The “comfort women” issue appears, on the surface, to be a bilateral problem between South Korea and Japan. In reality, it is deeper. The key player is increasingly not South Korea, but China, and the ultimate target is not Japan, but the United States, as the comfort women are co-opted by Beijing in its anti-American information war.
China has been waging this war since Beijing realized after the First Gulf War that it would likely be unable to the United States on the battlefield. As the document Unrestricted Warfare, published by two high-ranking Chinese military officials, makes clear, the Chinese have chosen to fight the US, and particularly the US-Japan alliance, using desinformatsiya rather than hardware and troops.
Chinese information warfare in the United States is a massive and multi-front campaign. In December 2017 the Washington Post alerted its readers to “the huge scope and scale of Chinese Communist Party influence operations inside the United States, which permeate American institutions of all kinds.” In May 2017, the New York Times reported that the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at the University of California-San Diego managed “within hours” to get the Dalai Lama uninvited as UCSD commencement speaker. The more than 150 Chinese students and scholars associations in the US, the Times added, are funded and influenced by Chinese Communist Party headquarters.
In January 2018, the Washington Post detailed that UT-Austin rejected funds from the China United States Exchange Foundation because the “Hong Kong-based foundation and its leader, Tung Chee-hwa, are closely linked to the branch of the Chinese Communist Party that manages influence operations abroad.”
But on-campus campaigns are just the tip of the iceberg. The comfort women issue represents arguably Beijing’s most aggressive information-war maneuver. It has been a source of serious friction between Seoul and Tokyo since the 1990s, and in the past three years, has threatened to upend the uneasy security relationship, triangulated through Washington, between South Korea and Japan. Rending relations between the three democracies is China’s premier policy goal in East Asia.
The South Korean government uses the comfort women issue mainly for domestic consumption – as a sure vote-getter or deflector of unwanted scrutiny. China’s ambitions are bigger. The CCP is much more interested in how this issue serves its global agenda; domestic politics runs a distant second. This is the difference and the reason that Beijing can operate on a much larger scale than Seoul on the comfort women front.
A three-front strategy
Globally, Beijing has so far moved through three main vectors: overseas Chinese networks; a largely compliant press; and the United Nations.
An example of the first is the comfort woman statue that mysteriously appeared in Manila in 2017. An investigation by the Sankei Shimbun revealed that the statue project was orchestrated by Overseas Chinese groups in the Philippines, including the Wai Ming Charitable Trust Foundation Company – long a front for politicizing the comfort women issue in mainland China.
Overseas Chinese groups have also pressed hard on the comfort women and Nanjing issues in the US and Canada: In San Francisco, Superior Court judges Julie Tang and Lillian Sing retired from the bench in order to co-found the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, which was ultimately successful in bringing a comfort woman statue to San Francisco. Chinese-American San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was himself a vocal proponent of the comfort woman statue. In Canada, Chinese-Canadian legislator Jenny Kwan has been pushing for a “Nanking Memorial Day” under the auspices of Canada ALPHA, a propaganda outlet run in-country by Hong Kong-born doctor Joseph Yu Kai Wong. Dr. Wong was one of the first, in 1997, to promote Iris Chang’s book Rape of Nanjing, a project which was, in turn, funded and coordinated by Chinese-American Ignatius Ding and his pro-China group Global Alliance.
A sympathetic Western media, for its part, has largely accepted South Korean and Chinese historical claims and repeats – without adding critical context – what Beijing’s spokespersons say. For example, speaking on January 10, 2018, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang “scolded” Japan about the comfort women issue, standing with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in pressing Tokyo to make yet another apology.
At the United Nations, China has been working to register the comfort women with the UNESCO “Memory of the World” program. Also at the UN, Beijing has repeated the talking points of “sex slavery” and “systematic rape,” demanding that Japan offer a full apology and reparations. In fact, China has partnered with North Korea in the registration efforts. It is notable that several prominent persons connected with Chong Dae Hyup, the most vocal comfort woman-related NGO in South Korea, have been arrested as North Korean spies.
The comfort women issue allows China, a country which leads the world in forced abortions, gendercide (sex-selective abortions of girls in favor of giving birth to boys), and draconian restrictions on a woman’s rights to have children, to deflect from its own women’s rights record. In portraying Japan as uniquely perverted, China hopes to isolate its perennial enemy from the world community while assuming the mantle of champion of gender equality.
