I was born in Chinju in 1920. My family moved to Mokp’o as soon as I was born, then, following my father’s illness, we had to move to Yŏngam where we had relatives. I remember more about life in Yŏngam than anywhere else. My mother gave birth to eight daughters, all of whom died apart from me. I was the second to be born, but my eldest sister died when she was nine, so I became the eldest child. My father cultivated someone else’s land, and as a consequence we were very poor.

My parents weren’t able to afford my school fees, so I was twelve before they sent me to start elementary school. [See endnote.] I was older, so other children used to tease me about my age. I hated this and sometimes I ran home during lessons, or I tried to get out of going to school first thing in the morning. Most children started school at the age of eight and were already in the fifth grade when they reached my age. Because of this, they teased me as soon as I started: “We will soon be finishing school. You, fat one, when will you ever finish? Aren’t you a bit too big to be in the first grade?” Whenever I tried to miss going to school, my father cajoled me into going, saying he was sending me there not because we could afford it, but because he wanted to bring me up like the son he never had. However, I didn’t like studying. I would have rather played and run around with other children of my age.

My father was determined to educate me, but since I couldn’t stand school any longer, I finally left home. There was no money in the house that I could take, so I just got on a train with nothing, and with no particular destination in mind. I got off at Kwangju and, having eaten food that some passers-by gave me, I spent the night at the station. The next day a lady who was about 50 years old told me to go with her. I went to her house, and stayed there the night. The very next morning she took me to a relative’s house, and I started to work there as a live-in maid. The couple I worked for ran a business.

Every day, after the couple left for work, I looked after their baby, did the dishes and did the housework. I lived there for about three years. They fed and clothed me, but paid me no wages. After this time a neighbour coaxed me to move and work for them, saying that they would give me a monthly allowance. So I moved to this new household. After only a fortnight my former employer came to fetch me, and the two women had a huge row. At the end I was taken back to the first place, where I stayed a couple more years. My employer said she would find me a good husband when I reached 20 or 21. I found my job as a housemaid quite comfortable and I never had to go hungry, so I didn’t contact my parents at all. Later, I learned that they had been trying everything they could to find me. They even resorted to consulting fortune tellers.

One day, I think I must have been about 20 or so, my employer’s baby was fast asleep and I was outside talking with some girls. They were also housemaids in the same neighbourhood. A Korean man approached us together with a Japanese man as we chatted. They wore suits and looked quite young and dashing. They asked us how much we were paid for our work. We answered that we didn’t receive any monthly wages, but were given food and clothes for free. To this they responded, saying that the Koreans were thieves. They said that if we went to Osaka with them we would be able to earn lots of money. We were fascinated by the prospect of earning our own income so, without even asking what kind of work we would do, we went with them. We didn’t even stop to tell our employers.

Eight of us went altogether. There were girls from Kwangju and girls from Changsŏng. I remember I was wearing a long-sleeved dress, so it must have been spring. At about 2 p.m. we got on a train and went to Yŏsu with the men. We stayed overnight, then took a ship bound for Japan. There were many Korean men on board, all of whom were going to Japan to work. We disembarked at Osaka the following morning, at about 10 a.m., and were led to the home of the Japanese man. In his house there was an elderly lady and two young children. He said we would be moving again to go to Shanghai. We asked him why, when he had earlier said we were going to Osaka. He replied that he ran a big business in Shanghai and needed people to work for him there. We believed him. After spending the night at his house, the very nest morning we boarded a ship for Shanghai.

The ship was crowded with civilians, and we sailed for many days. We were given maize for food. When we landed at Shanghai, the Korean and the Japanese, who had accompanied us all the way so far, parted. A military truck was waiting and this took us to a house. The house was next to a military unit. When we entered we found that the same Japanese man was the owner. His wife, a woman from P’yŏngyang, and a Chinese couple who did cooking for them, lived there. The wife was also Japanese even though she came from a Korean city, and she looked older than her husband. She scolded him for his delay in arriving, and they started by having a row. The other girls were taken to different places, leaving me alone. It was a single-storey house with many small rooms. I was told it had formerly been a guest-house or a boarding house, but that it had been confiscated from a Chinese owner.

