The Seoul Times - "Japan Boiled Comfort Woman to Make Soup"

"The Japanese killed a Korean woman and boiled her flesh in a big pot," said a former North Korean comfort woman in an interview. "They lied to us that it was beef soup and we ate it."

The Seoul Times recently published a first hand account from a Korean woman who served as a sex slave to the Japanese Military before and during WWII. It is estimated by certain scholars that more than 200,000 women served as "comfort women" during Japanese expansion in the early 20th century.

Here is the article in it's entirety:

"The Japanese killed a Korean woman and boiled her flesh in a big pot," said a former North Korean comfort woman in an interview. "They lied to us that it was beef soup and we ate it."

The 83-year-old Park Young-Shim said that the Japanese killed some of the comfort women just because they were not cooperative in serving sex to the Japanese soldiers.

South Korea's news agency YNA reported on April 27th, her case quoting a witness' account article from the April 27, 2005 edition of the ethnic Chosunshinbo (http://www.korea-np.co.jp/) newspaper of the pro-North Korean Association of Koreans in Japan called in Korean "Jochongryon."

"One day Japs came and said that because we are nearly starving to death, they would treat us with beef soup," said Park. "So we ate it and they said with a big chuckle that the soup was made out of the meat of a Korean woman."

"Japs are really like animals," Park continued. "They butchered one of the comfort women who refused to serve sex for them and they boiled her flesh in a pot."

She said that she was 17 when she was taken by Japanese police in Nampo, South Pyongan Province, North Korea in 1938. She was working as a housemaid in the city.

She recounted that in March, 1938 a Japanese policeman showed up in front of her and put her on the train, taking her somewhere in China. She said that the Japanese cop said "I will introduce a good job to you." She put up a strong resistance but to no avail.

Later she found that it was Nanjing in China where the Japanese took her.
Park recalled that there were many Japanese military installations. There was a "comfort station" called "Geumsuro Comfort Station" about 500 meters away from one of the Japanese military posts.The station was a three-storey brick house and in the house each room had one bed which measured 2 by 2.5 meters.

"I was extremely shocked when I entered one of the rooms. I was wondering and worried about what's going to happen to me soon." Park remembered.

"A little while later, a Japanese soldier came in and I realized what would occur to me," I resisted with all of my strength," said Park.

Park was kicked and beaten all over her body but she resisted to the end. Eventually, the Japanese soldier drew his long sword from his waist and threatened to cut her neck.

From then on she had to deal with some 30 Japanese soldiers per day. Every time she became sick or too tired and she refused to have sex with them, she was beaten severely. She still carries some scars on her body left by the sword of Japanese soldiers.

"I became so sick and I took some opium but the pain did not go away," said Park."I tried to take my own life on several occasions but it was not even possible."

During the course of the war between Japan and China (1937-45) and later the Pacific War (1941-45) she had to move from one comfort station to another in the Japanese military installations within mainland China.

Finally, the end of the Pacific War between Japan and the US appeared to bring her freedom. With war's end Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). Yet her following years were not met with happy or at least normal days.

She was not able to come to her hometown immediately. In the years later with the help of her Chinese friend she was able to come back to North Korea.

In the home country she had to undergo a couple of medical operations including one to remove her womb. She still suffers from a heart ailment, nervous tension along with pains all over her body.

"I still wake up in the middle of the night when I recall the past nightmare," said Park. "I cannot die before they apologize to me and other comfort women."

The Imperial Japanese Army first introduced "a system of military sexual slavery" or euphemistically "comfort woman system" for its soldiers in 1932.

By 1938 the system was spanned out to the entire military, which conquered and ruled much of Asia during WWII. "The Rape of Nanjing" incident led to the heinous system.

When Japanese soldiers raped Chinese women in Nanjing and anti-Japanese feeling heightened, the Japanese military decided to set up "comfort stations" or sex facilities within its military units as a way of relieving its soldiers of their pent up desire.

In 1941 when the Pacific War broke out and the Japan's war front was expanded they needed more comfort women. With the help of the Japanese governor general in Seoul, Japanese military officers were on a hunt for comfort women in the entire area of the Korean Peninsula.
The number of Korean victims was estimated at between 80,000 and 200,000. The Japanese government denied that they ran any such system until 1991 when a brave woman named Kim Hak-Soon came out and revealed the Japanese atrocities to the world. Japanese Governor General's Office in Seoul incinerated all related documents before the closing of WWII.

A 1994 report shows that there are still hundreds of former sex slaves alive. Most of them are women of Asian countries occupied by Japan before and during the Pacific War. Among them are 160 South Koreans, 131 North Koreans, 100 Filipinos, 50 Taiwanese, 8 Indonesians, and two Malays. These numbers are only for those who revealed their real names.

There are much more victims living out there who do not want to identify their tragic past. Even after Korea's liberation from Japan in 1945, many of the Korean victims chose to live in the Asian country where they were forced to serve sex to Japanese soldiers.