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Japanese cartoonist Ayumi Mishima

South Korean President Park Geun-hye stands with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe while US President Barack Obama tries to get them to join hands. From behind, a girl can be seen watching them sadly from a distance. Titled "Forgotten People," the painting is on display as part of the 2016 RE: Imagine exhibition – A Satire of the Artists Wish for Peace exhibition taking place through Nov. 20 at the Neutinamu Gallery in Seoul's Tongin neighborhood. The parody of the agreement reached between the South Korean and Japanese governments on the comfort women issue last Dec. 28 is the work of 36-year-old Japanese cartoonist Ayumi Mishima.

"Forgotten People

The exhibition features over 40 works of cartooning and photography by 13 South Korean artists - including Sangmyung University professor and current events comic artist Ko Gyoung-il and the husband-wife couple Kim Eun-sung and Kim Seo-kyung, who sculpted a statue representing the comfort women that currently stands outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul - and five Japanese artists, including Ako Kawasaki, Masaru Hashimoto, and Hanahana Ichi.

The focus of their attention was on marginalized people and issues such as discrimination against Koreans in Japan, nuclear power, and the US military base on Okinawa. Mishima's interest in the comfort women issue dates back to Dec. 2000, when she saw the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery, a mock trial staged in Tokyo. After seeing the elderly survivors win the case by proving their forcible mobilization and sexual assault had been war crimes and crimes against humanity according to international law, she "felt that these women were claiming justice for themselves within a desolate wilderness." After her career as a comic artist began taking off in 2013, Mishima visited South Korea to lend her voice to the weekly Wednesday comfort women demonstrations in front of the Japanese embassy and efforts to resolve the comfort women issue.

" a painting by Japanese cartoonist Ayumi Mishima

But transferring that issue to the medium of artwork was not easy for her. "Satirical cartoons are at their strongest when they're objective, but as a woman my sympathies were fully with the survivors," Mishima explained. "The suffering they experienced as survivors was too great for me to draw."

Then came the agreement in Dec. 2015, when Seoul and Tokyo declared a "final and irreversible resolution" to the comfort women issue. Many alleged that Washington had been involved in organizing the deal. "I found myself saying bakabakashii- ridiculous," she recalled. "I was so angry that I felt I ought to do something." On Nov. 3, she returned to South Korea at her own expense, carrying five pictures produced from her anger last year.

“Self-Defense Forces

On Nov. 5, she observed the second National Action candlelight demonstration at Gwanghwamun Square. "The two governments may be trying to erase the comfort

women issue from history, but South Koreans have not changed on it. In putting up the statues, they are looking after the survivors," she said.

"There's an energy. And I think maybe they'll appreciate my work with that same energy."

By Ko Han-sol, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

"Forgotten People," a painting by Japanese cartoonist Ayumi Mishima

“Over the Wall,” a painting by Japanese cartoonist Ayumi Mishima

"Forgotten People" (left) and “Self-Defense Forces, Mobilized”, paintings by Japanese comic artist Ayumi Mishima