hankyoreh

Women’s rights activist Lee Yong-su speaks during a press conference in Daegu on May 25. (Baek So-ah, staff photographer)

“Through this struggle, I have moved beyond the woman who was ashamed of all the finger pointing and the lies and have found my true self,” said Lee Yong-su, former comfort woman. That was in the remarks she’d prepared for a press conference on May 25 in which she criticized the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Korean Council), an advocacy group for the women forced to serve in brothels for the imperial Japanese army.

But what Lee actually said at the press conference was closer to sadness and shame than to pride. In a voice choked with tears, the old woman repeatedly said she was sorry. “I’m so sorry that the comfort women have inflicted such harm to the women of the world,” she said, revealing a strikingly different side of the human rights activist who boldly stood before the US Congress to testify about the horrors she’d suffered.

Lee testified once again, specifying the exact dates of what she suffered decades ago. She spoke of things that would have been completely uninteresting to most people, things that the majority of us wouldn’t bother remembering in detail. While society was gradually growing accustomed to the testimony of the survivors, perhaps Lee’s memory was like a jagged stone, prodding emotions that will forever remain raw. While watching a live broadcast of Lee’s press conference, I found myself thinking that we may have overlooked a rupture in time. Is 70 years enough time to erase the kind of suffering that rocks the soul? Is 30 years of testifying enough?

Advocates of the comfort women movement today urge us to move beyond the memories of the victims and to focus on stopping other instances of violence around the world. Setting aside the rightness or wrongness of that plan, it’s possible that Lee has felt the loneliness of being isolated in a decades-long discontinuity. While she was asked to testify repeatedly about the trauma of the past in countless statements and lectures, no one is talking about the past any more. Lee’s companions are passing away, and her colleague of 30 years has departed for greener pastures. Perhaps that’s made Lee more lonely than she can bear. Even if the comfort women movement achieves historical results, what’s the point if it fails to comfort these hurting women?

The Korean citizens who have wrapped scarves and blankets around the comfort women statues on cold days have failed to look at the ongoing pain of the survivors themselves. Korean audiences may have been enraptured to see a former comfort woman’s courage and strength in front of the US Congress in the film “I Can Speak,” but now some are questioning Lee’s “qualifications.” Even though it’s obviously the responsibility of the government and politicians to address the comfort women issue, which was a crime of the state, they’ve placed that burden on the backs of the former comfort women and activists. That leaves the activists with the task of embracing the comfort women and easing their suffering.

Even while speaking of her pain and frustration, Lee introduced herself as a “women’s rights activist” in her first and second press conferences. She rejected such official titles as “former comfort woman” or a “sex slave.” That may sound contradictory, but that’s the uncompromising life of Lee Yong-su. Despite the lingering pain of her past scars, Lee remains an activist who refuses to back down from her demands for an apology and compensation from Japan.

While the world was reducing the former comfort women to the two-dimensional stereotypes of young girls robbed of their innocence and “grannies” (as they’re often called in Korea), women like Kim Bok-dong, Gil Won-ok, and Lee Yong-su have been women’s rights activists, denouncing injustice despite the pain, with the hope of building a better world. We may not like Lee’s testimony, but rather than rushing to speculate about who is “behind” that testimony, we ourselves should stand firmly “behind” Lee to ensure she doesn’t feel “used” anymore. We don’t have much time left.

By Park Yoon-kyung, staff reporter

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