The more China can convince the international community to believe the worst about the Japanese, the easier it will be for China to have its way in Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Bhutan, Nepal, Vietnam, the Philippines, Mongolia, and beyond. The comfort women are unwitting ground troops in China’s push to whitewash its own programs against Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, Falun Gong practitioners, Chinese girls, and dissident Chinese citizens, topple the United States’ base network in East Asia, and retain its title as the regional hegemon.
Comfort women: a nuanced history
None of this is to say that a comfort woman system did not exist.
In the Japanese Empire, time-tested Korean practices of buying and selling women as concubines to members of the elite yangban ruling class served as models for the Japanese military for contracting women to work at military brothels in Manchuria, China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific.
Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910 and was as much a part of the Japanese Empire then as Hawaii is part of the US today. Many women recruited from Korea were bought from their parents by Korean pimps or else were made vague promises by brokers—again, largely Korean—of employment prospects abroad. The Korean pimps and brokers simply repurposed the old yangban trafficking practice in order to deliver the Korean women to the “comfort stations” which the Japanese military used to combat sexually-transmitted diseases and prevent soldiers from revealing classified information to civilian spies posing as prostitutes in unlicensed brothels.
Many comfort women were professional prostitutes from Japan. Traditional Japanese pleasure quarters like Yoshiwara suffered from falling clientele as increasing numbers of Japanese young men were shipped to the front. Many prostitutes made the savvy business decision to go where the work was.
Some comfort women earned enough for their services (at rates set and enforced by the Japanese military authorities) to pay off the advance money given to their parents. Saving money was encouraged by the Japanese military, and accumulating large sums was hardly impracticable.
Now-deceased comfort woman Mun Ok-chu saved up a staggering 26,000 yen in three years (at a time when a sergeant in the Japanese army made between 23 and 30 yen per month). Mun made more money in 1943 – a lot more – than the Japanese lieutenant-general commanding all Imperial land forces in Burma.
More than history
Careful historians in South Korea, Japan, the United States, and elsewhere have repeated historical facts in an attempt to modulate the now-conventional rhetoric. But these historians have been mistaken in imagining that the comfort women issue as simply a historical question. It is not – it is another mode of Chinese disinformation.
But while comfort women propaganda is targeted at the US, a collateral benefit for Beijing lies in seeking revenge against Japan.
For example, in a recent policy speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed three new “State Memorial Days”: July 7, in commemoration of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident; September 3, in commemoration of the Japanese surrender to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces; and December 13, in commemoration of the Japanese advance into Nanking. In other words, China is invoking history in its direct confrontation with Japan.
China is, therefore, co-opting comfort women into the grand project of the CCP to re-assert its authority and to retake East Asia and beyond. What appears to be an issue between South Korea and Japan over history is actually a live-fire battle to draw East Asian states into satellite positions around the “Middle Kingdom” once again.
Jason Morgan is assistant professor at Reitaku University in Chiba, Japan, and a research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies. He holds a PhD in Japanese history from the University of Wisconsin, and an MA in Chinese Studies from the University of Hawaii, Mānoa. From 2014 to 2015 Morgan was a Fulbright scholar at Waseda University in Tokyo.
Why it is not cool to "appropriate" the Jewish Holocaust to support your political issues. Please hear Eliyahu Cohen’s perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPP_SKXoZI4
Excellent, well-researched article by Dr. Morgan. Thank you. I’ve followed the comfort women issue for a number of years now and I’ve now seen plenty of evidence that the comfort women were indeed highly-paid prostitutes hired by commercial brothels that had gladly contracted with the Japanese army to provide their services at forward bases.
Many or most of the brothels that hired Korean comfort women were owned by Koreans themselves. In those days prostitution was legal, throughout Asia, including Japan and its territories, and in China. But, in exchange for the privilege of having a steady flow of soldier/clients the private brothel owner had to first agree to health, safety, and work guidelines. For example, owner had to post fees and pay the sex worker according to the agreed upon contract, had to give time off, had to clean and disinfect the facilities and bedding, had to allow the workers to get periodic medical checkups, had to permit the women to refuse a customer. and much more. Owner also had to monitor that soldiers used prophylactics and washed up before having sex.
