Abstracts:
- »The theme of You-shin Joo's chapter, 'Writing a History Through Cinema: A Focus on Two "Comfort Women" Films' is also an exploration of the forgotten past of a traumatised nation in both history and film. By looking at recent films and the controversy surrounding the issue of 'comfort women,' she focuses on the figures of 'sexual slavery' during the Asia-Pacific War (1937-45) and discusses concepts of historical memories related to 'comfort women' in two films: Spirits' Homecoming (dir. Cho Jung-rae, 2016) and Snowy Road (dir. Lee Na-jeong, 2015). Her reflections and analysis include a gender perspective as she discusses new ways of rewriting (women's) history and representing victims' wounds and memories in national history.« (Source: Lee, Hyunseon. »Cinematic Battlefield of Memory, Imagination, and Narrative of the Past. A Preface to Korean Film and History« Korean Film and History. Edited by Hyunseon Lee. London 2023: 9.)

»The appearance of two films depicting 'comfort women' raises some problems about not only the comfort women issue but also the representation of it after the Korean-Japanese Agreement about Comfort Women on December 28, 2015. Two films set the two main characters in a tragic situation and a fateful relationship as young girls, but the creators' perspectives and intentions that support the narrative and the narrative that develops around the image of the girl also show significant differences. Spirits' Homecoming (Cho Jung-rae, 2015) focuses on the moment of pain as it violates girls' sexuality and the traces of it on their bodies that remain. Snowy Road (Lee Na-jeong, 2017), however, is shows a new ethics of filmic representation through expressing the tragedy metaphorically instead of exhibiting it physically. The stories of comfort women in these two films failed to break out of known testimonies and failed to show the possibilities of rewriting women's history and representing the wounds and memories of the victims. In this regard, revising history is negated by Japan through the postcolonial perspective, interpolates women's history into the national history as something experienced by minorities and the oppressed, and displaces the position of the comfort women issue through a geopolitical perspective.« (Source: Taylor& Francis Online)

Wikipedia: History of Asia: History of Japan / Shōwa era | History of Asia: History of Korea / Japanese occupation of Korea | Film: Films about comfort women / Spirits' Homecoming, Snowy Road | Prostitution: Forced prostitution / Comfort women | Sex and the law: Wartime sexual violence / Wartime sexual violence in World War II | War: Pacific War / Japanese war crimes