Published : Sept. 21, 2014 - 20:31
Gender Equality and Family Minister Kim Hee-jung started her term just two months ago, but her interest and activism in women’s issues, including the Korean women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II, started much earlier.
It was in 2004 when Kim first met the surviving Korean victims, who were speaking out about the issue in public. Her encounter with the women eventually led to her proposal last year, as a lawmaker, to apply for UNESCO designation for the documents related to the Korean victims.
The Gender Equality Ministry embraced Kim’s initiative and started working on the UNESCO application early this year, preparing to submit the documents next year and aiming to get the final designation in 2017.
Coincidence or not, Kim happens to spearhead the project herself as the chief of the Gender Ministry in charge of women, family and youth policies.
After she took office, she had the chance to meet with a different group of Korean survivors ― those who were legally registered as victims of Japan’s military sexual slavery but did not want to share their experiences in public for personal and complex reasons.
“It was evident that they were still suffering from the wartime experience, but they would hold my hand and tell me, ‘You are doing great work.’ It inspired me to really go out there and make a change,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Herald in her Seoul office.
Scholars estimate that up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, were forced to work as sex workers for Japanese soldiers during the war. Many of the victims, euphemistically called “comfort women,” have died in old age; there are only 55 surviving victims in South Korea.
Despite Seoul’s repeated demand for an official apology and legal reparations for the victims, Tokyo has been claiming that all compensation was settled in the 1965 South Korea-Japan Normalization Treaty.
The Gender Equality Ministry is currently collecting documentary evidence and data related to the victims’ experience in preparation for submitting their official application to the UNESCO.
Gender Equality and Family Minister Kim Hee-jung speaks to The Korea Herald in her office in Seoul on Sept. 12. (Kim Myung-sub/The Korea Herald)
“The point (of applying for UNESCO designation) is to preserve these documents and get their credibility and value recognized,” Kim said. “And to use these materials to educate the public so such tragedy does not repeat in future.”
On top of documents about and by the victims, Kim said the ministry is also trying to collect documents related to the former Japanese soldiers who witnessed the wartime atrocities against the victims.
“In 2012, I visited an NGO in Japan that supports overseas victims of Japan’s wartime sexual enslavement,” Kim said.
There, Kim asked a female staff member about how she got involved in the wartime sex slavery issue. “She told me that one of her acquaintances, a former Japanese soldier living in her neighborhood, told her that he was involved in the wartime sexual enslavement. His story motivated her to do something to make a difference,” Kim said.
As for Kim’s motivation about the UNESCO application, she recalled a moment in 2012 when she noticed the archives of Saemaul Movement ― Korea’s iconic community development campaign ― were listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. She became interested in other UNESCO-designated documentary properties around the world, including those related to World War II as well as experiences of colonialism.
“Examples include the diary of Anne Frank, records of the French occupation of Mauritius and the archives of the Dutch East India Company. And I thought, maybe documents related to victims of Japan’s sexual enslavement would have a chance, too,” Kim said. “The documents are directly linked to the issue of human rights, which is one of the universal values of the human race.”
Expectations are running high that Kim, 43, is at the helm of the Korean government’s UNESCO designation efforts, especially considering her prominent political career. In 2004, then at age 33, Kim shot to political stardom with a parliamentary election victory in her hometown of Busan ― a feat that gave her the title of the youngest elected woman lawmaker in Korean history.
The two-term Saenuri lawmaker previously served as the first head of the Korea Internet & Security Agency, a Cheong Wa Dae spokeswoman under the Lee Myung-bak administration and a member of the Gender Equality and Family Committee of the National Assembly.
Aside from Japan’s wartime sex slavery, Kim has been vocal about women’s rights and the importance of the local IT industry. She is currently interested in introducing cultural and educational programs accessible for teenagers regardless of where they live and implementing a bill she introduced last year aimed at protecting teenagers who are out of school.
By Claire Lee (
dyc@heraldcorp.com)