Whatever, one thinks about prostitution in this day and age, the comfort women system of regulated brothels was considered quite progressive thinking in those days (at least in the military world) because they helped significantly reduced the spread of VD, reduced the incidents of rape on the battlefield, and discouraged soldiers from social contact with potentially dangerous local women. It also attempted to protect the health and treatment of the sex workers. Despite having available the comfort system, there were a limited number of rapes committed by soldiers (e..g. in Semerang) and the perpetrators were punished by superior officers and tribunals. But those rape victims should not be confused with comfort women. The comfort women were hired and paid by commercial brothels eager to make big bucks following the IJA from camp to camp.
Chinese and Koreans would do well to confront their own histories. Nobody killed more Chinese than did other Chinese.
Likewise, the Koreans: nobody killed more Koreans than did other Koreans. Even today, Koreans sit poised to annihilate each other while pointing fingers abroad, including at Japan.
And then there are the naïve and the facilitators who actually buy into the idea that Japan had something to do with Koreans and Chinese killing each other for generations just SINCE World War II, right there on the world stage.
We literally see Chinese and Koreans saying Japan is their enemy. And people believe it.
No, the real issue has to do with modern geopolitics in Asia, and as long as PRC remains Communist, nobody would want a ‘common future.’ Except maybe confused people like you who quickly bring up Nazi Germany like so many do here.
Al Johnson KMT didn’t bring it up in 1946 didn’t mean the crime was not commited by Japan’s. Japan only made financial payments for their comfort women crime to Korea. Taiwanese comfort women in their 90s protested in Japan multiple times because Japan’s denial and Japan government didn’t even meet with them. Japan has paid lips service, but they never did anything to back up their apology to all the comfort women outside Korea.
Kaizuka Masae
It is very sad fact that you feel this way. On the other side of the world, the German people has confronted its Nazi past and made amends with its neighbors. In Germany today, a silly Chinese tourist can get arrested for a Nazi salute, while in Japan not so silly and not so innocent nationalists in full WWII regalia visiting Yusukuni Shrine has no equivalence in Germany.
Why can’t we just just get along?
Vic Mason Have you ever talked to anyone whose parents were killed because of Mao? I don’t think so because then you would know that they don’t hold the grudge against the Chinese government. Did anyone mention that the comfort women is Japan’s only crime? German has the courage to face up their crime, but Japan continued modifying the history to deny the crime in the school textbooks.
George Silversurfer
— Diary of a Korean comfort woman
http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.com/2014/10/former-korean-comfort-woman-mun-oku.html
— Photo of Korean comfort women taken by Colonel David Smiley
https://www.chogabje.com/toron/toron22/view.asp?idx=&id=150096&table=TNTRCGJ&sub_table=TNTR01CGJ&cPage=1
Michael Yon Doesn’t UN recognize one China with Tibet, Taiwan, and Xinjiang as part of China? Chinese internal affair can only be sorted out by Chinese. You made a poor comparison between internal affair vs foreign affair because the child never sees the neighbor the same way as the child’s parent.
George Silversurfer
— – In an interview with Professor Chunghee Sarah Soh of San Francisco State University, a former Korean comfort woman Kim Sun-ok said that she was sold by her parents four times.
Yet she testified before UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy that she was abducted by the Japanese military.
– In an interview with Professor Park Yuha of Sejong University in South Korea, a former Korean comfort woman Bae Chun-hee said she hated her father who sold her. She said that men who recruited Korean women and operated comfort stations were all Korean, and that Korean women who testified before UN Special Rapporteur lied on behalf of Chong Dae Hyup, [an organization co-founded by the wife of a man arrested as a North Korean spy in South Korea].
– In 1993 a former Korean comfort woman Kim Gun-ja told Professor Ahn Byong Jik of Seoul University, “I was sold by my foster father.”
Yet she testified before UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy that she was abducted by the Japanese military.
Source: http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-comfort-women-by-chunghee-sarah-soh.html
George Silversurfer
These are the testimonies and records made by Koreans:
— Professor Jun BongGwan’s review of the book "Comfort Women of the Empire" published on July 20, 2014 in ChosunIlbo
I heard the news that her book (Professor Park Yuha, "Comfort Women of the Empire") got banned and that she was being sued for defamation by a Korean civic group.
After reading the book, I was a little bit disappointed because there was nothing in the book that I didn’t know. We all knew that Korean comfort women were not coercively taken away by the Japanese military. Korean comfort station owners recruited women in the Korean Peninsula and operated comfort stations in the battlefields. The Japanese military was busy fighting all over Asia, and it certainly didn’t have time to be in Korea recruiting women.
