HANS ROLLMANN
12 Feb 20
The powerful graphic novel Grass documents the atrocities against WWII "comfort women" through the recollections of a survivor. This is an incredibly powerful and urgent work that, frankly, should be read by the governments of all nations that must face, admit to, and begin real reparations for their country's atrocities.
GRASS
KEUM SUK GENDRY-KIM
Drawn & Quarterly
August 2019
Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's powerful graphic novel Grass could not have hit the shelves at a more timely moment.
Originally published in South Korea in 2017, Janet Hong's English-language translation for Drawn & Quarterly came out in the summer of 2019. It tells the story of Korean comfort women – a term "widely used to refer to the victims of Japanese sexual slavery," the author explains. Gendry-Kim's vantage into this experience comes from Granny Lee Ok-sun, a survivor who shares her life story with the author.
The artwork in Grass is stark: panels are dark and full of shadows, shading into crepuscular obscurity at especially brutal points of the story. The characters themselves are striking -- adults gaunt and angular; children softer and less defined -- sketched into black and white panels that make for an appropriate depiction of the grim tale. The author's black-inked landscape vistas are breathtaking. The narrative alternates between Granny Lee's childhood and youth, and the sometimes fraught present-day dialogue between Gendry-Kim and Lee as the author tries to gain her confidence and learn her story.
The timing was remarkable. The very summer that Grass appeared in English, a long-simmering dispute between South Korea and Japan over the latter's responsibility to compensate victims of WWII-era forced labour – including sexual slavery – erupted into what has been described as a full-blown trade war. As so often, both antagonists in the dispute could learn a lot if they set aside their political agendas to learn from creative interventions like Grass.
The powerful graphic novel Grass documents the atrocities against WWII "comfort women" through the recollections of a survivor. This is an incredibly powerful and urgent work that, frankly, should be read by the governments of all nations that must face, admit to, and begin real reparations for their country's atrocities.
GRASS
KEUM SUK GENDRY-KIM
Drawn & Quarterly
August 2019
Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's powerful graphic novel Grass could not have hit the shelves at a more timely moment.
Originally published in South Korea in 2017, Janet Hong's English-language translation for Drawn & Quarterly came out in the summer of 2019. It tells the story of Korean comfort women – a term "widely used to refer to the victims of Japanese sexual slavery," the author explains. Gendry-Kim's vantage into this experience comes from Granny Lee Ok-sun, a survivor who shares her life story with the author.
The artwork in Grass is stark: panels are dark and full of shadows, shading into crepuscular obscurity at especially brutal points of the story. The characters themselves are striking -- adults gaunt and angular; children softer and less defined -- sketched into black and white panels that make for an appropriate depiction of the grim tale. The author's black-inked landscape vistas are breathtaking. The narrative alternates between Granny Lee's childhood and youth, and the sometimes fraught present-day dialogue between Gendry-Kim and Lee as the author tries to gain her confidence and learn her story.
The timing was remarkable. The very summer that Grass appeared in English, a long-simmering dispute between South Korea and Japan over the latter's responsibility to compensate victims of WWII-era forced labour – including sexual slavery – erupted into what has been described as a full-blown trade war. As so often, both antagonists in the dispute could learn a lot if they set aside their political agendas to learn from creative interventions like Grass.
(courtesy of Drawn & Quarterly)
The Japan-South Korean Trade War
For the past seven months, both governments have engaged in what's been described as a 'trade war' but is really just a display of macho chest-beating. Oblivious to the harm they're doing to their respective economies, labour forces, and regional economic growth, the handful of men driving this dispute in both administrations have even come close to scuttling regional defense agreements.
The present round in this dispute dates back to late 2018, when the Supreme Court of South Korea ruled in favour of the right of former victims of wartime forced labour to seek compensation from Japanese companies.
'Compensation' is the term being thrown around, but what victims are seeking is some measure of justice. When World War II erupted, Korea had been under military occupation by Japan since 1910, and over five million Koreans were forcibly conscripted into the war effort, including forced labour both in Japan and abroad. This number included over a quarter million Korean women (some estimates suggest close to a half million), most of them under the age of 18, who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan.
