Metamorphosis of the Korean 'Comfort Women': How did Han Turn into the Cosmopolitan Morality?

Abstract

This paper is aimed at showing how the ‘comfort women’ victim-survivors transform into cosmopolitan activists through Beck’s three lenses of emancipatory catastrophism: violation of sacred norms, anthropological shock, and social catharsis. First, the anthropological shock of the comfort women was so great that three traumas or han 恨 were found: the trauma of being a comfort woman, of being cut off from the family and hometown, and of not being able to live a normal life as a woman. The shock for the general public came 50 years later, which caused the emergence of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (KCWD). Second, social catharsis, i.e., the paradigm shift and cosmopolitan sympathy, was possible through the ‘meaning work’ by KCWD. In conclusion, the anthropological shock has a hidden emancipatory effect for the ‘comfort women’ and their life can be seen as the metamorphosis found in a butterfly transforming from a caterpillar through a cocoon to a butterfly.