Author: 김현경 (Hyun Gyung Kim), 교양대학 (College of General Education), 서울여자대학교 (Seoul Women's University)- Academia.edu, ORCID

Abstracts:
- »Kim describes how the postmemory generation creates its own archive of comfort women materials through media such as documentaries. In particular, she investigates how the 2018 film Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue uses images and narrative to elucidate the history of and current debates over the comfort women system, expanding general audience awareness of the causes of both the system and the debates over it today. However, Kim also expounds the limitations of documentary films such as Shusenjo in imparting high-level knowledge, arguably creating a gap between expert and public perceptions. Such films can institutionalize these messages by themselves becoming archives and perpetuate certain notions of history. This highlights the need for a diversity of archival forms.« (Source: Mary M. McCarthy. »Knowledge production and activism on the ‘comfort women’ in Northeast and Southeast Asia.« Women's History Review 34(5) (2025): 679)

- »This essay draws on the documentary Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue (2018) to explore new documentary forms on the issue of the ‘comfort women’. Through its focus, choice of archival materials and images, and narrative style, Shusenjo reveals that some of the existing archives on comfort women have been a source of false knowledge promoted through expressions of power, and, instead, seeks to create a postcolonial Cold War archive on the comfort women issue as an alternative. In particular, it sheds light on the U.S.-led Cold War regime as a powerful but hidden framework behind past and current relations between East Asian countries, complicating and prolonging the comfort women issue. This essay’s in-depth reading of Shusenjo further highlights the need to embrace a diversity of archival forms in the digital age towards the goal of historical awakening for the postmemory generation.« (Source: Women's History Review)

Wikipedia: History of Asia: History of Japan / Shōwa era | Prostitution: Forced prostitution / Comfort women | Sex and the law: Wartime sexual violence / Sexual violence in World War II | War: Pacific War / Japanese war crimes