The Japanese man was in effect the proprietor. He brought more women to join us until we numbered about 30 altogether. Except for two Chinese and two Japanese who arrived about three or four months after me, the other girls were all Korean. Some came from P’ohang and some from Pusan, cities in Kyŏngsang province. The Chinese women were residents of the local district. An introduction agency in Shanghai informed the proprietor when there were new arrivals at the port, and he went to fetch girls. The Korean man who had accompanied us turned out to be a dealer in women. There was a sign on the front door, which I wasn’t able to read because I was virtually illiterate. The house was right in the centre of Shanghai, and I was later told it was situated in what had earlier been the French judicial area. There were a few Japanese military units there and, alongside them, brothels.

We were each given a room and told to serve soldiers. The room allocated to me was just big enough for two people to lie down in, and the floor was covered with paper and two blankets. There was a small wastepaper basket.

For the first two weeks, I had to serve one or two soldiers a day, but after that many more came. I said to the proprietor that I’d rather die than keep doing this job. We would sell wine to the soldiers, too, but when they got drunk they became unbearably rough. I begged the proprietor to let me do the cooking and washing-up instead of serving soldiers. He just slapped my face. He kicked me and told me to continue my work. I was given a Japanese name, Odomaru. I can remember there was another girl also named Odomaru and another named Takeko. The soldiers who came to the house were in the army. Some had no commissions and some were officers. Civilians weren’t allowed to come in at all. If a sailor came by, he was chased out with people shouting to him to go to the place where the navy was allowed. This sort of segregation often led to fights among the men.

We had to get up at 4 o’clock every morning to clean our rooms. On Sundays, the soldiers came from 9 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon, without respite. Sometimes we had to serve 20, 30, 40 or even more men without pausing for a break. We gave up counting. While some finished what they had come to do with us in a short time, there were some who held on and delayed, wearing us out. How can I recount everything that I was subjected to in words?

Most of the soldiers used condoms.

If, for any reason, the visits of regulars became less frequent, the proprietor would beat us, saying that because we had treated them badly the last time they were not coming anymore. For about three or four months, I didn’t serve soldiers. I was allowed to help the Chinese cooks with cooking and shopping. The other girls said that I cooked so nicely and begged me to continue to cook for them. But the proprietor nagged at me and beat me, telling me to serve soldiers rather than cook. If I boiled water to wash the dishes, he would throw the pan out, saying that I was deliberately taking time out to heat the water so that I could avoid the soldiers.

Whenever we had time to spare, we Koreans sat around talking about our homes and families. One of the Chinese women was 31 years old and one was 29. The Japanese women were 25 and 27 respectively. Of the Koreans, a few were about 30 years old, and some were younger than me. There were girls who were still teenagers. The younger girls were frightened and refused to serve the men, so they were sent to different houses. Yes, the proprietors in Shanghai sometimes exchanged girls. Our proprietor favoured the women who earned him the most by serving as many soldiers as possible. The two Chinese were pretty and amiable, and served more men than anyone else. So, on special occasions they were given new clothes and good food. When I first arrived, the proprietor gave me two pretty dresses. The soldiers paid their money direct to him, and he managed this himself since he didn’t trust anyone. We never knew how much the men paid, nor were we paid directly.

We had to go to a military hospital once a month for check-ups. Those who developed any venereal disease then had to attend regularly for treatment. The check-ups were carried out either by a Japanese doctor or by a Japanese nurse. The hospital was in a large, two-storey building, and it housed many wounded soldiers. As far as I could see, three doctors and two nurses worked there.

Not long after my arrival, I asked the woman from P’yŏngyang to write a letter to my parents for me. A reply came saying that my father was very ill, asking me to go home immediately. Since I hadn’t written the letter myself, I don’t remember the exact address where I was being kept. I wasn’t allowed to go home. Later I heard that my father had died, so greatly was he disturbed by my letter. That letter of mine was lost during the Korean War.

After about a year in Shanghai, I ran away from the comfort station on a snowy winter’s day. I ran as far as the rickshaw terminal. It was late at night. But there was nowhere for me to go. I couldn’t communicate with anyone, because I didn’t know Chinese. I crouched in the corner of the terminal and tried to sleep, waking frequently. I was frightened. In the morning, I still didn’t have anywhere to go, so I returned to the comfort station. I crept back to the kitchen. I cooked breakfast, as usual, and sat down to have my own meal. But the proprietor knew. He came in and beat me all over, saying that he would teach me a lesson once and for all. When my wounds had almost healed, soldiers began to come looking to have sex with me. I resisted them, so then the proprietor hit me on the head with a club. I can remember blood gushing out from the wound but then nothing else. I blacked out. Later, I heard that he had put some soya bean paste on my head to stop it bleeding, but I was saved because a Western woman living in the neighbourhood saw me from over the wall and brought ointment to put on my wound. I am told that the proprietor told her to leave me alone to die. The woman was about 40 years old and she sold clothes in the neighbourhood. I had once bought a dress from her with a tip given to me by an officer I had served. She had remembered my face, and came to my aid when she saw me bleeding.

