Factory Girls and ‘Comfort’ Girls: A Feminist Theo-Ethical Reflection on Korean Girl Soldiers in Japanese Empire

Abstract

This chapter theo-ethically contemplates the soldiering of girls in colonial Korea by examining Japan’s mobilization of girls during its Asia Pacific War (1931–1945). More specifically, soldiering girls in Korea is argued as the manifestation of the idea of sovereignty’s right to kill (e.g., necropolitics). Through the lens of “necropolitical labor,” which means that the extraction of labor from those who are condemned to death happens for the fostering of lives of others (i.e., state), the soldiering of girls in the late colonial Korean context reveals the militarized incorporation of girls into the body of the nation. The chapter will further generate a Christian feminist ethic of peace that is strong enough to stop the nation-state from exercising its right to kill the vulnerable for the fostering of the lives of others.