The U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS and Asia Policy Point present

Unfinished Apologies:

Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves of Wartime Asia

March 1, 2016
9:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Kenney Auditorium
1740 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20036

The US-Korea Institute at SAIS and Asia Policy Point invite you to attend a discussion on the unexamined and unresolved history of Imperial Japan’s system of sex slavery in wartime Asia. The panels will provide an overview of how the system came to be and how it was managed, discuss new research on the non-Korean Comfort Women, and bring the legacy of the Comfort Women system into contemporary understandings of conflict resolution and violence against women in warfare settings.

Panel 1: Framing the Comfort Women History – Japanese Comfort Women and their Antecedents

• Caroline Norma, lecturer in the Master of Translating and Interpreting degree in RMIT’s School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, Melbourne, Australia
• Discussant: Katharine H.S. Moon, SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies and senior fellow at the Brookings Center for East Asia Policy Studies

Panel 2: The Comfort Women of Japan’s Occupied Asia 

• Griselda Molemans, Dutch researcher and investigative journalist, founder of the Task Force for Dutch Indies War Reparations (Dutch acronym: TFIR; Task Force Indisch Rechtsherstel)
• Hilde Janssen, Dutch Journalist and author Schaamte en Onschuld[Shame and Innocent] and Troostmeisjes/Comfort Women
• Peipei Qiu, Professor of Chinese and Japanese on the Louise Boyd Dale and Alfred Lichtenstein Chair, Vassar College
• Evelina Galang, Professor of English, University of Miami
• Caroline Norma, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
• Moderator: Yukiko Hanawa, Department of East Asian Studies, New York University

Keynote: Women in warfare, how far have we come?

• Taina Bien-Aimé, Executive Director, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women

Book signing with authors:

• Caroline Norma, The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery during the China and Pacific Wars
• Peipei Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves
• M. Evelina Galang, Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery
• Hilde Janssen, Troostmeisjes/Comfort Women
• Margaret Stetz, Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II

 Please RSVP here: 

https://uskoreainstitute.org/events/unfinishedapologies/

The event will be webcast here.

Tuesday, Mar 1, 2016 – Unfinished Apologies: Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves of Wartime Asia

The 2014 Edition of the SAIS U.S.-Korea Yearbook analyzes important developments in North and South Korea that characterized their relations in that year. Each paper was written by a SAIS student from the course, “Korea’s Economic Development,” offered in the 2014 fall semester. Their insights were based on extensive reading and study as well as on numerous interviews conducted with government officials, scholars, NGO workers, academics and private sector experts both in Washington and Seoul.

Student authors featured: Alin Horj, Ju Hyung Kim, Kendrick Kuo, Jagabanta Ningthoujam, Kyu Seok Shim, and Mario Vanella.

Read more and download the full report here: 2014 SAIS US-Korea Yearbook

Learn more about the Korea Studies Program at SAIS.

Monday, Sep 28, 2015 – Myanmar in a Regional Context

The U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS and Fading Away LLC present

Saturday, August 15, 2015
1:00pm-4:00pm

The United States Navy Memorial
701 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20004

The U.S.-Korea Institute and Fading Away LLC invite you to the debut film screening of Director Christopher H.K. Lee’s latest documentary, “The Last Tear.” The screening will be followed by Q&A with the producer and a reception.

1:00 Opening remarks
1:15  Film screening
2:15  Q&A with director
2:45  Reception

The screening is free and open to the public. Please RSVP here.

About the film:

 

Sexual violence against women has accompanied almost every large-scale conflict, yet most of its victims are silenced. One such sad episode is that of the “comfort women,” or more accurately, the estimated 200,000 women who were recruited to sexually serve the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. As part of this immense system, many young women from all over Japan’s occupied territories in Asia were forced into service where they faced rape, torture and extreme violence at military camps, euphemistically termed “comfort stations.”

Since the early 1990s, the testimonies of these women shocked the world, and were eventually taken up as a serious human rights issue by the United Nations, a host of governments, and numerous independent NGOs. Taking a different approach, we aimed to listen to and gauge the true feelings of some of the few remaining survivors, believing that the sea of mass media and politics is largely drowning their voices out. We sought to hear their true wishes.

As part of our Fading Away documentary series, we hoped to give a voice to these women and search for a form of healing. We traveled thousands of miles to visit the historical locations and met with the some of few remaining survivors. Along the way, we became witnesses to the scars left on their bodies and souls.  Our journey brought us to Japan, Korea, China and Taipei to meet with several experts, museums and NGOs. Our team gained great insight on this controversial issue that is still widely unknown to the rest of the world.

Now into their 80s and 90s, these women are becoming weaker day by day and we believe that such traces of painful memories and tragic stories may never be healed. But by remembering them and embracing them, we will provide a step towards their ultimate closure.

Our film’s purpose is to share the emotions of the past and to connect our generations in a more personal and humanistic way. Through understanding the faults of the past, we allow them to never be erased, and prevent them from happening again.

Movie website: The Last Tear

About the director:

Christopher H.K. Lee is an award-winning filmmaker/writer/publisher and media artist. He has over 27 years of multi-cultural and diverse industry experience in the fields of architecture, interactive media, visual effects and animations as a director/producer and over ten years of lecturing experience at colleges in both South Korea and the U.S.  Mr. Lee has produced many feature and short films, including several others that raise awareness of Korean history, culture and current affairs titled “I am Grace,” “Rescued by Fate,” and “Fading Away.”

 

A Workshop on the Naming
of East Sea/Sea of Japan

Thursday, July 9, 2015
9:00AM – 1:00 PM
1619 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20036

The US-Korea Institute at SAIS and the Society for East Sea will hold a workshop on the naming issue of East Sea/Sea of Japan. Since the early 1990’s, the name of the sea area between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago has been a cause of friction and debate. The workshop aims to engage in a constructive discussion on the naming issue.

 Featuring the following speakers/discussants:

CHOO Sungjae, President, The Society for East Sea
PARK Nohyoung, Honorary President, The Society for East Sea
Joseph STOLTMAN, Professor, Western Michigan University
Albert PARK, Professor, Claremont McKenna College
Charles NORCHI, Professor, University of Maine
Dennis HALPIN, Former Senior Professional Staff, U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs
John SHORT, Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
KIM Young-Hoon, Professor, Korea National University of Education
Norman CHERKIS, Five Oceans Consultants
RYU Yeon-Taek, Professor, Chungbuk National University
KIM Young Won, Visiting Professor, Seoul National University
YOO Euy-sang, Ambassador-at-Large for Geographic Naming, South Korea

 

*This event is invitation only.

Thursday, Jul 9, 2015 – East Sea/Sea of Japan Workshop