Review of ONE LEFT by Kim Soom

 3.5 Stars

This is the translation of the first Korean novel about comfort women.  (The original was published in 2016; the translation, in 2020.)

The protagonist is a 93-year-old woman known simply as She.  Though she had “a dozen Japanese names and more than one Korean name,” she doesn’t remember her real name.  When she was 13, she was kidnapped and taken to Manchuria where she was forced to become a comfort woman for Japanese soldiers.  “During her seven years at the comfort station, thirty thousand Japanese soldiers came and went from her body.” Now she lives a largely invisible life in a dilapidated house in a neighbourhood with few inhabitants, always fearful that her past will be exposed.  She sees a newscast that a comfort woman, believed to be the last survivor, is dying; this news triggers her flashbacks to her time in Manchuria.

This novel uses an interesting technique.  Though the protagonist is fictional, her descriptions of events and even bits of dialogue are footnoted to documented testimonies of actual survivors.  So though the book is classified as fiction, it is based on non-fiction accounts. 

More than 200,000 women were forced into sexual slavery, but only 10% survived.  The conditions at the comfort station were horrific.  Besides being sexually exploited, the girls were physically abused and induced into opium addiction.  They suffered from sexually transmitted diseases (washing and reusing condoms) and trauma that often left them physically maimed, unable to bear children, and psychologically scarred. 

Those women who survived and made it home kept quiet.  It was not until 1991 that a woman spoke up and then others also came forward with their stories.  Those who registered did receive some government compensation, but were still stigmatized.  One woman who is able to build a house with government assistance is still an outcast; “the neighbor had called her a dirty cunt and said she sold her pussy to have that house built.”  The protagonist has told no one about what happened to her; “Her wish is to live and die quietly without troubling anyone and without being treated with disrespect.”

The protagonist’s emotional and psychological scars are obvious:  “Whenever she thinks about herself, shame fires up first.  It’s humiliating and painful to remember who she is.  In the process of trying not to examine and reveal herself, she has forgotten who she is.”  Marriage was not a possibility for her:  she hated men; the mere sight of them made her shudder.”  Because of her secrecy, “she’s long since lost all sense of attachment or kinship to anyone.”

The comfort women were shamed, marginalized, and silenced in Korea.  And the Japanese government was reluctant to admit that women were coerced into becoming comfort women.  In the Foreword, it is stated that “Emperor Hirohito had been directly involved in all military activities, including establishment of the comfort women system.”  Also Kishi Nobusuke, the maternal grandfather of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is identified as a war criminal. 

The book’s subject matter is relevant today.  Uighur camp detainees in China have made allegations of systematic rape.  Conflict-related sexual violence has been reported in a number of African countries; in fact, the protagonist watches a television program which discusses rebel forces assaulting women to assert their power.  Muslim women in southeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina were subjected to systematic and widespread gang rape, torture, and sexual enslavement by Bosnian Serb soldiers in the 1990s.  And sex trafficking is a problem in many countries, including Canada. 

The book is not an easy read because of its subject matter.  The writing style doesn’t help either; it is often chunky and disjointed.  Nonetheless, I think it is an important book.