1910 - Japan colonizes Korea.
1920s - As a part of Japan’s imperial policies after the colonization of Korea, theJapanese Imperial Army mobilizes Korean women as physical laborers or as comfort women. Comfort women is a translation of the Japanese euphemism, “jugun ianfu” (military comfort women), categorically referring to up to 300,000 women and girls of various ethnic and national backgrounds forced to become sexual slaves from the beginning of the 1920s when Japan began to invade neighboring nations in Asia until the end of WWII. An estimated 200,000 were from Korea. Poverty was rampant in the Korean peninsula due to the Japanese colonial policy of exploiting every available resource. Thus comfort women recruiters had no difficulty conning women and girls in Korea into becoming comfort women by making false promises of jobs abroad. Women were also abducted or sold by family members to pay off debts.
1931 - Japan invades Manchuria and first establishes comfort stations for Japanese soldiers, originally managed by civilians, under the supervision of the military.
1932 - The Japanese Navy establishes comfort stations in Shanghai. In addition to the military designated comfort stations, the Japanese Imperial Army begins to set up military operated comfort stations wherein, the military supervises and manages the comfort stations. Comfort stations are located throughout the vast Asia Pacific region occupied by the Japanese forces. The comfort women are raped 30 times or more a day and regularly contract sexually transmitted diseases for which they rarely receive proper medical care. Women who become gravelly ill, pregnant or try to escape are killed.
August 15, 1945 - End of WWII. Following Japan’s defeat, the retreating Japanese military seek to hide evidence of comfort women by massacring them. In other cases, the women are deserted and later detained at POW camps, many never returning home. Some of the women who return home commit suicide and others live in solitude with their painful past. These survivors live in poverty and shame, suffering permanent physical ailments and emotional trauma.
1948 - The only military tribunal concerning the sexual abuse of comfort women is held in Batavia (today’s Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia). The Batavia trial convicts several Japanese military officers for having forced 35 Dutch women into comfort stations, but completely ignore similar ordeals suffered by native Indonesians and women of other ethnic backgrounds. To this day, no Japanese soldier has been convicted regarding their treatment of Korean comfort women and the Japanese government has not released any documents on the issue.
1977 - Pong-ki Pae is a former comfort woman who had been detained in a POW camp in Okinawa at the end of WWII and missed the ship headed back to Korea. In 1972, when Okinawa was reversed to Japanese control, Pae, then 63 years old, became an illegal resident and was forced to reveal her past. 14 years before Hak Soon Kim testified as a comfort woman under her real name, Pae is identified by the Japanese media and serves as an important historical witness.
1990 - In South Korea, increasing public and media attention on comfort women lead to the formation of significant citizens organizations seeking to pressure the Japanese government to officially acknowledge its responsibility.
1991 - Hak-soon Kim, 67 years old at the time, is the first woman living in Korea to testify as a former comfort woman. Kim explains why she testified: “I have lots of unspeakable grudges against Japan. My life has been full of misery because of what Japan did to me. I had to tell someone about this. Which is why I decided to reveal that I was a comfort woman.”
January 8, 1992 - The first Weekly Wednesday Demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy is held. These demonstrations are held every Wednesday at noon through all weather conditions and recently, the milestone of 700th demonstration was reached in March 2006.
1992 - The House of Sharing, a communal home for former comfort women is initially established in Sokyo-dong. A permanent home is later established in Kwangju, Kyunggi-do Province.
1994 - The Japanese government announces the creation of the Peace and Friendship Exchange Plan, which would establish the Private Comfort Fund, now known as the Asian Women’s Fund, a private funding source to compensate former comfort women. Many comfort women vehemently oppose the fund as the Japanese government’s attempt to bury the past and avoid the responsibility of legal restitution.
1996 - The United Nations Human Rights Commission releases Special Commissioner Coomaraswamy’s “Report on Violence Against Women” which officially acknowledges the crimes of the Japanese government.
1997 - Duk-Kyung Kang, a former comfort woman and unofficial leader of the art therapy group operated by the House of Sharing passes away. The most celebrated artist in the group, Kang’s paintings depicted her terrifying experiences and strong desire for justice. She had collapsed during a Wednesday Demonstration and died after a year-long struggle with lung cancer. Hak-Soon Kim passes away at 73 years of age. As of May 13, 1999, of the 193 women who testified as former comfort women, 153 of them are still alive. Nami Hun, a former comfort woman now living in Cambodia travels home to Korea for the first time in nearly half a century. Hun’s case emphasizes the need for more resources and attention to locating the whereabouts of former comfort women unable of return home.
1999 - California State Congress adopts the so-called Honda resolution unanimously urging the Japanese government to issue a formal apology and pay reparations to survivors of the Japanese Military Sexual Slavery System and the Nanking Massacre. The resolution also acknowledges that the Japanese military committed crimes against humanity by forcing millions of people from Korea, China, the Philippines and other occupied areas or colonies into slavery.
2000 - 15 former comfort women from Korea, China, the Philippines and Taiwan sue the government of Japan, seeking unspecified but substantial damages for years of rape, beating, starvation and other forms of mistreatment that continue to haunt them in old age. The case is the first suit filed in U.S. courts against the Japanese government for war crimes. The suit was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a law passed by Congress in the 18th century, which gives foreign citizens the right to sue other foreign citizens, foreign entities or U.S. citizens in U.S. courts for abuses of international law.
2005 - The South Korean government released diplomatic documents detailing behind-the-scenes negotiations between Japan and South Korea over reparations for Korean victims during Japan's colonial rule and other issues prior to the normalization of bilateral ties in 1965. In contrast to Japanese government's argument, it turned out that the treaty only covers the reparation on the Japan's financial responsibilities such as unpaid labors, not the war crimes against humanity. The Japanese government is responsible to provide reparations to the former comfort women.
Produced by Young Koreans United of USA