It's unfortunate that something so obviously a valid argument (English and Korean) – that there were Koreans who collaborated, especially in the recruiting of the so-called "comfort women" – are still beyond the bounds of scholarly debate.
Given the fact that there is a good bit of evidence to show that there were Koreans who collaborated in this horrible, ongoing act, making the assertion is a reasonable thing for a scholar to do.
What makes me suspicious about any "correct" vs. "distorted" history is the political context in which certain issues are raised, and the fact that there is a "right" answer before the question is even fully articulated. The Korean government and media seem to want to construct a history of black-and-white absolutes, in which Korea was a hapless victim; and even beyond the issue of the colonial period itself, if we're assigning national "blame" and talking about collective guilt, then isn't the Korean government, by having fostered, protected, and developed a sex industry (based in no small part on Japanese roots) around the US military for the gathering if capital for the nation – if we're talking about guilt on national and government levels, how is the Korean government also not morally culpable for having perpetrated a continuation of nearly the same kind of oppressive system of sexual labor?
Put another way, from the perspective of the so-called "comfort women," was being forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers much different from returning to Korea and having no other social option than to do the same for American soldiers, especially at the behest of the Korean government?
On a related note, it is also scary to me is how convicted Korean war criminals can be absolved of responsibility after having been convicted of war crimes from eyewitnesses who identified them as having been infamous to their cruelty in the prison camps where they had served as guards over captured American servicemen. There's even a site demanding that compensation be given to the Korean war criminals, with no additional evidence other than they were Korean, and couldn't have really been morally culpable.
The rationale, in a nutshell? They were Korean, and just doing what they had been told. Well, the Americans tortured under certain of these individuals apparently couldn't make that distinction as their guards went above and beyond the call of duty to psychologically and physically torture them.
Huh? Even the Jews had the kapos in the death camps. But Koreans are somehow, by virtue of being Korean in the colonial period, with no additional evidence presented, impervious to guilt, because a court in 2006 assumes so?
So basically, being Korean during the colonial period absolved individuals of any responsibilities for their actions, and by retroactive extension, the then non-existent Korean nation under colonial rule.
And then for the Korean government to sell away future moral culpability for past wrongs – without informing the victims nor ever having compensated them since (which declassified documents talked about here and here and here and here and here revealed to be true in 2005) – isn't that enormously problematic?
And then there's also the fact that the government actively suppressed any talk of this stuff for decades, since it seriously contradicted with the state's interests in keeping this quiet?
How is that not sharing in a great deal of moral culpability for the lifelong pain and plight of the "comfort women" who lived on for far, far longer than 1945? Does anyone really think their suffering was due solely to the Japanese before 1945, or that that suffering ended immediately upon liberation and thereafter?
In other words, when did I step into an alternate universe in which Korean society has valued women's bodies at all throughout most of Korean modern history?
Was that when the Korean government was sending representatives to encourage prostitutes in the "camp towns" around the US military bases to gather capital for the nation? Or perhaps that was when the Park government was exploiting feminized labor throughout the 1960's and 70's? Is that why there are estimated from 300,000 to a staggering one million prostitutes working in the Korean sex industry in South Korea today (4.1% of the GDP by the government's own 2002 estimates)?
Why is this news, from a hardcore feminist perspective, at all surprising? There were Koreans who colluded in the kidnapping of the comfort women. Wow – not surprising, since most of the Koreans involved in the ongoing sex industry employing Korean women, as well as the importation of Filipino and Russian women under the same conditions that Korean women were kidnapped in the colonial period, as well as in the recent upsurge in the human trafficking of Korean women now all over the world since the 2004 Anti-Prostiition Law crackdown...
Seriously – are people around the nation holding their hands over their mouths and fainting in disbelief? In a country in which there are "masturbation rooms" and brothels next to elementary schools?
Come on.
And all the accounts you see present serious problems for the serious historian (as opposed to the kneejerk nationalist kind). As I tell my students of history all the time, refrain from using the passive tense as much as possible. This is not just for stylistic reasons, but also because it's an easy way to elide concrete historical references and credible evidence, which is what good history is based upon.