Soon after the war ended, negotiations between South Korea and Japan over compensation for conscription and forced labour led to a 1965 agreement in which Japan paid over $500 million (US) in loans and grants to its overseas neighbour. Japan had initially wanted to pay compensation directly to victims, but the South Korean government (then led by President Park Chung-hee, who himself was a Japanese military collaborator during the war) insisted on being the recipient of the funds, which it then funneled into general spending.
The Japan-South Korean Trade War
For the past seven months, both governments have engaged in what's been described as a 'trade war' but is really just a display of macho chest-beating. Oblivious to the harm they're doing to their respective economies, labour forces, and regional economic growth, the handful of men driving this dispute in both administrations have even come close to scuttling regional defense agreements.
The present round in this dispute dates back to late 2018, when the Supreme Court of South Korea ruled in favour of the right of former victims of wartime forced labour to seek compensation from Japanese companies.
'Compensation' is the term being thrown around, but what victims are seeking is some measure of justice. When World War II erupted, Korea had been under military occupation by Japan since 1910, and over five million Koreans were forcibly conscripted into the war effort, including forced labour both in Japan and abroad. This number included over a quarter million Korean women (some estimates suggest close to a half million), most of them under the age of 18, who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan.
Soon after the war ended, negotiations between South Korea and Japan over compensation for conscription and forced labour led to a 1965 agreement in which Japan paid over $500 million (US) in loans and grants to its overseas neighbour. Japan had initially wanted to pay compensation directly to victims, but the South Korean government (then led by President Park Chung-hee, who himself was a Japanese military collaborator during the war) insisted on being the recipient of the funds, which it then funneled into general spending.
(courtesy of Drawn & Quarterly)
Demands for justice for and by comfort women continued. For its part, Japan insisted the issue had been settled by the 1965 agreement (and a couple of half-hearted apology statements made in the 1990s). But in 2015 the two countries (under US pressure and mediation) came to the table and signed an additional agreement on the issue of comfort women, which was intended to see Japan pay roughly $1 billion into a fund for survivors. For its part ,South Korea was supposed to promise to stop complaining about the issue, as well as remove a statue memorializing comfort women from in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. The agreement, reached by mostly male diplomats from the US, South Korea, and Japan, was largely criticized by comfort women survivors themselves as inadequate.
So in 2017, a new South Korean government denounced the treaty and called for Japan to come to the table and re-open negotiations. Japan, under the conservative, right-leaning government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, refused, and in 2018 the South Korean Supreme Court ruled in favour of compensation suits filed by survivors of wartime forced labour against the Japanese companies that had exploited them. When those companies refused to pay, the South Korean courts in 2019 approved the seizure of Japanese-owned assets in order to fund compensation payments. Japan retaliated with a series of harshly restrictive trade measures, and the two countries launched into a trade war which has continued, with ebbs and flows, to the present.
As political scientist Tom Le writes in the Washington Post, the dispute is the result of "a haphazard reconciliation process and poorly designed agreements."
Demands for justice for and by comfort women continued. For its part, Japan insisted the issue had been settled by the 1965 agreement (and a couple of half-hearted apology statements made in the 1990s). But in 2015 the two countries (under US pressure and mediation) came to the table and signed an additional agreement on the issue of comfort women, which was intended to see Japan pay roughly $1 billion into a fund for survivors. For its part ,South Korea was supposed to promise to stop complaining about the issue, as well as remove a statue memorializing comfort women from in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. The agreement, reached by mostly male diplomats from the US, South Korea, and Japan, was largely criticized by comfort women survivors themselves as inadequate.
So in 2017, a new South Korean government denounced the treaty and called for Japan to come to the table and re-open negotiations. Japan, under the conservative, right-leaning government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, refused, and in 2018 the South Korean Supreme Court ruled in favour of compensation suits filed by survivors of wartime forced labour against the Japanese companies that had exploited them. When those companies refused to pay, the South Korean courts in 2019 approved the seizure of Japanese-owned assets in order to fund compensation payments. Japan retaliated with a series of harshly restrictive trade measures, and the two countries launched into a trade war which has continued, with ebbs and flows, to the present.
As political scientist Tom Le writes in the Washington Post, the dispute is the result of "a haphazard reconciliation process and poorly designed agreements."
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