————-
Korean fathers and brothers who sold their daughters and sisters, Korean comfort station owners who deceived women, Korean town chiefs who encouraged those acts. They all should be held accountable someday. But now is not the time. We must make Japan apologize and compensate again before we admit our responsibility.
http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.com/2014/10/comfort-women-of-empire-reviewed-by.html
The real issue is not just about Comfort Women, Nanking Massacre, Bataan Death March, Manilla Massacre in a long of list of war atrocities committed in name of the Japanese Emperor, but the whitewashing, pardon the pun, of the history by the post-war Japanese one-party state with the US government looking the other way for the sake the unity with an ally during the cold war. Japan and its people, unlike the German, have missed out the opportunity to confront the history and reset their relationship with their aggrieved neighbors. I dared this author to publish this piece apologist propaganda in Europe today.
The vitriol displayed in this forum is the perfect proof that little was done perhaps intentionally to allow the future generation of Chinese, Korean and Japanese to hold a common future.
Mr. Chan,
When did Japan occupy Korea? Korea wanted to be annexed in 1910 and was legally annexed with no struggle.
Occupied? Where were the landings? The battles? Who pushed the attack ashore and who defended?
Why did Koreans never defend their women? Because they were selling them? Because they were cowards? What was it? Maybe it is because this is all a big lie.
Simple questions need only simple answers.
Michael Yon
Al Johnson if you weren’t barking yourself into a frenzy to every comment you disagree with (most if not all) you might notice i wasn’t comparing false apples to disgusting oranges.. only referring them as real events. As to documentations.. i personally don’t have any and i wouldn’t think the japanese army at the time would keep detailed documentations of such deeds like comfort women or Nanjing massacre.(before you start ranting again , i am not comparing these two issues) but it is interesting you left out the testimony one of the, supposedly, biggest victim of the comfort women issue, the Koreans.. with the inconvenience of still living victims. the contemporary info from US, UK and Kmt chinese are influenced more by geopolitical interests than facts.(what documents they have to make the claim and prove many victims and families as liars? )
During the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Japanese army organized Korean comfort women and, during the American occupation of the southern part of Korea, the American army also organized Korean comfort women, who are called patriotic prostitutes. American soldiers, like Japanese soldiets, are rapists, besides being murderers.
First, to compare genocide with contract prostitution is both a false analogy, and disgusting.
Second, all contemporary information from the US, UK, AND the KMT Chinese (the only group to actually fight the Japanese unlike the current CCP government that collaborated with them) states otherwise to your assertion that the sex slavery was real.
What documents are you looking at to make your claim?
All the under table money goes to the pro communist and other neo fascist shills and those that promote the historical denialism on this subject.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/technology/china-facebook.html
Krisztian Valko,
Excellent point.
The Chinese it seems use the Comfort Women as a means to deflect the attention of their populace away from their own social crimes and problems.
Lee,
Your comments in Penang demonstrate clearly you are a CCP shill, in fact, mirroring Xi’s new ultra ethno nationalist neo fascism very clearly, proving the point that this issue is critical for the CCP to create a "smoke screen" to hide their crimes.
Thank you for helping to demonstrate that to all reading this.
Second, perhaps you should look inward with less racist bias.
First, you are incorrect about China being "poor and lack of funding" as a reason it didn’t take up the issue until AFTER the 1989 Tienamen Massacre.
China recieved MASSIVE funding by the US in all throughout the wartime period, and had to be consistantly prodded and cajoled to conduct a war crimes againt the Japanse at the end of the war in 1946. They wanted to focus on "Hanjian" or "race traitors" and not the Japanese military, the US wanted otherwise. So in 1946 the Nanking War Criminal Tribunal was held, again in part from massive funds from the US at the time. In addition, the Chinese KMT, as the only group to fight the Japanese during the war, was invited to the Tokyo IMTFE.
NO CHINESE BROUGHT ANY ALLEGATIONS OF COMFORT WOMEN TO ANY OF THESE.
Facts and not racist emotions Mr Lee are what you should bring to this discussion.
Actually, the "best post" was the screen shot of Yap Seng and Lee Wee Shing posting this.
Lee Wee Shing is a known CCP Shill and promoter in Southeast Asia.
Lee posted in September 3, 2015 that "Whites are never Chinese friends, especially the Anglo Saxon 5 Axis of evil nations. Individual cases of friendship are exceptions rather than the norm."
The Malaysian branch of the CCP sympathizers has been active lately, but apparently not very good in tradecraft. Lee, have you seen Chen Chuang lately in Penang?