Since January 8, 1992, every Wednesday Koreans gather in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, just steps away from the Gyeongbokgung Imperial Palace, one of the main tourist attractions in the capital. It is the longest-running weekly protest in the world: sometimes there are dozens of protesters, other times just a handful. Only in 1995, during the devastating Kobe earthquake, the so-called Wednesday Demonstration that calls for recognition of the atrocities committed by Japan during World War II was suspended: a mea culpa for the so-called comfort women or comfort women, the most perverse euphemism coined by the imperial army to refer to the young women they forced to be their sex slaves in a systematic network of internment camps (rape camps, to be more accurate) that spread throughout Southeast Asia. It is estimated that around 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, but also from the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, or China, were forced to be sex slaves for years in one of the darkest and most controversial episodes in Japan's history. And it still causes diplomatic conflicts with South Korea.
The survivors' testimonies are harrowing: all kinds of rapes, sterilizations, forced abortions, the cruelest humiliations, physical torture... "It was like a slaughterhouse, but not for animals, but for humans. Horrible things were done there," recounted Lee Ok-sun, one of the last survivors, who passed away in early 2023 at the age of 95 and inspired the popular graphic novel Grass (Reservoir Books) by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, a global bestseller. Due to the abuses and beatings, Ok-sun became sterile, lost part of her hearing, and the scars on her arms and legs were still visible on her elderly body. What happened in the comfort stations, another vile euphemism, was not widely and officially known until four decades later: most women had died - many committed suicide - and the survivors remained silent out of shame and fear of being ostracized in a still hyper-conservative society where talking about rape was taboo.
Everything changed in 1991, with the first public testimony. The Korean Kim Hak-sun, who was 67 years old at the time (she would die six years later), spoke for the first time in front of cameras at a press conference in Seoul. Dressed in an elegant hanbok, the traditional Korean dress, she recounted with composure and tears in her eyes how she was repeatedly raped from the age of 17 by Japanese soldiers. Every day, for years. Until she managed to escape. "We were a hygienic tool for Japanese soldiers to satisfy their sexual desires," she said, reproducing military jargon. Because in documents of the imperial army, women were dehumanized with expressions like military supplies or female ammunition.
Kim Hak-sun put a name and face to the horror. Her testimony and courage shocked Korean society, especially the new generations who had not experienced the war. Other survivors began to tell their stories, from China to the Netherlands, where many Indonesians had emigrated. That was the germ of the Wednesday Demonstrations, which began a few months later when then-Prime Minister of Japan Kiichi Miyazawa visited Seoul on an official visit. A group of women convened by feminist associations gathered in front of the Japanese embassy. There were barely thirty of them. They did not shout their anger: for an hour, they walked in silence around the embassy building, a red brick monolith surrounded by barbed wire. It was January 8, '92, a Wednesday. The protesters presented six historical demands, many of which are still upheld today: official recognition of the crime, a sincere apology, reparations for the victims, inclusion in Japanese textbooks, the construction of a memorial, and full disclosure of the facts.
Over the years, there have been more or less formal apologies, such as that of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in 1995, who apologized for the acts committed by Japan during World War II and the wound of the comfort women. They have always been insufficient for the victims and South Korea itself. But where politics has not reached, art has, with a bronze girl who, sitting in a chair, looks towards the Japanese embassy, reminding the victims who did not obtain justice in life, symbolized by another empty chair next to her. She has been on Yulgok-ro street for 15 years.
The peace girl: a national icon
In 2011, to commemorate the one thousandth Wednesday Demonstration, artists Kim Seo-Kyung and Kim Eun-Sung unveiled the sculpture Statue of a Girl of Peace, funded by popular collection. "Koreans still suffer certain war traumas. Japan is only interested in talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For years, it deliberately concealed assaults on minors and sexual slavery in its bases," the couple says firmly.
Since the installation of the Peace Girl in front of the embassy, the work has become a national icon. Today there are more than 80 different versions scattered throughout South Korea, including a replica in Busan, the country's second most important city, in front of the Japanese consulate. Abroad there are about twenty, mostly in the United States, which in the 1960s experienced a strong wave of Korean immigration. "In Korea, there are also about 140 statues by other artists that pay tribute to the halmoni [grandmothers, a respectful term for the victims] and denounce sexual slavery," Seo-Kyung points out. But the Peace Girl in Seoul has become a true popular phenomenon: people write her letters (addressed to the 'girl in front of the embassy': the postman knows perfectly which one), in winter they dress her with handmade yellow hats and scarves, they leave her flowers, bring her gifts, children draw her... Most offerings are yellow, symbolizing hope and reconciliation. The citizen identification with the statue is such that it has led to surreal yet tender images: a very serious policeman holds an umbrella over her to protect her from the rain, regardless of her being made of bronze.
