The Voices of the Silenced

The Silence narrates the struggle of fifteen "comfort women"—former sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII—for recognition and reparation. The "comfort women" issue has previously been treated almost exclusively within the framework of Korean nationalism. The Silence will provide insight into the ways in which nationalism and the emergence of post-war Asian nation-states have hindered the understanding of "comfort women" narratives through Zainichi Korean documentary filmmaker Soo-nam Park's point of view.

In the final hours of the Pacific War, Okinawa was the destination for Korean men conscripted as “military laborers” and Korean women taken as “comfort women.” Little is known about the number of casualties or their experiences. In 1989, Park Soonam started to track down the survivors of the Battle of Okinawa to record their testimonies. In 1990, Park visits Korea in search of former “military laborers” who had survived Okinawa and repatriated to Korea. The survivors vividly recount their experiences of their compatriots’ murder and about the “comfort women” to the Zainichi Korean female director. The film zeroes in on the murder of Korean “military laborers” and the presence of “comfort women” in Okinawa via testimonies of former Japanese soldiers.

Living in a slum damaged by the atomic bomb and watching elderly first-generation zainichi hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) pass away one after another, Pak felt compelled to break their silence with this documentary, her first. Using up all her savings and going into debt, she teamed up with cinematographer Otsu Koshiro and collected these testimonials from zainichi North and South Koreans living in Hiroshima and South Korean hibakusha visiting Japan for medical treatment.

A feature-length documentary that witnesses twenty-seven survivors of the Battle of Okinawa break their silence to testify the truth about the tragedy of “gyokusai,” forced group suicide, of Korean “military laborers” and “comfort women” brought from Korea. Just how were Okinawa citizens pressured and forced to commit group suicide in the final hours of the Pacific War, and what led to the near complete destruction of Korean military laborers and comfort women? Twenty years in the making since 'Song of Ariran -voices from Okinawa' (1991), Park Soo-nam’s third documentary returns to the subject of Korean military laborers and comfort women in Okinawa.