[KS] Re: Comfort Women

[HELEN HYUNG-IN KOH]

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Dear Rob,

I am pleased to inform the list about an exhibit of drawings by Korean
"comfort women" to be shown at Columbia University next week.  I hope
those in the New York area will be able to view it.  The art exhibit
will also be traveling to other cities in North America.

Thank you,
Helen Koh
East Asian Institute
Columbia University


Quest for Justice: The Story of Korean Comfort Women, As Told Through
Their Art


Opening:  Friday, October 6, 2000 at 6:00pm
Barnard College, 4th floor, James Room
3009 Broadway (at 117th Street), New York, NY 10027
Exhibition runs October 6-12, 2000
Exhibition hours:	October 6, 6:00 pm
  	October 7-10, 10:00 am-7:00 pm
		  	October 11, 9:00 am-12:00 pm and
		  	October 12, 10:00 am-7:00 pm

The term "comfort women" is a euphemism for those women forced into
sexual
slavery in Japanese military camps during World War II. After the war,
those who returned home often lived in poverty, enduring physical and
emotional problems while keeping secret their painful experiences. Since
the early 1990s more and more former comfort women have come forward to
reveal their pasts and to demand reparations from Japan.

Several former comfort women, now the age of grandmothers, moved in 1992
into the House of Sharing in Seoul, South Korea, where they received art
instruction as part of their therapy. The paintings and sketches from
these sessions have evolved into the compelling expressions of this
exhibition, full of shame, anger, bitterness and lost innocence, yet
powered by a determination for justice and understanding. 

Speakers on opening night will include: Soon-Duk Kim, one of the
featured
artists; HyeJin, founder of the House of Sharing; Dai Sil Kim-Gibson,
director of the documentary film Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women,
which will be screened at the event, and; Rhonda Copelon, Professor of
Law
at City University of New York.  

The exhibition, which opened in Chicago on September 22, will also be
shown in Philadelphia, Toronto, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The event will be sponsored by Barnard College, The Richard W.
Weatherhead
Fund of the East Asian Institute, Young Koreans United and The New York
Alliance for Peace and Reunification of Korea.

For more information, please contact Kristi Barnes, East Asian
Institute,
Columbia University at (212) 854-1742.