In front of the Peace Girl, a Westerner only sees a teenage girl in a Korean hanbok sitting next to an empty chair and a blue bird on her shoulder (in the colored versions). But every detail means something: the poorly cut hair represents the forced rupture of the girls with their families; the clenched fists indicate the victims' firmness, who no longer remain silent; the bird symbolizes freedom; the empty chair not only evokes the absence of the deceased but also invites the public to sit and put themselves in the place of the comfort women. But the most important thing is the shadow projected behind the girl: that of an elderly woman who has endured all the post-war difficulties and still awaits the apologies of the Japanese government, a hope symbolized by a white butterfly.
But the Japanese embassy was not pleased. It has been repeatedly demanding their withdrawal for years. Conversely, Korea—which was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945—demands Japanese recognition of all its war crimes, which has been rather lukewarm for the Koreans. "Japan has issued forced apologies and tried to quell the protests with money for the victims. But what Korea expects are sincere apologies, like those Germany offered after World War II with Chancellor Willy Brandt [Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 1971]...," laments Eun-Sung.
In 2015, Korea and Japan reached an agreement through their respective foreign ministers whereby Tokyo committed to creating a fund of one billion yen (almost eight million euros) to compensate the victims, many of whom are now in their eighties and nineties. The agreement sparked outrage in Korea and also within the hardline, conservative wing of Shinzo Abe's party, which was unwilling to acknowledge sexual crimes against women and, moreover, demanded the relocation of the Peace Girl sculpture. "The perpetrator can't demand the removal of a work that isn't offensive. It's a child! Can anyone imagine Germany asking Poland to remove a Holocaust memorial? Well, that's what Japan did," Seo-Kyung declared.
From the Bus to Censorship
Following that agreement, a popular uprising began to prevent the sculpture's possible removal. For weeks, university students kept vigil day and night beside the Peace Girl. In winter, they set up tents with generators for warmth, and a local restaurant served them free food donated by an anonymous donor. The sculpture has garnered widespread public affection: impromptu concerts, poetry readings, and artistic performances have been held around it, and even school visits are organized.
That year, the Japanese embassy decided to demolish its brutalist building, constructed in the 1970s, to build a new, larger, and more modern headquarters. It moved just a few meters away, to the Twin Towers on the same street. However, the Wednesday Demonstrations remained centered around the Peace Girl. Although it was intended to be a temporary location, after years of inaction and delays by the Japanese government, the Seoul city government ultimately canceled the building permit in another subtle maneuver of diplomatic cold war, or at the very least, a show of spite toward the old rival.
Another example of this skillful Korean cunning: in 2017, South Korea released the first audiovisual images of one of these consolation centers, and on August 15, Gwangbokjeol, National Liberation Day, Seoul installed five Peace Girl statues on several buses, seated as passengers. Coincidentally, those on the line that passes in front of the embassy...
The sculpture of 'The Peace Girl' travels like any other passenger on a bus in Seoul, in 2017. The most international controversy arose in 2019, this time on Japanese soil. That year marked the Aichi Triennale, one of the major art events on the global calendar. A polychrome version of the sculpture was exhibited in the show titled "After Freedom of Expression?" Just days after its opening, the Nagoya prefecture demanded its removal and pressured the Triennale with a cut in public funding. A fax was even received with a bomb threat, possibly from far-right nationalist groups.
"In the end, they covered it with screens, and only 40 people a day were allowed to see it, by lottery." People came from all over demanding to see the sculpture. The other artists signed a manifesto of support...," the artists recall. It was then that the Catalan businessman Tatxo Benet bought the sculpture for his Forbidden Art collection, which he exhibited for months in Barcelona. "Spain has been one of the few places where there haven't been any incidents when the work has been exhibited. There were incidents in the United States and Germany...," its creators admit. But the place where they would truly like to see the Peace Girl is, of course, Tokyo.