21-03-2025
Jane Austen, K-Dramas And Tragic History Meet In ‘Stone Angels'
Protestors sit next to a statue of a South Korean teenage girl in traditional costume. The Statue of ... [+] Peace acknowledges the women who served as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II. JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images
Stone Angels was not an easy story to tell. It has been almost two decades since author Helena Rho first heard about the wartime sex slaves known as 'comfort women.' Yet, in all those years these victims have not received the only thing they care about, an apology,
In 2006, while Rho was in Korea, relearning her native tongue and reconnecting with her mother's family, she was shocked to learn that before and during World War II, institutionalized sex trafficking by the Japanese Imperialist Forces enslaved as many as 200,000 women and girls. The majority of these women were Korean. The victims were taken to provide 'comfort' to the Japanese armed forces, in the process suffering repeated rape and horrifying abuse. Many died and those who survived were crippled by shame, often unable to return home.
'The surviving victims want just one simple thing from the government of Japan, a formal governmental apology,' said Rho, a four-time Pushcart Prize nominated writer and author of American Seoul. 'Not a personal apology, because several prime ministers of Japan have issued personal apologies, but they've made it clear that this is on behalf of just themselves. Every human being should feel terrible about sex trafficking of young girls and women, but they have never formally apologized as a government or acknowledged their war crimes and crimes against humanity and that's all the survivors have ever wanted. And they would like an offer of reparations. I've interviewed these survivors and they told me, we're old women. We don't need the money. We don't want the money, but it would indicate that they are sincerely, truly sorry if they offer us reparations, because this was a war crime.'
Helena Rho's second book 'Stone Angels was published in 2025.
Rho wanted to tell the story of these women and initially focused her story on Sun-yah, a fictional character who was enslaved.
'I realized very quickly that I could not have only one point of view in the novel,' said Rho. 'I started with Sun-yuh and thought, I can't stay in darkness that long. It took me so long to write her chapters because they were emotionally devastating to write."
That's when Rho decided to alternate the story of Sun-yah, with the character's niece Angelina Lee, who returns to South Korea to find out more about her mother's family. In the process she discovers that her mother had an older sister, Sun-yuh, who survived enslavement, but whose memory the family had erased. While exploring her family history Angelina also discovers what she needs from the world and from relationships. Her life/love story involves a narcissistic ex-husband, a longtime friend she grows wary of, and a younger admirer who helps uncover her family's mystery.
'Once I realized I couldn't stay in the point of view of a sexual slave for the entire novel, I thought, oh, I've always wanted to do my own version of Persuasion by Jane Austen,' said Rho. "I wanted to call it Regret and Redemption. So that's how Angelina came about. I based her loosely on Anne Elliot from Persuasion and then decided on a multi-generational novel. I wanted it to be about mothers and daughters. There are literally millions of iterations of mother-daughter relationships and I wanted to explore that.'
Rho is such an ardent Jane Austen fan she re-reads the author's published works every decade. References to Austen abound in the Stone Angels. The heroine's daughter is named Emma. Her sisters are named after other Austen characters.
'Once I decided that a version of Anne Elliot from Persuasion was going to be my central character, I realized that a love story was integral to her journey. And then I realized I didn't know how to write a love story. So I was like, okay, let's go back to Jane Austen. She's the OG.'
At one point in the novel Angelina cites two of her favorite love quotes. One was written by Austen and the other is a phrase commonly pronounced by male leads in Korean dramas, which Rho also loves. For the record, her favorite dramas include Our Blues, Fated to Love You, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, Descendants of the Sun. What's Wrong with Secretary Kim, Encounter, Forecasting Love and Weather and My Liberation Notes. She's currently enjoying When Life Gives You Tangerines.
Helena Rho first learned about the history of the comfort women while in Korea reconnecting with ... [+] family.
Angelina watches k-dramas, like Rho, and the man she falls for may seem familiar to k-drama fans. He has some classic k-drama male lead attributes: good looks, talent, but also humility and a kind heart. Does he seem too good to be true? Maybe. Rho is fine with perpetuating the idea that you can find the perfect man.
'I'm totally fine with it because I think that it started with Jane Austen,' said Rho. 'Honestly, I think all women who are attracted to men want a man like that.'
She compares Yoon, a character who devotedly loves Angelina's aunt, to Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. Rho admits that Angelina's younger love interest, Keisuke, is a version of Darcy, Austen's most compelling male character.
Rho has always loved reading. When she was six years old, her South Korean family moved to Uganda, where she remembers reading a copy of Jane Eyre left behind by the previous British tenant of their Kampala house. After seeing Gone With the Wind, she started a diary, titled Dear Scarlet.
'Margaret Mitchell's book is problematic now with its depiction of slavery,' said Rho. 'But as a 10-year-old, I just thought, here's a strong woman who has a pretty amazing story. So, I started a diary, Dear Scarlet, and kept at it for a year. I suppose that was probably my first desire to write, but that wasn't practical for my culture, for a Korean American immigrant at that.'
Rho followed her father into medicine. A former assistant professor of pediatrics, she practiced and taught at the top children's hospitals in the U.S. However, an accident at the age of 40 prompted her to reassess her goals.
'It also coincided with my mother's first suicide attempt and I was reevaluating everything in my life,' said Rho. 'I had never experienced chronic pain before. I had herniated several discs in my back and had excruciating back pain. I thought, you know what? To use that cliché, life is too short. And as Marianne Evans, who wrote as George Elliot, once said, 'it is never too late to be what you might've been.' So I decided, I want to be a writer. I've always loved books. I want to be a writer and I'm going to do this.'
While Stone Angels bears literary witness to the horrors of war, it has another message to convey. Families are messy.
'Angelina is at a very difficult time in her life where her mother has died by suicide," said Rho. "She's going through an ugly divorce from an even uglier husband and has two unhappy children. She discovers a horrific family secret and then it's about what she chooses to do. I hope readers will laugh and cry along with Angelina and with Sun-yuh. Also, I hope that they will avail themselves of the resources in my author's note and learn more about the victims of sexual slavery by Japan during the Asia Pacific War.'
The Statue of Peace, a statue of a girl that symbolizes the victims, was first erected in 2011 in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to urge the Japanese government to apologize to and honor the victims. Since then more of these statues have been placed in South Korea and in locations around the world.
Stone Angels is published by Grand Central Publishing, a division of the Hachette Book Group.