Most accounts read "were abducted" and "were taken" or "were misled into thinking they were applying for domestic labor" – something like this. If we have the facts evenly laid out and they are apparently distributed such that they offer a similar level of credible density across the entire argument, then why don't the histories tend to read, "After having been kidnapped by a roving band of Japanese soldiers searching for young candidates to be recruited into the ranks of the so-called "comfort women," Yumi found herself placed on a train and bound for..."
Too many of the accounts tend to skip right over recruitment and procurement and emphasize only the horrors of being a sexual slave itself. I'm not pooh-poohing that description, but merely pointing out that I know; I get it. I fully acknowledge the horror of that experience as well as the Japanese military and government's well-documented and historically compelling participation in the entire process.
But the question no one on this side of the East-Sea-of-Japan/Tokdo-Takeshima divide wants to look squarely in the face is the extent to which the overall low value of women's bodies in both societies at the time (which is still partially reflected now) contributed to not only the easy operation, but the relatively easy procurement of soon-to-be "comfort women."
Given the fact that the Japanese state and Korean/Japanese-run industry were in collusion at the time (which brings up the thorny issue of Korean collaboration), and that industry and organized crime were also closely linked (and were well into the development period as well), and that we know that many of the Korean women were brought into the industry by paid domestic recruiters, why is it akin to career suicide to pose the same question of collaboration, especially since the same historical actors – the state, industry, and organized thugs, for example – were on the scene.
Because that's a messy question.
But we forget that historical narratives are constructed around political purposed. The "Holocaust" didn't gain that moniker until the mid-1960's. It didn't become the historical lesson for the world that it is until a significant amount of time after the fact.
This doesn't change what happened. It changed how it is represented. "The Holocaust" happened like a motherfucker, but it took some time for the West to make sense of it, for the considerable political power of both Israel and those who support her to makes its presence felt (and not as a worldwide conspiracy, but as a political force like any other that exist in the world of politics, especially one enabled by a mixture of nationalism and a recent historical "quickening"), as well as for the rest of the world to begin to mold a coherent historical narrative out of such an overwhelmingly horrible act.
The situation with South Korean politics and constructions of "correct" versus "distorted" history makes for any true, deeper exploration into the painful, complex, and stomach-turning morass of the Japanese colonial period nearly impossible, quite ironically, in South Korea.
Think this isn't true? Look at the reactions to professors who even hint that Korea might have benefitted materially from the colonial period – they are summarily fired and their names turned into mud. And to the crazies who don't tend to read very closely before hitting the comment area, I'm not concerned with whether Korea benefitted or not at the present moment; I am only concerned with the fact that, given such a complex period with so complex and dependent factors, this isn't even considered a legitimate historical question.
"Did the Holocaust happen at all" is not something I consider a legitimate question, given the staggering, mind-boggling amount of evidence that anyone who has taken even a passing interest in the subject is faced with. Holocaust denial is political extremism because it is so very historically untenable a line of reasonable inquiry. You would have an easier time convincing me that Neil Armstrong never went to the moon (and yes, I've seen all the conspiracy theory videos and been to the web sites). And it is even more suspicious because it is usually only political extremists who are ever behind it.
However, "To what extent did Korea materially benefit from colonial occupation" is a legitimate historical question. "To what extent was there Jewish collaboration in the camps?" is also a legitimate historical question. And outside of a very narrow zone of unreasonable, undocumentable, and untenable extremes, most historical questions are at least worth asking, even if they may not be fun to hear answered.
And what is frightening about the Red Guard, knee-jerk reactions to Koreans in difficult moments in history, the logic behind people wanting certain professors' heads for even broaching certain historical topics seems to essentially stem from the idea that "they were Korean; that couldn't have happened."
It such professors were met with overwhelming, damning evidence of just how daft and dumb their arguments were, I wouldn't have a problem with this; but most of the reaction, as in the past with similar incidents, is simply knee-jerk nationalism guiding historical and popular discourse, even in the face of someone who might have something worthy of hearing. I'm not saying she's right about her historical assertion; I'm just saying that anyone covering their ears while calling for her head on a silver platter is most unequivocally wrong.
And given all the other sacred cows of Korean national ideology that poses as history from the colonial period, I think I'd like to hear what she has to say. And I'd like to hear more about who did the recruiting, how it was done, and what role the Korean government played in covering up this entire period after the war.
