Comfort Women Mobilization
Overview
Mobilization of comfort women was divided into Japanese military comfort women and comfort women workers (or employed comfort women). From the start of the Manchurian Incident to their defeat in the Asia Pacific War in 1945, Japan set up ‘comfort stations’ as sanctioned brothels to prevent the Japanese army from outbreaks of venereal disease, the leaking of confidential military intelligence, and the unregulated rape of local women – all in the name of conducting a war efficiently. The Japanese military comfort women were those forced into ‘comfort stations’ to live as sex slaves of the Japanese army. Comfort women workers were those other than the Japanese army comfort women sent to coalmines and military construction sites. Mobilizing the Japanese army comfort women occurred using various methods of employment fraud, intimidation and violence, and human trafficking and abduction.
While there is currently no way of knowing how many women were mobilized for the Japanese army comfort women and comfort women workers, estimates by researchers of the numbers of those forced into sexual service vary widely from 20,000 at minimum to 400,000 at maximum.
[Source: 『Committee Activity Report』, the Committee for the Victims of the Forced Mobilization during Resistance to Japan and the Casualties from the Overseas Forced Mobilization, 2016, Page 133-134.]
The combined total victims of the forced mobilization under the Japanese occupation are as follows:
Status of the Victims of the Forced Mobilization*
| Type | Classification | No. of Mobilized Persons | Sub-total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Military Combatant Mobilization** | Within the Korean Peninsula | 51,948 | 209,279 | |
| Out of the Korean Peninsula | 157,331 | |||
| Civilian Labor in the Military Mobilization*** | Within the Korean Peninsula | 12,468 | 60,668 | |
| Out of the Korean Peninsula | 48,200 | |||
| Non-military Laborer Mobilization | Within the Korean Peninsula | In-Province Mobilization | 5,782,581 | 6,488,467 |
| Government Mediation | 402,062 | |||
| National Draft | 303,824 | |||
| Out of the Korean Peninsula | National Draft | 222,217 | 1,045,962 | |
| Allocated Recruitment, Government Mediation | 823,745 | |||
| Total | 7,804,376 | |||
* Including redundant mobilization of individuals, excluding the mobilization of the comfort women victims
** Soldier mobilization: overseas 157,331 persons, domestic 51,948 persons (as of Aug. 1945, number of the Japanese army in the Korean Peninsula)
*** The total number of civilian workers in the military excluding those mobilized by the national draft
[Source: 『Committee Activity Report』, the Committee for the Victims of the Forced Mobilization during Resistance to Japan and the Casualties from the Overseas Forced Mobilization, 2016, Page 135.]