WAR IS RAPE
14:50
REVISITED © FRANCE 24
Issued on: 17/01/2025 -
During World War II, the Japanese imperial authorities abducted, coerced, tricked and sometimes recruited hundreds of thousands of women from Japan's colonial empire to become sexual slaves for soldiers. Sometimes minors, these women were called "comfort women" and were raped repeatedly in brothels near the front lines. With only a handful of survivors still alive in China, our reporters met one of them: 95-year-old Peng Zhuying. She is determined to share her story in a country where the subject remains taboo.
Being a "comfort woman" was long considered shameful. As a result, the exact number of victims remains unknown. Between 1932 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of women – around 200,000, according to historians – were abducted from the four corners of Japan's colonial empire. These Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipino and Indonesian women, some of them minors, were made available to Japanese soldiers in brothels near the front lines.
Back in 1991, a 67-year-old Korean woman named Kim Hak-soon publicly shared her story of being forced to live in a military brothel as a teenager. Soldiers raped her multiple times a day. Her trailblazing testimony led to many others speaking up and eventually a civil society movement was born, focused on bringing justice to "comfort women". Decades of campaigning in South Korea means that there is now widespread awareness of what happened to the "comfort women".
Only eight known Chinese victims still alive
But in China, the issue remains taboo. Most of the victims were from rural and traditional regions, where rape has long been a shameful topic. The Chinese Communist Party also considers history to be extremely sensitive and decides top-down on how to remember the past. In state media, different facets of wartime atrocities are highlighted according to Beijing's relations with Tokyo at a given time. School textbooks barely mention the crimes. With little to no feminist activism to help approach the topic with sensitivity, the issue has often been cast aside.
Despite these difficulties, a handful of Chinese scholars and volunteers want the wider public to care. They have devoted their careers, and sometimes their lives, to this cause. But time is running out to collect the testimonies of rape and exploitation of these women, who are now very elderly. In June of last year, one of the last surviving victims passed away. Only eight publicly known Chinese victims are still alive.
Our reporters met one of them: 95-year-old Peng Zhuying. She was a visually impaired teenager when soldiers dragged her to a brothel and raped her repeatedly. The former "comfort woman" told FRANCE 24 about the trauma she endured. She would now like younger generations to know what happened during this painful chapter of China's history.
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