An original photograph showing comfort woman Park Young-shim taken on Sept. 3
Original copies of three photographs showing South Korean “comfort women,” a euphemism for sexual slaves under the Japanese military during the colonial occupation, are being made public after previously only being available in scanned versions.On Feb. 18, the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the research team of Professor Chung Chin-sung at Seoul National University announced that an exhibition titled, “Archival Memories: The Stories and Unheard Words of the Japanese Military Comfort Women” would be taking place from Feb. 25 to Mar. 20 at the Seoul Center for Architecture and Urbanism in Seoul’s Jongno district to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the Mar. 1 Independence Movement.
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon explained, “We are holding this exhibition because while many independence activists have been spotlighted for the 100th anniversary of the Mar. 1 Movement, the contributions of the comfort women who informed the world about imperial Japan’s abuses through their own victimization should also be recognized.”Two original photographs to be shown at the exhibition include one showing heavily pregnant Park Young-sim – a comfort woman survivor who testified to her victimization before passing away in 2006 – during her time as a prisoner of war, and another showing a group of comfort women in the Burmese city of Myitkyina. First published in South Korea in the 1990s, the photographs have considered among the public as representative images of South Korean comfort women, but the images were scanned versions of photographs from the US National Archives and Records Administration rather than original copies.
