows for a great deal more flexibility vis-à-vis different types of actors, FPA research has so far remained state-centric and only very recently turned to non-state actors. On the other hand, non-state actors’ involvement in policymaking is the strong suit of the literature on globalization and global governance, which has spent a lot of time and effort analyzing various forms of “hybrid” governance. At the same time, however, this literature has been rather descriptive, so far mainly systematizing different governance arrangements and the conditions under which non-state actors are included in governance arrangements. This literature could profit from foreign policy research’s rich theoretical knowledge in explaining policy outcomes in hybrid governance networks and international organizations (IOs). Foreign policy researchers should take non-state actors seriously. In this regard, three avenues in particular are relevant for future research: (1) comparative empirical research to establish the extent of non-state actors’ participation in foreign policymaking across different countries and governance arrangements; (2) explanatory studies that analyze the conditions under which non-state actors are involved in states’ foreign policymaking processes; and (3) the normative implications of increased hybrid foreign policymaking for democratic legitimacy.

South Korean Perceptions of UnificationEvidence from an Experimental Survey Timothy S. Rich (bio) Since the historic meeting in April 2018 between South Korean president Moon Jae-In and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, several confidence-building measures across the Korean Peninsula suggest the possibility of peaceful relations and perhaps a path toward eventual unification. Questions regarding perceptions of unification are ubiquitous in South Korean survey research, showing that most South Koreans support unification. For example, data from the Korean General Social Survey (KGSS) from 2003 to 2012 consistently shows large majorities (67+ percent) stating that unification is somewhat or very necessary, with variation based on age and political ideology.1 Likewise, survey data from the Asan Institute from 2011 to 2014 finds similar majorities (70+ percent) that express their interest in reunification, with respondents in Asan's 2010 survey expressing a slight majority (52.6 percent), even after the sinking of the South Korean submarine Cheonan, which was attributed to a North Korean torpedo.2 While many factors—from ethnic motivations, to concerns of the short-term economic factors, to the long-term economic potential of a united Korea—likely influence desires for unification, these motivations provide little information about issues related to unification. This analysis addresses two unification-related questions. One, to what extent is support for unification contingent on more concrete factors, such as costs and internal migration? Two, to what extent do South Koreans expect unification in the short term? Despite a large literature on both South Korean public opinion and how framing and priming affects perceptions and attitudes across contexts, remarkably few efforts attempt to systematically connect how framing and priming in surveys potentially influence perceptions of North Korea. To address these questions, I embedded two experimental questions within an original web survey conducted in South Korea in November 2018, allowing for an explicit test of the extent to which word choice—in terms of how unification is presented in surveys—influences public perceptions. This article will first summarize literature on unification, introduce framing and priming and its potential implications for South Korean public opinion, and provide a brief research design. Empirical analysis will show the limited effects of framing on support for unification, call into question whether costs and migration undermine support for unification, and demonstrate that expectations that unification will occur increase when presented with longer time horizons. The findings suggest the durability of unification sentiment and potential avenues to support unification sentiment. More surprisingly, survey results find that South Koreans who [End Page 142] believe North Korea has a right to nuclear weapons consistently support unification, which calls into question whether the North Korean nuclear program counterintuitively promotes a future unified Korea. Previous Research While public opinion research consistently finds majorities in support of unification, several factors influence support. For example, existing work finds that South Koreans frequently focus on the costs of unification more than the benefits of unification, with concerns particularly focused on long-term economic development and the logistics of political and social integration.3 This should not be surprising considering the wide variations in estimates of unification costs, ranging from billions to over $10 trillion depending on whether infrastructure, humanitarian, and educational costs are included,4 estimates which are further complicated by debates on what countries and non-state actors will contribute to Korean unification.5 The growing economic divergence of the two Koreas further exacerbates concerns of cost, while younger generations of South Koreans exhibit declining interest in unification as well.6 Likewise, the role of North Korean refugees likely influences South Korean support for unification.7 The broader literature on immigration, which focuses on crime, economic competition, and cultural distinctions, would also seem to apply to South Korean views on North Korean refugees, and thus, by extension influence views on unification.8 North Korean refugees not only receive various forms of resettlement packages, but also compete with unskilled South Koreans for jobs. Meanwhile, evidence suggests that South Koreans who score high on ethnic identity are more likely to both view North Korean migrants negatively and be less supportive of unification.9 Furthermore, security concerns likely influence perceptions of unification. Previous research indicates that, other than...

Transnational comparison of ‘comfort women’ advocacy movements in Japan and South Korea

Many countries in Asia were conquered by Japan during the World War II, including Korea and Indonesia. Romusha, or slavery system introduced by Japan, also imposed to women. Girls were sent to brothels as Jugun Ianfu/‘comfort women’. Differ from men, women got double burdens, both physically and mentally, thus trauma was inevitable. The belief of taboo is also spreading, hence the movement of victims which demands to get their dignity back is rarely found. Using setting agenda theory and social movement theory, this paper argues that the best potential to promote human rights and justice of ‘comfort women’ goes to media. In South Korea, social movement has been advocating people about ‘comfort women’ as forced victims, not a voluntarily choice. Through engaging media, they hope to use its power to persuade people, changing the paradigm that ’comfort women’ were not sexual workers, but victims of war who needs assistance from society to heal their trauma.Keywords: ‘comfort women’, Japan colonization, media, sexual harassment, social movement