[Reading Notes] Testimony of Korean Comfort Women Seeing Their Fading Reality and Overdue Justice - "The Last Man"

Whenever I think about myself, the first emotion that comes to my mind is shame. For her, thinking about herself was a time of shame and pain. She neither thinks nor speaks, and eventually forgets who she is.

She felt overwhelmed by not knowing herself, but the finger holding the pen made another effort.

I am also a victim.

Following the advent of 2022, East Asian cultural circles are also immersed in the festive atmosphere of the Year of the Tiger, but while many people are beginning to look to the future, a group of people are still racing against time, hoping to recover their past before death. justice. Among them, comfort women, who are generally disadvantaged in terms of gender or educational level, are probably the group with the least chance among these groups seeking transformational justice.

There are no ups and downs of the ups and downs, the comfort women historical materials woven from the testimony

Just one year before the release of "Grandma Huayang Show English" (아이캔스피크), which received a great response in 2017, writer Kim Hee (김숨) completed the fictional novel "The Last Man" (김숨) based on the testimony of North Korean comfort women. 한명). There are no climaxing plot arrangements or sensational soundtracks to help the audience stack up emotions. This work is only a work that interweaves the present and the past of a comfort woman, but in the most simple and unpretentious way, it strung together countless comfort women. The experience of , through writing, records this history that the world is still reluctant to face up to now.

There is only one person left. It was originally two people, but last night, one of them passed away.

This short line highlights the desolate feeling of the comfort women's withering, and at the same time shows the author's skill in telling stories with refined words. The original title of "The Last Man" is "한명" (literally translated as "One"). Although "한" is "One" in Korean, it also implies that although the protagonist in the book has only one "she", through The other memories in "she"'s mind make "she" also a kind of collective memory of comfort women.

"She" who lost her name in history with the metaphor of cat, dog and magpie

Not only through the protagonist's memory, but also the life situation of the comfort women in the testimony, through some animals in the development of the story, such as: the cat that was captured, the dog that was forced to give birth to a maim, and the dead magpie, etc. Become a metaphor in the book. But perhaps the biggest metaphor is the "name".

Used as a tool for lust during the war, and felt ashamed about what happened to him after the war. After decades, he finally plucked up the courage to speak out, but he was questioned and discriminated against, a series of injustices followed by fear and shame Feeling, let these famous and surnamed girls go from fakes with various Japanese names to incognito aphasia. However, "she" will eventually understand that only by facing up to history and standing up to the world's deliberate forgetting can they find their name and life back.

Let's be "the last one" together

Including the comfort women during World War II and the "foreign princesses" after the Korean War, the same story exists not only in South Korea, but also in the life course of many Taiwanese women. However, many of them have not received education. After returning to the country after suffering, they concealed their experiences, and finally passed away peacefully and sadly with secrets. It has been more than 70 years since the end of World War II, and many war crimes have been forgotten or even never acknowledged, and "The Last Man" is a work completed for people to "remember", not only carrying the memories of hundreds of thousands of women who suffered , and also allows readers to become one of the inherited memories of "한" by reading these words.

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