Jenny Lee Humanities
Rewriting a Ghostly Feminist History: Complicating National Memory, Identity, and Education in Post/colonial South Korea
From 1932-1945, during the Pacific War, Japan mobilized an imperial agenda in many Asian countries. To prevent Japanese soldiers from sexually exploiting Japanese women, the government created stations in colonized countries to provide sexual “comfort.” This became a formalized system of sexual slavery composed mostly of young, impoverished Korean women; following the war, as South Korea modernized, ‘comfort women’ were largely omitted from national remembrances, rendered invisible in the linear narrative of post/colonial development. Jenny will be traveling to Korea to research at national archives and interview ‘comfort women’ survivors and scholarly experts to examine the enduring, gendered impacts of the Pacific War. Ultimately, her research aims to reimagine the linear, masculine temporality of contemporary Korean history and challenge binary, rigid ways of contemplating national memory, identity, and boundaries.
