One of the things I love about living abroad is experiencing the holiday celebrations and seeing all the similarities and differences. I got to witness Lunar New Year in Mexico when I lived there in 1997 and it was amazing how similar it was to U.S. Chinatown’s parade and firecracker festivities, except practically everyone involved (from the kung fu performances to the dragon dancers) were Mexican. Aaahh, how I miss Mexico’s love of any excuse to party!
Today, I got to experience the International Women’s Day event in Seoul. Although you may be under the impression that I’ve done absolutely nothing except go dancing (from my last post), I actually have found a way to participate in some socially meaningful activities, despite my lack of verbal communication skills. I started volunteering with the House of Sharing, a place for former “comfort women” to live and receive support (because the women did not receive any comfort out of the situation, we use the term “halmoni” which means grandmother in Korean). As many of you know, the Japanese government instituted a policy of setting up “comfort stations” where military personnel could get sex. Many of the women and girls were forcibly abducted or lured under false pretenses (similar to many of the stories from human trafficking survivors). A majority of the women were Korean, but there were also significant numbers of women from China, Taiwan, and Philippines. For decades after the war, the issue was buried and the women were forgotten, often ostracized by society and abandoned in foreign countries where they had been taken. The first Korean comfort woman came out publicly in 1991, sparking an international movement to seek a government apology and reparations for what happened. Korea set up the House of Sharing as a place where the halmonis could live and receive support. For more info, check out the House of Sharing website: http://www.nanum.org/eng/index.html.
As a volunteer, I’ve been helping out with different outreach and public education events. One of the advocacy tools of the organization is to educate the broader international community about the issue. I was lucky that they’ve really focused on including foreign volunteers in their work to outreach to non-Koreans about the issue. There are tours about once a month for English-speaking visitors (most of the museum is in Korean), and I hope to start helping lead tours soon. Although I knew about the issue from NAPAWF’s advocacy in the US, it’s been great to learn a lot more deep substantive knowledge about it. (btw, a book I’m working on is “Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II” by Yoshimi Yoshiaki that’s a definitive account of the issue).
The great thing is that I felt so at home at The International Women’s Day event. Despite everything being in Korean, it was all incredibly familiar. Imagine all these booths with different progressive organizations with information about different women’s issues, a stage with performances ranging from speakers to folk singers, and women with placards and signs. Although I am not particularly fond of outreach, I’ve always been somewhat well-suited for it, and as I’ve gotten older, there’s even less fear in sticking a petition in somebody’s face for their signature. Not knowing Korean did pose a particular challenge, but I learned how to say “support the halmonis” and then used my incredible pointing and gesturing skills to indicate that people should read the petition statement, sign their contact information, and check the actions they would agree to do. It was super fun and made me realize that yes, I will always need to be working on community issues somehow. It was good to be back doing the non-profit thing that I know how to do :)
