Abolitionism in the history of the transnational ‘Justice for Comfort Women’ movement in Japan and South Korea

2017 ◽  
pp. 115-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Norma
2016 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 264-274
Author(s):  
Elizabeth W. Son

In producing Chungmi Kim's eponymous Hanako (1999), the first Asian American play on the topic of “comfort women,” East West Players (EWP) provided a critical space for addressing this devastating chapter of Asian history and showing its relevance to communities in the United States. It also inadvertently launched the play on a ten-year transpacific journey as Comfort Women (2004) in New York and as Nabi (2005–9) throughout South Korea and Canada. Hanako dramatizes the intergenerational bonds between a Korean American university student, her grandmother, and Korean “comfort women” survivors who travel to New York to give their public testimonies. As the play develops, one learns that the grandmother has been repressing her own memories of enslavement as one of an estimated two hundred thousand young girls and women euphemistically called “comfort women” whom the Japanese Imperial military forced into sexually servicing its troops in the years leading up to and during World War II. Survivors kept their wartime experiences a secret from the public until the early 1990s, when a social movement for redress emerged in Asia. Over the past two and a half decades, activists and artists from around the world have joined survivors in their quest for justice. The recent agreement in 2015 between South Korea and Japan to “resolve” the “comfort women” issue sparked outcry from survivors and their supporters for its insincerity and inadequacy, further galvanizing the movement. Hanako and its afterlives as Comfort Women and Nabi are part of the transpacific culture of political activism and artistic expression that contends with the ongoing struggle over the history of “comfort women.”


2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei N. Lankov

This article, based on newly declassified material from the Russian archives, deals with the fate of non-Communist parties in North Korea in the 1950s. Like the “people's democracies” in Eastern Europe, North Korea had (and still technically has) a few non-Communist parties. The ruling Communist party included these parties within the framework of a “united front,” designed to project the facade of a multiparty state, to control domestic dissent, and to establish links with parties in South Korea. The article traces the history of these parties under Soviet and local Communist control from the mid-1940s to their gradual evisceration in the 1950s.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 2050313X2110355
Author(s):  
Laura Suzanne K Suarez ◽  
Larnelle N Simms ◽  
Khaled Deeb ◽  
Curtis E Scott

Recurrent pyogenic cholangitis (RPC) is a condition found almost exclusively in individuals who lived in Southeast Asia. We report a case of a Caucasian veteran diagnosed with RPC after presenting with a 5-year history of recurrent fevers and abdominal pain 20 years after serving in Japan, South Korea, and Guam. Extensive evaluation led to the diagnosis of RPC with improvement after biliary decompression and antibiotics. Although rare, RPC should be considered in individuals who present with recurrent bouts of abdominal pain and fevers regardless of race.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1905
Author(s):  
Sea Jin Kim ◽  
Woo-Kyun Lee ◽  
Jun Young Ahn ◽  
Wona Lee ◽  
Soo Jeong Lee

Global challenges including overpopulation, climate change, and income inequality have increased, and a demand for sustainability has emerged. Decision-making for sustainable development is multifaceted and interlinked, owing to the diverse interests of different stakeholders and political conflicts. Analysing a situation from all social, political, environmental, and economic perspectives is necessary to achieve balanced growth and facilitate sustainable development. South Korea was among the poorest countries following the Korean War; however, it has developed rapidly since 1955. This growth was not limited to economic development alone, and the chronology of South Korean development may serve as a reference for development in other countries. Here, we explore the compressed growth of South Korea using a narrative approach and time-series, comparative, and spatial analyses. Developmental indicators, along with the modern history of South Korea, are introduced to explain the reasons for compressed growth. The development of the mid-latitude region comprising 46 countries in this study, where nearly half of Earth’s population resides, was compared with that of South Korea; results show that the developmental chronology of South Korea can serve as a reference for national development in this region.


2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (6) ◽  
pp. 349-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans M. Kristensen ◽  
Robert S. Norris

Author(s):  
Hyunjin Seo

Massive and sustained candlelight vigils in 2016–2017, the most significant citizen-led protests in the history of democratic South Korea, led to the impeachment and removal of then President Park Geun-hye. These protests took place in a South Korean media environment characterized by polarization and low public trust, and where conspiracy theories and false claims by those opposing impeachment were frequently amplified by extreme right-wing media outlets. How then was it possible for pro-impeachment protests seeking major social change to succeed? And why did pro-Park protesters and government efforts to defend Park ultimately fail? An agent-affordance framework is introduced to explain how key participants (agents), including journalists, citizens, social media influencers, bots, and civic organizations, together produced a broad citizen consensus that Park should be removed from office. This was accomplished by creatively employing affordances made available by South Korea’s history, legal system, and technologies. New empirical evidence illustrates the ongoing significant roles of both traditional and nontraditional agents as they continue to co-adapt to affordances provided by changing information environments. Interviews with key players yield firsthand descriptions of events. The interviews, original content analyses of media reports, and examination of social media posts combine to provide strong empirical support for the agent-affordance framework. Lessons drawn from citizen-led protests surrounding Park Geun-hye’s removal from office in South Korea are used to offer suggestions for how technology-enabled affordances may support and constrain movements for social change elsewhere in the world.


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