![]() She and many other girls were put on a freight train and sent to Longjing, China, to work at a comfort station, one of many brothels servicing Japanese soldiers throughout the Japanese-occupied territories. At just fifteen years old, Lee Ok-sun was kidnapped on her way back from running an errand for a tavern where she worked in exchange for room and board. Many were lured with the promise of work in restaurants and factories, while some were simply abducted. While acknowledging its many failings, the author uses the term, and it proves to be a clever way to make the horrors of sexual slavery easier to read.The Imperial Japanese Army forced an estimated 350,000 to 410,000 impoverished girls and women, mostly from Korea, China, and the Philippines, into sexual slavery. Painted in black ink, the story opens with a note on the controversial term “comfort women,” a Japanese euphemism that survivors say distorts victims’ experience. Gendry-Kim also appears as she coaxes Lee Ok-sun, now in her nineties, to talk about her life and tragic experiences. ![]() Grass is a graphic work of non-fiction about a former comfort woman, Lee Ok-sun, during World War II. ![]() ![]() As many fled violence in the north, not everyone was able to make it south. It’s not an uncommon storythe peninsula was split across the 38th parallel, dividing one country into two. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, the award-winning author of Grass, is known for both her work about the marginalized and for her manhwa, a South Korean comic style. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim was an adult when her mother revealed a family secret: She had been separated from her sister during the Korean War. ![]()
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