Statues

During the second* time I lived in South Korea, I saw this statue in a park:

I vaguely thought that the empty chair represented a missing brother, either during the Japanese occupation (see this previous post (but this was before I’d seen that movie)) or Korean War). Although the photo shows information in Korea, I can’t remember that there was information in English anywhere nearby, and I didn’t think to ask anyone. (I have recently found that searching for South Korea statue girl finds the answer.) I may have encountered it elsewhere after that, and certainly encountered it during our most recent visit in January 2023, in the grounds of Gwangmyeong Cave.

The rain gives an extra poignance.

This cropped up twice recently. The first was on Wikipedia’s front page, possibly on 6 June, being Memorial Day, either under Did you know … or On this day. It’s called 평화의 소녀상 (pyeong-hwa-e so-nyeo-sang, lit. girl of peace statue but referred to as The Statue of Peace), and symbolises the victims of sexual slavery by the Japanese, euphemistically called ‘comfort women’. According to Wikipedia, it was first installed, rather pointedly facing the Japanese embassy in Seoul, in 2011.

The second was on news/analysis site The Conversation yesterday, specifically about the terminology of ‘comfort women’ or sex slaves. The article uses quotation marks for ‘comfort women’ throughout. There is disagreement about the terminology, especially by Japan but also within Korea. There is “a complex debate over identity and language”. If people can’t agree on the terminology, they are unlikely to agree on the substantive issues. (‘Comfort’ is a good thing, isn’t it?)

I previously wrote about a class in which I got students to nominate and discuss (in English) the most important Korean person in history, person alive now, city (not Seoul – too easy), natural place, old building, modern building, food, drink, holiday or festival, and word. One student wrote, for the person alive now, ‘my grandmothers who were sex slaves from [presumably for] Japan’. I first assumed that she meant her grandmothers, but later learned that the surviving women are referred to as halmeoni, grandmother or respected woman of that generation. If she had said “our grandmothers” or “the grandmothers”, I might have questioned her further.

If I was designing a monument for comfort woman, I would include a young and old woman together, looking like they are comforting each other.

(*I first thought that I’d seen this statue and taken this photo during my first stay (2006-2009), when I lived near there), but the date of 2011 made me rethink. The photo confirms that it was my second stay (2015-2016), when I went to this park once. (One advantage of digital files. Misled by the egregious treachery of memory.)