ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between gender and literacy by considering the different forms of literacy the Korean comfort women's testimonies reflect. It shows how the literate version of the testimonies produced in English have informed the international community of these events and served subsequently as a call for redress. The chapter focuses on a representative collection of nineteen narratives that appear in Sangmie Choi Schellstede's edited volume, comfort Women Speak, published in 2000. By tracing the evolving literacies associated with the Korean comfort women testimonies, we can learn much about how power shapes literacy, as well as how literacy can become a form power. It is interesting to note that, in their testimonies, the dominant metaphor associated with liberation is silence. In addition, we have noted how language and literacies can be used to strip away these women's cultural and linguistic identity and humanity, reducing them to sex objects answering to foreign names and numbers.
