ABSTRACT
In the documentary trilogy The Murmuring (1995), Habitual Sadness (1997), and My Own Breathing (1999),1 Korean woman fi lmmaker Byun Young-joo deals with the long-neglected issue of “comfort women,” a euphemistic term used by Japanese military forces during World War II to refer to the women they abducted and forced into sexual slavery. The use of the term “comfort women” is contested, and many activists and scholars suggest that we replace it with the more accurate expression “military sexual slaves.” However, others knowingly use the term because they believe it conveys the irony of deploying the word “comfort” to veil the brutalities experienced by the women. It is in this vein that I use it here (always in quotes), as I believe the term is emblematic of the denial of the violence infl icted on survivors in the past and the present. In the three fi lms, Byun presents the
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testimony of these hitherto silenced former “comfort women” and the documentation of their everyday lives, including their continued participation in the weekly protests that have taken place every Wednesday since 1992 in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.
