Comfort Woman
by Tanya Ko Hong
On August 14, 1991, in Seoul, a woman named Hak Soon Kim came forward to denounce the Japanese for the sexual enslavement of more than 200,000 women during WWII. They were referred to as “Wianbu” in Korean and “Comfort Women” in English.
1991, Seoul, South Korea
The voice on TV is comforting,
like having a person beside me
talking all the time
while I eat my burnt rice gruel.
Suddenly in Japanese
But we didn’t—
Those women came to us
for the money.
We never forced—
I dropped
my spoon into my nureun bap
On the screen
a photograph of young girls
seated in an open truck
like the one I rode with Soonja
over the rice field road that fall
Awake in a cold sweat
I gulp Jariki
bul kuk
bul kuk
but my throat still burns
It’s 3 a.m.
I reach for a cigarette
blow a smoke
and the white smog spirals
like Soonja’s wandering soul
They called me, wianbu—
a comfort woman—
I had a name.
1939, Chinju, South Kyangsan Province
We are going to do Senninbari, right?
No, Choingsindae, Women’s Labor Corps
Same thing, right?
Earn money
become new woman
come back home—
Holding tiny hands
red fingertips
bong soong ah
balsam flower red
together and colored by summer’s end
red fingertips
ripening persimmons
bending over the Choga roofs
that fade into distance
When the truck crosses over the last hill
leaving our hometown in the dust
Soonja kicks off her white shoes Ko Mu Shin
1941, That Autumn
That autumn night, Japanese
soldiers wielding swords
dragged me away
while I was gathering pine needles
they fell from my basket
filling the air with the scent of their white blood.
When you scream in your dream
there’s no sound.
Grandma’s making Song Pyunon the maru,
asking mom, Is water boiling?
Will she bring pine needles before my eye balls fall out?
I feel pain
there—
They put a long stick between my legs—
Open up, open, Baka Chosengjing!
they rage, spraying
their sperm
the smell of
burning dog
burning life
panting
grunting on top of me—
Under my blood I am dying
1943, Shanghai, China
One night
a soldier asked all the girls,
Who can do one hundred men?
I raised my hand—
Soonja did not.
The soldiers put her in boiling water
alive
and
fed us.
What is living?
Is Soonja living in me?
1946, Chinju Again
One year after
liberation,
I came home.
Short hair
not wearing Han Bok
not speaking clearly
Mother hid me in the back room
At night Mother took me behind the house by the well and washed me
Scars seared with hot steel like burnt bark
like roots of old trees
all over my body
under the crescent glow She always smiled when she washed me
My baby! Your skin is like white jade, dazzling
She bit her lower lip
washing my tummy softly like a baby’s
but they ripped open my baby house
with the baby inside
What is dying?
Mother made white rice and seaweed soup
put my favorite white fish on top
—but Mother, I can’t eat flesh.
She hanged herself in the granary that night
left a little bag in my room
my dowry with a rice ball.
Father threw it at me
waved his hand toward the door
I left at dusk.
30 years
40 years
forever
Mute mute mute
bury it with me
They called me, wianbu—
I had a name.
1991, 3:00 AM
[That night,the thousand blue stars
became white butterflies
through ripped rice paper,
and flew into my room.
One,
One hundred,
One thousand butterflies—
These endless white butterflies going through
the web in my mouth,
going into my unhealed red scars,
stitching one by one—
butterflies lifting me, heavier than the dead
butterflies opening my bedroom door, heavier than shame.]
At
dawn,
I stand.
* * *
This poem originally appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal Vol. 65 Nº1 Fall 2014. It received an honorable mention in the 2015 Women’s National Book Association and was published in an online anthology of theirs. It also won the 2017 “Moon Prize” from Writing in A Woman’s Voice.
Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko Hong, poet, translator and cultural curator, has been published in Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, Two Hawks Quarterly, Portside, Cultural Weekly, Korea Times, Korea Central Daily News, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Mother to Myself, A collection of poems in Korean (Prunsasang Press, 2015).
Her poem, “Comfort Woman” got honorable mention in the 2015 Women’s National Book Association. She created a reading program, “Bittersweet: The Immigrant Stories,” and was the recipient of the Poets & Writers Reading & Workshop program. Tanya is an ongoing advocate of bilingual poetry, promoting the work of immigrant poets. She lives in Palos Verdes, CA. www.tanyakohong.com