The Story (Mp3 - first part of 51 Min broadcast) Audio interview with Ok Sun Kim, one of the Korean "Comfort Women" pressed into sexual slavery by Japan during WWII. She was 16 when kidnapped, and raped the first night.
posted by edgeways on Apr 3, 2007 - 19 comments

Jan Ruff-O'Herne's idyllic childhood in Indonesia came to an abrupt end in 1942 when the Japanese invaded and forced her into sexual slavery. In this transcript she reveals her story; how she hid the secret from her children until she finally broke her silence in 1992 to demand an apology from the Japanese government. This week Ruff-O'Herne joins other former sex slaves in testimony before the US Congress as part of a resolution urging Japan to apologize. Japanese politicians are working to stop the resolution from passing.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese on Feb 15, 2007 - 40 comments

Political discourse in these desperate days is - as we all know - very much a no-holds-barred affair. We have come to expect that political debate will be nasty, personal, based on appeals to emotion, and largely divorced from consideration of real-world consequences of the positions claimed. Still, I hope we can agree that some rhetorical flourishes are simply unacceptable in civil society. Like this piece of vileness from Adam Yoshida, imagining that "the future of the Democratic Party [is] providing Republicans with a number of cute (but not that bright) comfort women." You read that right: "comfort women." Left, right, or center, I hope we can all agree that we are within measurable distince of moral surrender if this sort of rhetoric goes unchallenged. Or is this really what we've come to? (Via Atrios, upon whose summary I cannot improve.)
posted by adamgreenfield on Nov 10, 2004 - 62 comments