SDHF Newsletter No.98-5 The Origins of the US Army’s Korean comfort women

The Origins of the US Army’s Korean Comfort Women (HEART PRESS)　
By Choi Kilsung,
Professor at University of East-Asia, Professor Emeritus at Hiroshima University
(5) Chapter 4 Sexual Mores and the Idea of Chastity in Korea

September 3, 2015

In response to the last Newsletter, I received an email message from Prof. Matthias Zachmann, The University of Edinburgh.
I was disappointed in that he probably did not fully read what I wrote and what Prof. Choi Kilsung wrote in his book. My response was as follows:

“I didn’t say “See, there was also comfort women brothels for American soldiers in Korea! And not just in the case of Japan!” Far from it!
“The very point of this book is that in war time, in a village where American soldiers were part of the “liberating” US-led UN military, soldiers perpetrated dreadful acts of sexual violence against women in that village. The only solution open to the residents to solve this problem was to accept prostitution in the village. The author stresses that this is the story of the US Army’s comfort women, a story which neither Korea, Japan nor international society can ignore when discussing the comfort women issue.
“The Japanese military, in anticipation of problems that could occur, setup the so-called “comfort women stations”. To prevent dreadful acts from occurring, strict rules concerning the brothels were posted. So, no one in Japan (including Korea) viewed the “comfort station” at that time as an oddity. This was the prevailing “tone” of brothels prevalent throughout the country. Of course, the military never ordered, to say nothing of coerced, women to become comfort woman. They were recruited by brothel business dealers in the same way as other brothels. But there was one point of departure between comfort women and ordinary prostitutes and that was income. In case of the comfort women, they received much more money than normal prostitutes because of the potential risk of being near a combat zone. According to newspaper advertisements posted by dealers, monthly payment was usually 300 yen, 30 times the pay of private first class soldiers. We now know how much they were actually paid through a document from the US Office of War Information: payment was, on average, 750 yen, much higher than that cited in advertisements…”

I don’t know whether he understood what I wrote or not—I have yet to receive his response.

*Chapter 4 content; https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Chapter-4.pdf
*Author profile: https://www.sdh-fact.com/auther/choi-kilsung


*Introduction & Contents: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Introduction-TOC-.pdf
*Chapter 1: The Korean War as I Experienced It
https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Chapter-1-US-Armys-Korean-comfort-women.pdf
*Chapter 2: From Rape to Prostitution
　　 https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Chapter-2-US-Armys-Korean-comfort-women.pdf
*Chapter 3: The Spread of Prostitution
https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Chapter-3-US-Armys-Korean-comfort-women.pdf
Questions are welcome.

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Secretary General
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact