https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zfq4xLaOLbdg.kjaWPljlPPtc&authuser=0&hl=en

If you could leave your thoughts on
1. (survivors of) Comfort women’s gender identity
2. your own gender identity
3. and this Mapping Project,

I would genuinely appreciate to you.
Of course, you don’t need to comment all about it! 🙂

I add the information about survivors of comfort women in Wikipedia based on my goal for Wikistorming.
“House of Sharing” is the home for living comfort women (survivors of comfort women) who were forced to work as sex slaves for the Japanese military during WWII. The House of Sharing was founded in June 1992 through funds raised by Buddhist organizations and various socio-civic groups. The House of Sharing includes “The Museum of Sexual Slavery by Japanese Military” to spread the truth about the Japanese military’s brutal abuse of comfort women and to educate descendants and the public.

Every Wednesday, living comfort women, women’s organizations, socio-civic groups, religious groups, and a number of individuals participate in the “Wednesday Demonstration” in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, sponsored by “The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.” It was first held on January 8, 1992, when Japan’s Prime Minister, Miyazawa, visited the Republic of Korea. It is to demand the full investigation and fulfillment of responsibility to restore the dignity and rights of the victims and to pressure the Japanese government to apologize for past atrocities.

Some of the survivors, Kang Duk-kyung, Kim Soon-duk and Lee Yong-Nyeo, preserved their personal history through their drawings as a visual archives. Also, the director of the Center for Asian American Media, Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, made a comfort women video archive, a documentary film for K-12 through college level students.

The “House of Sharing,” “Wednesday Demonstration,” and feminist visual and video archives have promoted a place for solidarity between the victims and the public. It has functioned as a “personal is political” feminist movement. Lastly, it has served as a living site for the teaching and learning of women’s dignity and human rights by bringing people together despite age, gender, borders, nationality, and ideologies.

To ameliorate and acknowledge the problem of Comfort women, I have created an account named “Comfort Zone” in order to embrace the controversial meanings of Comfort women; who were a comfort to Japan military’s sexual needs during WWII contrary to the vulnerable state of women and to attempt to make a real comfort zone for women.
Even though, Comfort women is illustrated in Wikipedia, I would like to actively contribute to the “Gender intersectionality” perspective on Comfort women issue through Wikistorming project.
Furthermore, I would like to inform about the continuous Wednesday rally of Survivors of Comfort women in front of Japanese embassy; it is 1095th rally as of 2013, October, 9th, as well as the drawings drawn by a few survivors of comfort women depicting their experiences.
By doing so, I hope I can contribute to articulate social inequalities regarding gender and sexuality of Comfort women.

The Three Gorges Dam that spans Yangtze River located in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, China = three cities, 140 towns and 1,350 villages that have been expelled from their homes and their homelands to make room for the largest, and potentially most destructive, hydroelectric dam in the world. It generated the same amount of electric with Itaipu dam on the Parana River located on the border between Brazil and Paraguay.
(But I still had the idea of Anthropocentric idea, other than Ecocentric) Countless species of mammals, amphibians, birds, and plants will be inundated. Furthermore, waterborne diseases, fish die-offs, and water contamination from submerge of hundreds of factories, mines, and waste dumps will be happened.
The traditional ideology of China is, “nature was the source of wisdom, the mother of all things.” But the construction of The Three Gorges Dam is based on radical Maoist revolutionary thoughts and cultural revolution that smashing the old to meet these modern western goals.
To resuscitate homeland traditions, these social and environmental concerns are embedded in Ji’s art medium, format, style, and technique.
The medium he used is all from Chinese mainland. Ink and pigments are all indigenous materials derive from local minerals and vegetable of the Chinese mainland. The mulberry and paper are made in the traditional manner from local trees. His brushes are from native sheep, fox, wolf, goat, and horse’s hair.
Even though, the tradition form of art, such as the centuries of Buddhist art and decades of vanguard art, was crushed by Cultural Revolution and replaced to social realism through modern art, his drawing format and technique are emulated from the elegance of the golden age of Sung landscape painting a thousand years ago in a traditional way.
Ten foot length drawing like scrolling, scene after scene evokes the current loss of land and its wildlife: all casualties of modernization.
In detail, people are dejected but calm, (As I experienced the pre-Opening of Olympics) seemingly resigned to a fate they cannot defy.
Lastly, the calligraphy is inspirational poem, but Ji enumerates China’s longstanding ambitions to tame the Yangtze River and the regrettable outcomes of these efforts.

Text is revised from Weintraub, L. (2012). To life: Eco art in pursuit of a sustainable planet. Berkeley: University of California Press. p.216-220.
Images are from http://museum.cornell.edu/collections/view/the-three-gorges-dam-migration.html

The purpose of the Feminist Mapping Project (FMP) is to inform knowledge and change women’s positioning on colonized women’s body through visible mapping in virtual space.

The first practice of colonized women’s body will be (1) the issue of Comfort Women, Korean women were subject to sexual violence by members of Japanese military throughout the WWII. Another practice of colonized women’s body will be (2) systematic human trafficking for sexual exploitation such as imported Philippine women in Korea to serve U.S. military army’s linguistic and sexual perceived needs. Both practices arise from military domination, colonialism, and imperialism and are encoded in the hierarchy of serving men’s sexual desire.

First of all, I will post the artworks of one of survivors of Korean Comfort Women and information of her personal background and experiences as Comfort women to make others aware of unspoken history had actually happened.

Second, I will research about human trafficking for sexual exploitation in Korea and post information about it.

Third, I will create geographical maps about Comfort Women and ongoing process of human trafficking for sexual exploitation in Korea to make it visible and open the space for dialogue.

Forth, I will encourage various majored undergrad and grad students to visit virtual space and to answer the questions as follows:
What is your stated belief as a woman before and after experiencing FMP?
State yourself as “I was ~.” And “now I am ~.”
And leave a comment of your belief and positioning.

Fifth, as the FMP is not a stable project, I will add participants’ dialogue on geographical maps.

Through the FMP in virtual space, it will be possible to make visible the unspoken history of Comfort Women and to acknowledge the status of ongoing human trafficking for sexual exploitation. Also, women will be aware of their positioning that used to be established by the dominant culture; military domination, colonialism, imperialism, and hierarchy of sex.
The social inscriptions are invisible, but the drawings and mapping project are visible.

As a Korean woman elementary school teacher, doctoral student in the Art Education program in School of Visual Arts at Penn State University, and a grand-daughter of the woman, who was in similar age with Comfort Women and married her husband during colonized period at a young age of 18 years old to avoid being kidnapped by Japanese military, I will use the FMP as a new pedagogic and dialogical strategy and as a medium for perpetuating the issue colonized women’s body and changing women’s positioning. Therefore, FMP could cultivate people’s “habits of flexibility and openness” and enable people to develop a feminist conscience.

The purpose of the Feminist Mapping Project (FMP) is to inform knowledge and exchange perspectives on colonized women’s body through visible mapping in virtual space.

The first practice of colonized women’s body will be the issue of Comfort Women, Korean women were subject to sexual violence by members of Japanese military throughout the WWII. Another practice of colonized women’s body will be systematic human trafficking for sexual exploitation such as imported Philippine women in Korea to serve U.S. military army’s linguistic and sexual perceived needs. Both practices arise from military domination, colonialism, and imperialism and are encoded in the hierarchy of serving men’s sexual desire.

Through the FMP in virtual space, various majored students and faculties will be participating in constructive dialogue and visual map will be created based on the dialogue, Comfort Women’s drawings, and knowledge of both issues.

Through the FMP in virtual space, it will be possible to make visible the unspoken history of Comfort Women and to acknowledge the status of ongoing human trafficking for sexual exploitation. The social inscriptions are invisible, but the drawings and mapping project are visible.

As a Korean woman elementary school teacher, doctoral student in the Art Education program in School of Visual Arts at Penn State University, and a grand-daughter of the woman, who was in similar age with Comfort Women and married her husband during colonized period at a young age of 18 years old to avoid being kidnapped by Japanese military, I will use the FMP as a new pedagogic and communicational strategy and as a medium for perpetuating the issue colonized women’s body.
Therefore, FMP could cultivate people’s “habits of flexibility and openness” and enable people to develop a feminist conscience.

Personal Reflection on Comfort Women, and Feminist Mapping Project

Since my father is the eldest son of the conservative Buddhist Kwon’s family from South Korea and my mother is the daughter of a liberal Catholic Lee’s family from North Korea, I was raised by a Confucian father and a liberal Catholic mother.  Thus my parents are from different religious and cultural background.  Due to the religious and cultural differences and conflicts between my parents’, I chose to be an Atheist and a Pacifist.

Historically, Korea has been a colony of Japan from 1919 to 1945.  Then there was the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 between North and South Korea.  This colonized history and the Korean War ended by the special military relationship between South Korea and the United States.  These national events within South Korea’s history brought major social and economic development and changes.  Along with that, Sough Korea used to have strong Japan and the United States chauvinism in the course of history.

South Korea opened its boarders to workers from different ethnicities and races mainly from developing countries.  With the increase of foreign workers from developing countries, Korea has become more insular.  Many Koreans, who have lived in a homogenous and xenophobic nation, do not welcome difference.  However, by being a Pacifist and remembering subordinated history of Korea, I do not harbor discrimination toward those who live and work in Korea from various places in the world.

As a woman elementary school teacher who has lived in post-colonial period, I am interested in making visible the unspoken history of Comfort Women, who had suffered a sexual violence by Japan military throughout WWII.  My desired myself is to inform about Comfort women through the visual art created by women who have lived experiences in an important part of Korea’s history not taught in schools.  The tears and terror of the Japanese colonized period has been inscribed in women’s body and, thereby, silently carried toward into next generation of women’s life.  The social inscriptions are invisible, but the drawings by Comfort women are visible.

The root of my memory of Comfort women is not clear.  I might have heard about it for the first time from my maternal grandmother, who was in similar age with Comfort women during WWII.  She married with my grandfather at a young age of 18.  Her status as a married woman helped her avoid being kidnapped by Japanese military.  That is all I heard in regard to Comfort women from my grandmother on how she married to avoid such a fate.  I did not know what Comfort women’s duties where and why they served in this way.  My grandparents had strong North Korean accents and were very smart, outgoing, liberal, and had close relation with me.  Thus I have good impression of North Korean people and strong interest in Comfort women since my grandmother could have been one of them.

Although the issue of Comfort women is perpetuated throughout the media for the last 15 years and Korean history is taught in 5^th grade, the regular curriculum rarely includes Comfort women in an elementary school.  The exclusion may be due to the sexuality aspect of Comfort women and lack of Feminism lenses/aspects in National curriculum of Korea.  However, this is part of Korea’s history and can be taught to young people with a focus on colonization and hidden violence of war.  Moreover, teaching strategies could cultivate people’s “habits of flexibility and openness” to view history from different lived experiences through the study of artworks by marginalized people in a culture (Fischer, 2010, p.77). To enhance people’s awareness of understanding the issue of Comfort women and thinking about women in similar contexts across the world, I intend to visually reconfigure the boundary/binary between you and I and here and there to disclose sexual power relation between women and men in colonized contexts.

Comfort Women is a location and time specific issue. However, the practice continues in Korea with systematic human trafficking for sexual exploitation such as imported Philippine women to serve U.S. military army’s linguistic and sexual perceived needs.  Human trafficking   arise in both cases from military domination, colonialism, and imperialism and are encoded in the hierarchy of serving men’s sexual desire.

Therefore, the specific challenge that I propose to confront in a feminist mapping project is to inform knowledge of colonized women’s body.  Knowledge production is manufactured in relation of power and privilege. Thus, this project will potentially serve as a new device for knowledge production for social transformation and constructing emancipatory power of women.

Key words: Comfort women, Decolonization, Art education, Feminist, Mapping.

Comfort women were sexually suffered from Japanese military during World War; they are called sex slaves.
The issue of Comfort women is rarely included in Korean curriculum due to the sexuality aspect of it; however, I believe Comfort women is part of Korean history and should be taught to young people.
I will conduct a feminist mapping project here, to include Comfort women as a part of Korean history and to enhance people’s awareness of understanding the issue of Comfort women and thinking about the women in similar context across the world.
Knowledge production is manufactured in relation of power and privilege. Thus, this project will potentially serve as a new device for knowledge production for social transformation and constructing emancipatory power of women.