Korean “Comfort Women”: Military Brothels, Brutality, and the Redress Movement

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Friday, April 23, 2021 | 5:30PM to 7PM

Arguably the most brutal crime committed by the Japanese military during the Asia-Pacific war was the forced mobilization of 50,000 to 200,000 Asian women to military brothels to sexually serve Japanese soldiers. The majority of these women died, unable to survive the ordeal. Those survivors who came back home kept silent about their brutal experiences for about fifty years. Edited by Distinguished Professor Pyong Gap Min, Korean “Comfort Women”: Military Brothels, Brutality, and the Redress Movement (Rutgers University Press, March 2021) comprehensively examines both the “comfort women” issue (a very important historical issue) and contemporary redress movement for the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery. For this presentation, Prof. Min will provide a brief overview of his book, and discuss in length Chapter 3: Emergence of the “Comfort Women” Issue and Korean “Comfort Women’s Breaking Silence.

Korean “Comfort Women” has already attracted a great deal of attention after Mark Ramseyer, a professor at Harvard Law School, published his unacceptable December 2020 article, “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” for the International Review of Law and Economics. Prof. Min’s critical response to Ramseyer’s article will be published along with other scholars’ responses in the same journal in April 2021.

URL: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/korean-comfort-women/9781978814967#!

Author Bio

Pyong Gap Min is the Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center. He also serves as Director of the Research Center for Korean Community at Queens College. Dr. Min's areas of interest include immigration, ethnic identity, ethnic business, immigrants’ religious practices, and family/gender, with a special focus on Asian/Korean Americans. He is the author of six books, five of them focusing on Korean immigrants’ experiences. They include Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles (1996), the winner of two national book awards, and Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations (2010), the winner of three national book awards, one in Korea and the other two in the United States. His last book is Korean Comfort Women: Military Brothel, Brutality, and the Redress Movement published just this year.

Dr. Min's fourteen edited and co-edited books include Encyclopedia of Racism in the United States, 3 volumes (2005) and Asian Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues, the Second Edition (2006). He was a Russell Sage Foundation fellow in 2006-2007, for writing his 2008 book, Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival: Korean Greengrocers in New York City. He received the Distinguished Career Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association in 2012 and the Contribution to the Field Award from the Section on Asia and Asian America of the American Sociological Association in 2019.