Comfort Women Justice in North Korea Between Sovereignty and Civic Struggle

On Friday, November 13th, the Asia Policy Program and the Center for East Asian Studies will host a public lecture “Comfort Women Justice in North Korea Between Sovereignty and Civic Struggle” with Dr. Cheehyung Harrison Kim, an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

The “comfort women” issue became a public matter in the DPRK (North Korea) in November 1991. For the next two decades, the DPRK’s comfort women justice movement was resolute in demanding accountability of the Japanese government, even when such a demand was derailing the normalization talks with Japan. This position is completely different from the case in the ROK, where diplomatic and economic normalization with Japan had been separate from the issue of justice for colonial suffering. The comfort women issue in North Korea is an intriguing case of, first, how public memory is formed from transnational forces and, second, how the closeness between the state and civil society shapes a justice movement. While the strongest comfort women movement is in South Korea, the consistency and solidarity between the state and civil society in pressuring the Japanese government as shown in North Korea is unmatched. This talk also raises questions on the strengths and limitations of a justice movement based on a strong connection between the state and civil society.

Dr. Cheehyung Harrison Kim is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His research and teaching focus on socialism, labor, industrialism, everyday life, and urbanism in the context of East Asia and North Korea. He is the author of Heroes and Toilers: Work as Life in Postwar North Korea, 1953-1961 published by Columbia University Press. He is also the editor of the journal Korean Studies: Global Research and Critique.