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There is no standard term for those women forced into sexual service for Japanese soldiers in the 'comfort stations' set up by the Japanese military. The Japanese term still in use today is 'jugun ianfu (従軍慰安婦),' meaning military comfort women. But this term is misleading because the Japanese word 'ian (慰安)' means love, compassion, warmth, or sympathy. Therefore, the term 'ianfu (comfort women)' alone does not convey the fact that the practitioners committed sexual abuse and these women were victims of sexual abuse. Furthermore, the Japanese word 'jugun (従軍),' as critics point out, is inappropriate to use in this context because it implies, as in the case of the Japanese word 'jugun kisha (従軍記者: war correspondent),' that they were voluntary participants in the cause they supported.

In Korea, those victims were initially referred to as 'jeongshindae (挺身隊)', short for 'yeojageunrojeongshindae (女子勤勞挺身隊),' single Korean women forced to work at military facilities for Japan, because those involved or experienced in the forced labor or sexual slavery, whether as perpetrators or victims, didn't remember well enough to make a clear distinction between the two systems and their operations. That explains the term 'jeongshindae' included in the name of the Korean organization formed to address and resolve this issue. But we need to make a distinction between those who were forced to work at factories and those who were sexually exploited by the Japanese military.

Beyond the Debate over the Term and Toward the Resolution of the Issue

Civil society organizations held the first Asian Solidarity Conference to address the issue of these women in Seoul from August 11 to 12, 1992, and decided to refer to them as forced military comfort women. At the second Asian Solidarity Conference on the same issue held in Tokyo in October the following year, they agreed to add quotation marks to the term ('comfort women') to signify that these women were once known as comfort women, and to use the term 'military sexual slavery by Japan' when referring to the system itself to specify the perpetrator. These terms have come into common use by not only civil society organizations but also the academia and the media. The Korean government also used the term 'military sexual slavery by Japan' when proclaiming the act to support the victims in June 1993. However, the term 'comfort women' still has its limitations because it alone cannot properly convey the sexual abuse suffered by the victims.

The U.N. and other international organizations used the terms 'comfort women' and 'comfort station' as translated from the original language. But once the use of the English term 'military sexual slavery by Japan' was agreed at the Asian Solidarity Conference as mentioned above, it became widely used in, for example, reports by Radhika Coomaraswamy, a United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women. But the term 'comfort women' was used in the relevant parliamentary resolutions passed in 2007 in the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, and the European Union. In other words, both terms are in use in the English-speaking world.

In 2012, once U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted on using the term 'enforced sex slaves' instead of 'comfort women,' it started a debate in Korea over which term to use. Obviously, 'enforced sex slaves' reflect the nature of the system better than 'comfort women,' although both terms are insulting to the victims. We should remember that what matters to the living victims is the resolution of the issue rather than the debate over the term.