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Since its release on February 24, 2016, the movie Spirits' Homecoming (鬼鄕) is still being shown at movie theaters as of April 15 as this contribution is being written. The number of viewers for the movie has cumulated beyond 3.68 million. It has been a pleasant turnout considering the initial concerns that the movie wouldn't be able to secure enough screens or attract enough viewers. It has also made it easier to discuss the movie here.

It is true. As someone who hopes that the Japanese military "comfort women" issue can be justly resolved, I myself had been concerned as to how well the movie would do. Yet, it was also difficult to bring myself to actually watch the movie. The idea of personally witnessing on a large screen the story of how "a happy fourteen-year-old girl living in a poor rural village was taken away from her loving parents by the Japanese military to be raped at comfort stations" did not seem at all appealing.

The current tally of Korean victims who served as "comfort women" under the Japanese empire's rule is 294. Among those victims, 70 of them have been able to confirm the details and extent of what they suffered through a collection of oral statements that have been published. For myself, it has been very painful to personally read and repeatedly go through the published statements for the purpose of research and to help resolve the issue. The process seemed to negatively affect my sexual desire and kept causing feelings of depression, not to mention making my body actually ache. That is why I would have preferred to avoid visually witnessing sexual violence that had been painful to even read about.

The Agony of Facing the "Pain of Others"

For a victim of sexual violence to be "acknowledged" or "confirmed" as one, why should it be necessary to endlessly point out that the crime involved force and physical violence and that the assailant had been abnormal? In her book Regarding the Pain of Others (2004), Susan Sontag criticized the ethics of people in modern society consuming the pain of others as a spectacle from an overabundance of visual material and the way such people spent their spare time. Looking down on a row of stalls where comfort women are each being beat and raped, would fury be the only emotion that creeps into the minds of the audience? Even if we were to set aside all other emotions and focus on fury, what would we be able to say about that fury when we are living in a society where sexual violence continues to occur although we are no longer at war nor under colonial rule?

This is not to criticize that the movie Spirits' Homecoming has exaggerated the violence former comfort women suffered. The movie is set in 1943 in the city of Mudanjiang (牧丹江) at China's Heilongjiang Province (黑龍江). It was where Kang Il-chul had been forced to serve as a Japanese military comfort woman and her painting "Burning Virgins" is said to have inspired the movie. In the Manchurian area of northeast China, the size of the Japanese army more than tripled around 1941. To prepare for battles against the Soviet Union, the Kwantung Army went into special training from July 1941 and deployed considerable forces along the border between Manchuria and the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the plan was to have 20,000 comfort women from Joseon stationed there, and about 3,000 to 8,000 women were actually mobilized. The Kwantung Army's discipline was infamously relaxed, but it was also on strict alert from being involved in clashes of various sizes with the Chinese army as well as the Japanese Resistance Army made up of Koreans. In fact, Kang Il-chul herself had been on the verge of death when she barely managed to escape a comfort station after receiving help from a Japanese solider at that comfort station who had kept in touch with a Korean in the Japanese Resistance Army.

So, the women who appear in the movie are those who had been dragged away to serve as comfort women in a region with abysmal facilities where the Japanese army's violence is ignored or encouraged amid brimming tension before battles. However, the violence comfort women suffered is all that the movie shows. There is only the confrontation between monstrous Japanese soldiers and innocent girls and no historical context. The solidarity between a Japanese boy soldier who feels sympathy for Korean comfort women, who in turn sympathize the circumstances their assailants are trapped in, definitely makes the movie stand out, but the storyline is too loose to be able to add a color to the movie.

Using sexual violence as a means to discuss it is a dangerous way that risks traumatizing the victims once more, but after holding their breath from watching a spectacle of violence, the audience's reaction has been that the movie was helpful in gaining an understanding of the comfort women issue. Is it truly "inevitable" for us to choose such a banal approach in imparting the seriousness of the comfort women issue, or rather the severity of issues involving victims who suffered sexual violence during war? This is a matter I have also continued to struggle with over the course of giving lectures about the comfort women issue to students or the general public for nearly two decades.

Looking Forward to Discussions on Peace and Human Rights

While writing this contribution, words of praise for Spirits' Homecoming have been spreading online. They seem too simplifying and unfamiliar compared to the jumble of thoughts that raced around in my head after watching the movie. What was unexpected is the fact that film critics have remained reserved about commenting on the movie as opposed to all the emotional and furious responses people have been expressing online. I believe diverse, constructive discussions should actively take place when it comes to a movie like this.

The reason I say so is because of the movie showed glimpses of novel streaks amid its banality, which reveals possibilities for the movie to overcome its own limitations. No amount of praise would be enough to commend the sincerity of the director who wished to make the movie in order to help publicize the comfort women issue and console the victims, the passion and dedication shown by the actors in the film, and the responsibility toward history and reality demonstrated by almost 75,000 citizens who contributed to the movie's production. The central message conveyed by the movie is touching in itself for bringing pains of the past and present together and for attempting to heal through the power of sympathy.

Nevertheless, I hope the movie becomes further criticized or reviewed from the perspectives of peace and human rights. That is because although the movie's heroine Jung-min ultimately managed to return to her parents, our hearts are still aching for the many other victims who failed to return, or returned only to be forced to leave their homes again, or ended their days without mentioning what they have suffered out of fear that no one would believe them. And also because there are still people all over the world whose everyday lives are being destroyed by war and sexual violence.