GW Institute for Korean Studies and the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues (WCCW)
Present
Film Screening:
RSVP
Thursday, December 14, 2017
5:00 pm – 7:30 pm
The George Washington University Marvin Center
Amphitheater (3rd Floor)
800 21st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
About the Film (From the Film Director, Jungrae Cho)
“Spirits’ Homecoming, Unfinished Story” is part dramatization and part documentary. It is a visual testimony of “Comfort Women,” and it contains additional scenes from the movie “Spirits’ Homecoming” along with filmed documentations of “Comfort Women” from the House of Sharing archives. Through their testimonies, we provide proof of the victims of Japanese war crimes during WWII and the unspeakable atrocities they experienced. Unfortunately, a satisfying resolution has still not been achieved. I hope that this film can further ignite discussions about this issue and make us think about what we can do to contribute and make a difference.
“Spirits’ Homecoming” was released in 2016 and has been screened globally after its release in South Korea. In the hopes to bring awareness about the issue of Japanese military sexual slavery, the film was screened at 10 different countries in 61 cities over 1,300 times and over 100 lectures. Many viewers who encountered this painful past for the first time have continuously asked, “Did this really happen”?
About “Comfort Women” (From the Film Director, Jungrae Cho)
During WWII, over 200,000 young girls were forcefully taken by the Japanese Imperial Army. They were separated from their own families without knowing where they were being sent. Eventually, they were all coerced to become sex slaves for the Japanese military and had to endure inhumane and horrific atrocities. Most of them never made it back home and faced a lonely death in unfamiliar foreign lands.
On August 14, 1991, one courageous Korean “Comfort Woman,” Hak-Soon Kim, came out and broke her silence by revealing to the world for the first time the atrocities she endured as a sex slave to the Japanese military. Many more survivors followed her and came forward from all over Asia and the world to speak about their experiences and demand justice. After 26 years of struggling to fight for their justice, the survivors have still not received their rightful apology and legal reparations from the Japanese government.
There are 34 living survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery as of Nomemeber 1, 2017.
In the last two months, two survivors have passed away without receiving their demands from the Japanese government. They were young innocent girls when they were enslaved, and now the average age of the survivors is over 90. It is time to receive an official apology now as the number of surviving “Comfort Women” is getting smaller.
While the victims are speaking out “against war and never to repeat again,” the current global atmosphere is unstable with numerous threats of violence. After contemplating how and what I could do to contribute, I decided to film a sequel with actual testimonies from the survivors called “Spirits’ Homecoming, Unfinished Story.”
We hope this horrific war crime will never happen again.
We should make sure the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery are never forgotten. They deserve a sincere official apology and legal reparations. I hope we can all stand firm with the victims and make sure this war crime against women and young girls never occurs again.
