Campaign to educate Americans about wartime sex slavery underway

This is Steven Cavallo's painting featuring a comfort woman on display at theMullen Library's May Gallery at the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C.

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Christine Choi, president of Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues

Nearly quarter of a century has passed since a survivor of wartime sexual slavery, Kim Hak-soon, first spoke publicly about the ordeals she endured during World War II.

Although disputes over the issue have continually put Korea-Japan relations to the test, the fact that up to 200,000 Asian women were forced to provide sexual services for Japanese soldiers is still not known by many people who live outside Asia.

To educate Americans about the wartime crimes, Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues President Christine Choi and her fellow activists organized a seminar and exhibition about comfort women.

Choi said hundreds of people had visited the "Sorrow and Hope of Comfort Women" exhibition since it opened in the Mullen Library's May Gallery at the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. on Nov. 25.

"They were amazed and educated by historical facts that had been totally unknown to the public and to students," Choi said in an email to The Korea Times on Saturday.

"Our goal is to show that the power of art can heal the victims and draw empathy from the Catholic University community and larger audience. [Through the exhibition, we are trying] to educate the public about what happened during World War II and how seriously traumatized were these forced victims of sexual slavery."

The exhibition features artists' works and reproductions of victims' works in various media. Paintings by former comfort women victims and photographs from the archives of the House of Sharing, a shelter for comfort women survivors in Korea, are also featured. Artists, including Steven Cavallo, contributed paintings.

Eileen Halpin, a freelance artist who graduated summa cum laude in kinetic imaging from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond in 2013, contributed a digital painting illustration that contains many portraits of the comfort women.

She said her work included many sepia toned portraits of the faces of strong women who survived kidnapping and sexual enslavement during World War II.

"They have seen and experienced much of the turmoil and hardships that this world has to offer and each of their faces has a different story of tragedy to tell," Halpin told The Korea Times. "Through it all, they are survivors, and there is strength of character and wisdom in the flickering of their eyes."

Halpin donated the same artwork to the House of Sharing in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, last year through her father Dennis Halpin, a former U.S. diplomat.

"My father was going to visit the House of Sharing in October 2013 and thought it would be nice to contribute a piece of art in their honor and memory so I created an illustration to give to them," said the younger Halpin.

Her father said the ongoing comfort women exhibition could help educate American students and younger generations about the history of World War II in the Pacific region.

"As women's rights issues continue to gain greater prominence in U.S. society, exhibitions like this can help people engage in consciousness-raising about the extensive human rights violations involved with sexual trafficking," said Halpin, now a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C

Halpin called for the issue to be settled, noting that sexual trafficking still continued around the world.

"Boko Haram's sexual enslavement of Nigerian schoolgirls and the Islamic State's kidnapping of Yazidi women and girls show the relevancy of the historic lessons that can be learned from the experiences of the comfort women in today's world," he said. "In Europe, deniers of World War II history are limited to skinheads and neo-Nazis; in Japan they include leading members of society."

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe angered Koreans for directing his deputies to review the Kono Statement, which admitted that the Japanese military had been involved in coercive recruitment of Korean and other Asian women to serve Japanese soldiers during the war.

The committee insisted that the Kono Statement was the result of a political compromise with Korea and denied the Japanese military's direct involvement in recruiting and enslaving Asian women against their will.

The recent fifth round of working-level talks between foreign ministry officials of Korea and Japan on the subject of wartime sex slavery confirmed only that the differences are so deep that there seems to be little hope of them being narrowed.

During the meeting, one Japanese official was quoted as insisting that the peace statues featuring a comfort girl should be removed, a suggestion the Korean side rejected.

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