A Long Way Around

Habitual Sadness

1997

The story of the women at the "House of Sharing" continues. Old women who share a common bond lead a peaceful life in the countryside, raising vegetables, chickens and painting pictures. They are no different from the elderly women we see every day. But they are all scarred by pain and sorrow from their collective history of being comfort women during World War 2. They became subject to prejudice in their own homeland after their return to Korea. It is painful for them to watch other peoples' children and grandchildren, and they feel rage when the Japanese government tries to cover up the unspeakable crimes they committed against them. The film asks us to remember what these women sacrificed and the shame and misery they faced even as these individuals pass away often forgotten by their own people.

Comfort

2022

KIM Soonak is a survivor of sex slavery by the Japanese military. The war may have ended, but her life was still at a war. She lived in the prostitute quarters to survive, did sex business in the US military camp town, and peddled goods from the US military. She raised two kids on her own as she worked as a maid. We’ll listen to her story in her absence. The film reconstructs the life story of the deceased KIM Soonak with interviews with activists, archive videos, animation, and read-aloud testimony.

The Silence

2017

The Silence narrates the struggle of fifteen "comfort women"—former sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII—for recognition and reparation. The "comfort women" issue has previously been treated almost exclusively within the framework of Korean nationalism. The Silence will provide insight into the ways in which nationalism and the emergence of post-war Asian nation-states have hindered the understanding of "comfort women" narratives through Zainichi Korean documentary filmmaker Soo-nam Park's point of view.

The Big Picture

2013

The Women Outside

1996

They're called bar women, hostesses, or sex workers and "western princesses." They come from poor families, struggling to earn a decent wage, only to be forced into the world's oldest profession. They're the women who work in the camptowns that surround U.S. military bases in South Korea. In 40 years, over a million women have worked in Korea's military sex industry, but their existence has never been officially acknowledged by either government. In The Women Outside, a film by J.T. Orinne Takagi and Hye Jung Park, some of these women bravely speak out about their lives for the first time. The film raises provocative questions about military policy, economic survival, and the role of women in global geopolitics

My name is KIM Bok-dong

2019

In 1992, KIM Bok-dong, reported herself as a victim of the sexual slavery, "comfort women" during World War Ⅱ. She wanted to receive the proper apology from the Japan government but they denied its responsibility. In 2011, commemorating the 1000th Wednesday demonstration, Statue of Peace was installed in front of the Embassy of Japan. The fight over Japan confronts a new stage.

The Apology

2016

"The Apology" explores the lives of former "comfort women," the more than 200,000 girls forced into sexual slavery during World War II. Today, they fight for reconciliation and justice as they struggle to make peace with the past.

Comfort

2020

Song of Arirang - Voices from Okinawa

1991

In the final hours of the Pacific War, Okinawa was the destination for Korean men conscripted as “military laborers” and Korean women taken as “comfort women.” Little is known about the number of casualties or their experiences. In 1989, Park Soonam started to track down the survivors of the Battle of Okinawa to record their testimonies. In 1990, Park visits Korea in search of former “military laborers” who had survived Okinawa and repatriated to Korea. The survivors vividly recount their experiences of their compatriots’ murder and about the “comfort women” to the Zainichi Korean female director. The film zeroes in on the murder of Korean “military laborers” and the presence of “comfort women” in Okinawa via testimonies of former Japanese soldiers.

Calling the Ghosts

1996

Movie about tortured and humiliated women in concentration camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

KOKO SunYi

2022

Okinawan Harumoni - Testimony: Military Comfort Women

1979

Bae Ponggi, a Korean woman who became a comfort woman for the former Japanese military in 1944, testifies for the first time in Okinawa in 1975, after Okinawa was returned to the mainland. In the "red-tiled house" on Tokashiki Island, Okinawa, which was turned into a comfort station, she talks about her life and relationships, her situation after being left behind on the Korean Peninsula and unable to return to it after the war, and what happened afterwards.

A Secret Buried for 50 Years: The Story of Taiwanese "Comfort Women"

1998

This is Taiwan's first documentary about comfort women. The audience gets a glimpse of history as 13 "grandmothers" speak of their unspeakable past, unknown even to their family, in front of the camera.

TARGET

2021

In 1991, the issue of “comfort women” was raised for the first time through the testimony of the late Kim Hak-sun. One of the first reporters in Japan to write an article about her testimony was Uemura Takashi of The Asahi Shimbun. Since the publication of his article, Uemura has been subjected to blatant attacks from the far-right, including threats on his family’s life, and the issue is still ongoing in 2021. Based on Uemura's defamation lawsuit that began in 2015, TARGET details why he had to be someone's “target.”

Red Maria 2

2015

Korean sex worker Yonhee goes to Japan to build solidarity with her counterparts there. YAMASITA Youngae heads for Kyoto to give a lecture on how former prostitute-turned-comfort women were left out of the movement to achieve justice for comfort women. Korean professor PARK Yu-ha is sued by former comfort women because of her book Comfort Women of the Empire. Reportage writer KAWADA Fumiko Tells the story of BAE Bonki, a Korean who worked as a comfort woman in Okinawa. Shuttling between the issue of sex workers who refuse to be pictured as victims and the issue of comfort women who couldn’t even be acknowledged as victims, the film reveals stories that had disappeared from official memory.