I am Jin Kyung-paeng, now 70 years old. I live in a small apartment in Bundang. It was made available for me by the Korean government.
My family lived in a remote village called Hapchon, Kyungsang Namdo Province. When I was 14, my mother and I were picking cotton on our farm when two Japanese Kempei (military police) passed by. My mother spotted them and told me to lie flat on the ground. But they succeeded in finding me. They kicked my mother when she came after me. I was crying.
A few days later they took me to Pusan and put me aboard a ship, which set sail at 11:30 p.m., arriving in Shimonoseki the following morning. I was then taken with about 30 other Korean girls to an even bigger ship along with many army and navy personnel. We arrived near Kinariyama, Taiwan, the following day. I learned that it was a place with many monkeys and snakes, and the main staples for the local residents were potatoes, sweet potatoes, and taro. Many military personnel stationed nearby came to greet us.
The Japanese guards divided the Korean women from the ship into three groups of ten and took us to different locations. We were the first Korean women in this area. There were also 20 Japanese women who had been there for a year. But the 50 of us were not enough to meet the soldiers' demands. During the day I served as a nurse's aide, and at night I was a sex slave for about 20 men. Soon I contracted venereal disease and was treated with many injections, including "#606," a popular arsenic compound used for syphilis. They also gave me many shots in my posterior, causing several lumps. I remember a few soldiers-Hideo Kanemoto was the commanding officer of the naval unit there. He treated us okay. There were also Oono, Nakamura, Kanjiro Yoshida, Yamaguchi, Higashi, and Inomochi. After three years they moved me to an army unit in Kinariyama, and I stayed with them until the end of the war. This was a communications unit, I think, because I overheard radio communications frequently using Morse code.
One day in August the soldiers gathered and wept until late at night. Some even tried to kill themselves with bayonets. Afterwards we learned the war was over. Several days later Commandant Kanemoto took me to Takao, a nearby city. Most of the buildings in the city had been destroyed by bombing, except a few around the railway station.
A week later I saw a poster calling for Koreans to come to a meeting. The meeting hall was filled with Koreans who had served in the Japanese military. There we learned Aegook-ka, the South Korean national anthem.
In March, 1946 we were herded aboard a ship and sailed to Pusan. When we landed, we were sprayed with disinfectant and received 1,000 won each. A nice American GI alsp gave me a bag of candy and 1,000 won. I had to wait a week for a train for Hapchon, my hometown.
When I arrived at Hapchon, a policeman immediately arrested me and took me to his station. The reason may have been that I looked different from the town residents-I had a deep suntan on my face and looked like a stranger to this town. I told the police chief, who interrogated me, that I was returning home. I told him that my mother was Yi Kyung-hi and that my brother was Jin Jung-chul. He gave me a pair of rubber shoes for my bare feet, an item not readily available in the market those days, and let me return home.
When my mother first saw me, she thought she was dreaming. We were so, so happy. The first thing that I did was to go to the market and buy rice with the 1,000 won they gave me for transportation. We had a good meal.
In July of that year, I was married and lived in Hapchon for 22 years. Eventually my husband passed away, and I raised and arranged the marriages for his children. I could not have my own. Today they all have their own families and have left me.
I was a "comfort woman" between the ages of 14 and 19. Most of the girls were 16 to 19 years old. They all had been abducted and brought to the camp like me. During those years I received about 12 soldiers by midnight. After midnight one soldier often stayed with me through the night. Weekends were much worse. I was forced to service men from early in the morning to late at night with almost no time to rest, and then spend the rest of the night with yet another man. Frequently I did not have time for a meal. On days like this, I became feverish. Some girls serviced up to 50 men a day.
Not long ago, I was invited to visit Japan. I could not go because my poor health and lack of funds. Today I have constant pain all over my body and frequent dizziness, but I cannot afford over-the-counter drugs. My monthly income is 45,000 won, or about $55, from the Korean Government. I have no possessions, relatives, or offspring. I am alone.
Interviewed in Seoul, November 2, 1994
Source:
Schellstede, Sangmie Choi, ed. Comfort Women Speak: Testimony
by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military. New York: Holmes and Meier,
2000.