Kim Hak-Soon
South Korea, (1924–1997)
Kim Hak-Soon (김학순) was a Korean human rights activist who advocated against wartime sexual violence. Kim was one of the victims who had been forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. She is the first woman to come forward publicly and testify her experience as a "comfort woman" for the Japanese military; her testimony was made on August 14th, 1991. The rise of the women's rights movement in South Korea had inspired her to finally reveal her story to the public, after 40 years of silence in which the topic of comfort women was nearly unheard of due to potential backlash from Korea’s conservative culture. On December 1991, she filed a class-action lawsuit against the Japanese government for the harms inflicted during the war. Subsequently, hundreds of women from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Netherlands would follow her courage and step forward to tell their stories—their herstories–of enslavement to the Imperial Japanese military. Kim died in 1997 and her court case was still ongoing.
A Japanese military officer forcefully took Kim, who was just 17 at that time, to a Japanese military “comfort station” in China, where she was sexually assaulted numerous times. The comfort station housed other victims dealing with multiple Japanese soldiers a day in small rooms separated by cloth. After three months of staying in the comfort station, Kim was able to escape. In 1990, the Japanese government announced that Japan was not responsible for the issue of the military's comfort women, denying the existence of comfort stations.
On December 6th, 1991, Kim and two other victims filed a lawsuit at Tokyo District Court requiring reparation and apology from the Japanese government. They declared that the Japanese government and military were accountable for the operation of comfort stations, as well as the mental and physical damage inflicted on the victims.
"I do not understand why Japan is lying. I made my determination after watching the news. I was not asked to do it. I am doing this out of my own will. I am almost 70 years old, and I am not afraid of anything. I will say what I have to say." - Kim on August 14th, 1991.
Legacy
Kim’s statement prompted both victims and researchers to spread awareness and investigate, helping hold the Japanese government accountable for what the United Nations defines as a war crime. Today, South Korea celebrates the day Kim made her first testimony, August 14th, as a national memorial day for former comfort women.