True Meaning Underneath
Through more thorough research, I found out that 9 more statues have been built internationally (mainly in South Korea and the United States of America) to help remember the crimes committed against comfort women during Japanese colonialism.
After thinking about it for a long time, I thought that the appropriate national binds present in the transnational context of my object are Japanese uth, colonialism, and citizenship and conservative nature of Korea. As for Japanese colonialism, the Japanese military took power over most of East Asia during the Asia-Pacific War. While they had authority, they explicitly used such power to deceive, recruit, and kidnap local women (especially in Korea, Taiwan, China, Philippine, and Indonesia) to military brothels called “comfort stations”. Their idea of colonialism wasn’t just about obtaining more land, but rather on exploiting the resources and women to relieve the stress soldiers go through from the war.
I also thought the national binds of citizenship and the conservative nature of Korea were important to consider while writing about the idea of Pyeongwha-bi in Korea. Because of the conservative nature of most Koreans and the government’s state after Japanese colonialism, “comfort women” victims hid the truth, fearing that they might be seen as prostitutes (generally, ones with immoral values). However, following the democratization of the Republic of Korea, a Korean former “comfort woman” came forward publicly and sought formal apology in 1991. From then on, nationalism and citizenship in Korea helped embolden and enlarge the movement, starting with the Wednesday protest march outside the Japanese embassy, which has been happening every week for almost 25 years now. An extreme example of this nation bind could be a man named Mr. Choi who set himself on fire to protest Japan’s forced recruitment of sex slaves for military brothels during World War II and passed away after 9 days. In addition, many students and adults, especially women, had and have been active participants of the movement. If not for the nature of citizenship in Korea, it would not have been possible for the protest to go on for over a thousand times successfully.
The problem of relating intersectionality with an idea is that the idea may not necessarily have a gender or a definite race. Fortunately, the entire idea of Pyeongwha-bi was based on a young, Asian girl. The girl that the statue represents seemingly has an age of around 13-14, and is depicting one of the comfort women as a young girl, sexual slave of the Japanese military during the Second World War. The fact that the statue is female, Korean, and young contribute to the subtle image of innocence, youth, and vulnerability of young Korean girls at that time, and how such image was trampled by the Japanese soldiers.
Sources:
http://www.awf.or.jp/e3/oralhistory-00.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/fact-sheet-on-japanese-military-comfort-women/5449039
http://catholicamericaneyesinkorea.blogspot.com/2014/09/comfort-women-and-statue.html
