1930s document shows women jailed for warning others about Japanese sex slavery
Spreading word about Japanese military's mobilization of Korean women into sexual slavery resulted in suspended prison terms, newly revealed documents showed Monday.
According to the 1930s court documents released by the government of Yeongam-gun, South Jeolla Province, Koreans who informed others about women being mobilized were tried and found guilty of spreading falsehoods.
In a ruling from 1938, Gwangju District Court under the Japanese rule found four Yeongam residents guilty of what they claimed to be false rumors. The documents were provided by the National Archives.
The ruling dated Oct. 7 of 1938 showed that a mother by the name of Song Myeong-sim on Aug. 8 had heard news from another person named Yeong Mak-dong that many young women are hurrying into marriage. This was because the authorities were mobilizing unmarried women between the ages of 12 and 40 to send to Manchuria, China, to "comfort" the military.
A week later, Song found that the town chief was creating census on female residents, including her 15-year-old daughter. She filed a complaint and inquiry about what she had heard, which led to her being convicted of violating the military law, along with Yeong who first told her the news.
An Oct. 27 ruling in the same year showed that a person named Lee Wun-seon and another person named Han Man-ok had been convicted of the same charge, for also spreading the word about the comfort women. Han told Lee that women were being sent to China as comfort women, after which Lee told neighbors to "send your daughters away to marriage as quickly as you can."
The UN and the international community have acknowledged the human rights violation committed by the Japanese military through the comfort women system.
This is the first time a legal document has shown that Japan punished residents who tried to tell others about comfort women conscriptions, Yeongam officials said.
"(Yeongam officials) will look for the descendants of those who had been unjustly punished, and see if there are ways that they can receive honors," Yeongam-gun chief Woo Seung-hee said.
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