A Postcolonial Look at Korean Grandmothers : Representation of Comfort Women Survivors in a Post-Conflict Society
Lampinen, Mariela (2021)
Lampinen, Mariela
2021
Master's Programme in Global Society
Yhteiskuntatieteiden tiedekunta - Faculty of Social Sciences
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2021-05-18
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202105044444
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202105044444
Tiivistelmä
The comfort women system was a system of sexual slavery set in place by the Japanese Imperial Army during the period of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War. The victims of the system were taken from around the Japanese empire, but especially Korean women made up a large part of the body of victims. In the early 1990s, many Korean comfort women survivors came forth with public testimonies of the crimes they had faced. These public testimonies brought the survivors to general public consciousness both on a national and international level. While Korean survivors were able to connect through NGOs, take on legal actions, and gain some monetary compensation, many of the survivors still feel disenfranchised and that they lack reconciliation for the crimes they faced.
In this study I have looked into the way the Korean comfort women survivors were represented in South Korean society in the 1990s and how their agency was present in the said representation. I analyzed this through a framework of post-colonial studies and subaltern studies as a way to look into subaltern knowledge creation of the survivors vis-à-vis the national Korean grand narrative of model victimhood. The data I used consisted of Byun Youngjoo’s The Murmuring documentary film trilogy which was published between 1995 and 1999.
What I found is that a model victim narrative persisted in the representation of comfort women survivors, and in some cases, it had been internalized by the survivors themselves. However, Byun’s documentary trilogy took a different stance in letting the survivors themselves determine how they are shown on screen and how they themselves narrate their lives and experiences, thus offering a form of alternative knowledge creation origination from the survivors themselves. This knowledge portrays the survivors not as a homogenous group of melancholic victimized grandmothers, but as individuals with differing experiences and stories. While the survivors have gained an ability of knowledge creation among some platforms, such as the documentary trilogy used as data in this study, they can still be argued to occupy a subaltern status as they have not reached a position of similar power in the Korean society.
The post-colonial look of this study is limited in scope and thus there still remains work to be done on researching the current status of comfort women survivors, in Korea and in other societies, as well as subaltern knowledge creation, and more sustainable practices to peace.
In this study I have looked into the way the Korean comfort women survivors were represented in South Korean society in the 1990s and how their agency was present in the said representation. I analyzed this through a framework of post-colonial studies and subaltern studies as a way to look into subaltern knowledge creation of the survivors vis-à-vis the national Korean grand narrative of model victimhood. The data I used consisted of Byun Youngjoo’s The Murmuring documentary film trilogy which was published between 1995 and 1999.
What I found is that a model victim narrative persisted in the representation of comfort women survivors, and in some cases, it had been internalized by the survivors themselves. However, Byun’s documentary trilogy took a different stance in letting the survivors themselves determine how they are shown on screen and how they themselves narrate their lives and experiences, thus offering a form of alternative knowledge creation origination from the survivors themselves. This knowledge portrays the survivors not as a homogenous group of melancholic victimized grandmothers, but as individuals with differing experiences and stories. While the survivors have gained an ability of knowledge creation among some platforms, such as the documentary trilogy used as data in this study, they can still be argued to occupy a subaltern status as they have not reached a position of similar power in the Korean society.
The post-colonial look of this study is limited in scope and thus there still remains work to be done on researching the current status of comfort women survivors, in Korea and in other societies, as well as subaltern knowledge creation, and more sustainable practices to peace.