The ‘Comfort Women’ issue is an ongoing discourse that continues to shape the unstable relations between Japan and Korea. Since the 1990's, Korean women who were coerced into sexual slavery by...Show moreThe ‘Comfort Women’ issue is an ongoing discourse that continues to shape the unstable relations between Japan and Korea. Since the 1990's, Korean women who were coerced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II have come forward to fight for recognition of the war crimes committed by Japan. The contestation of various nationalist historical remembering however has sidelined feminist issues regarding the brutality women faced in order to prioritize state nationalism. This article extends McClintock’s critique of the term ‘post-colonialism’ and historical linearity to analyze the restraints of a singular embedded history that does not allow space for other historical experiences to be legitimized. This article examines how the state, organizations, and 'comfort women' survivors propagate a specific historical rhetoric in the redress movement against Japan where they are constrained to a post-colonial ‘condition’ that does not look beyond the nation nor takes into consideration the harm done to women’s’ bodies themselves.Show less