Lieutenant Yamamoto, who was one of my regulars, found me in bed with my head all bandaged, and took me to the hospital to have the wound treated properly. Not all the Japanese soldiers were bad. He and another soldier from Akasima were kind. Yamamoto was about 30. He was tall and healthy. After about eight weeks’ treatment, the wound healed and the swelling went down. I still have the scar, some 15 cm long, on my head. After that time I was allowed to just do the cooking. The officer who had taken me to the hospital ordered that I should not serve any more soldiers. Until Korea was liberated in 1945, I cooked and washed for the others. Yamamoto gave me pocket-money now and again to buy things with.

On our free days, we took turns to go out in groups of ten with the proprietor’s wife. There were restaurants and cinemas in the area, but our outings were limited to an hour and a half, so we were unable to look around much. If we were late back, we were beaten by the proprietor. Not far from our house was a place that only accepted sailors. The proprietor there was a much nicer man, even though he was Japanese. Whenever I went over to his place, he invited me in to eat and told me how pretty I was. He said he was from Tokyo. When I went there I told our Chinese cook where I was going, but never my proprietor. There were more rooms there than at my place, and he had about 40 women from Korea, Japan and China. One of the Japanese women was called Sanai, and she and I became good friends. If I didn’t visit her for a while she would telephone to ask me over. She was from Nagoya and quite a bit older than me. She would often come to see me if I was ill.

Two women in the station caught cholera nostras and died in the hospital while undergoing treatment. After two or three years, the woman who had written the infamous letter for me died of opium addiction. She used to sniff’ white powder at the dinner table and, when I asked her what it was, she used to say it was just a kind of medicine. After she had snorted, she would get high and dance about. We took our meals in the kitchen while the proprietor and his wife ate in their own rooms. This meant that they remained ignorant of what was going on. Some other women also took opium behind their backs. If the proprietor had found out he would have beaten them up, just as he had hit me. The woman who died had graduated from school and started taking opium while she was still living in P’yŏngyang. Her habit had begun as a boost to give her strength because so often she felt weak. But gradually she became more and more addicted. Anyone could buy cheap powder from a Chinese shop right opposite our place. Anyway, that woman used to serve many soldiers and she saved up her tips to feed her habit. Quite a few Japanese women took it, but very few Koreans were interested.

On my visits to the house which served only sailors, I met a Japanese woman and a Korean woman who were both pregnant. I also met two Korean soldiers in my own place, one from Chinju and one from Pusan. Those Koreans were allowed in, but they pitied us and spent their time talking instead of making us serve them.

Towards the end of the war we were bombed several times. If air raids were announced we would be evacuated to the piers. When Japan was defeated, the proprietor promptly disappeared, leaving us penniless. For a while we stayed with the Chinese cook at his home. There were five of us left, including one girl from P’ohang and another from Kwangju. One day our host told us that there was a ship in port leaving for Korea, and we rushed out to get on it. We were afraid that we might not be allowed to board, since we did not have any money to pay the fare with. But our host explained everything about our circumstances, and we were allowed to get on the last ship to be found in the port.

It was 1946, the year after our country had been liberated. I disembarked at Pusan and went home to Yŏngam. My father, remember, had died of grief at my letter. My 14-year-old sister welcomed me. As my mother was too poor to keep me, I quickly left home again and went back to Kwangju to find work as a domestic help. I moved around many different places trying to eke out something of a living. Between moving from one household to another, I briefly lived with a man. But I soon left him because he was a heavy drinker and a gambler. At present I live with my sister, surviving on government aid. All the beatings I received in Shanghai have so affected my health that on wet days my body aches all over and I am unable to move about. Even now, I can’t bear to watch violent scenes on television.

[ENDNOTE: The Japanese colonial regime instituted a six-year school curriculum at what Koreans refer to as pot’ong hakkyo (ordinary school). It is this school I have glossed as ’elementary school’. High schools were optional, and few Korean girls attended them.]

Sunnyŏ, Ha. Chap. 6, "I Would Rather Die." True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women. Ed. Keith Howard. Trans. Young Joo Lee. New York: Cassell, 1995; 58-64.