Talk:Comfort women

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2019 and 20 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jisuk1017 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Moriskume.

Other non-Asian women?

The only non-Asian women said to have been used as "comfort women" are Dutch and Australian. This has always puzzled me, since the Japanese also occupied the French and British colonies in South-East Asia (Vietnam, Malaya and so on). Since they evidently had no objection to non-Asian women as such, did they not also abuse French and British women for this purpose? I frankly can't find any evidence that they did, but it still strikes me as improbable.89.212.50.177 (talk) 11:29, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

• The difference is probably that in the Dutch East Indies almost all Europeans were put in internment camps, with separate camps for men and women. --♥ Stuart LaJoie → talk2me 00:21, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
• Those who abused Dutch were against Japanese laws and punished. It was not done by the government, but by individuals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiwiki210 (talk • contribs) 00:29, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Not Neutral; This article is mostly only based on South Korean activists viewpoint

They keep reverting my edits that are based on evidence including the American government findings without even not knowing about the issue deeply and without even pointing out which part is & how not neutral.
Apart from the 200-400 Dutch women incidents, South Korean activists use this event to proactively encourage the anti-Japanese sentiment around the world and to receive more compensations from Japan.
What's most not neutral is the "estimate number" of the South Korean AND Dutch victims of 200,000, which South Koreans ENGRAVED in the "Peace Statue" even though there is no evidence, which the American government also concluded that there was not.
It is overestimated being 30% of South Korean females at 20-25 years old; which defies math.
If it is 410,000 as stated by Chinese scholar, it is more than 60% of South Korean females at 20-25 years old.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiwiki210 (talk • contribs) 00:20, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Since clearly there is no consensus in favour of your (frankly repugnant) attempt to whitewash mass rape in WW2, you should propose specific cited edits on the talk page, rather than trying to shoehorn vast tracts into the article. Pinkbeast (talk) 03:50, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

"Japanese military sexual slavery"

For discussion about alternative article title "Japanese military sexual slavery" on this article, please see User talk:John B123#Special:diff/881758594. Thanks. --Garam (talk) 10:42, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

As this discussion may now involve other editors, it's probably more appropriate to have the discussion here rather than on my talk page. I have there copied the discussion over to this page. --John B123 (talk) 11:23, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

The NPOV is not political correctness. And please search in google about word "Japanese military sexual slavery". It is one of common name about "comfort women". Thanks. --Garam (talk) 18:28, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Agreed "Japanese military sexual slavery" is a common name for "comfort women", but common name is a different thing to which means, i.e definition, as used in the text. The cited works used this term in an attempt to distinguish between Volunteer Corps (Jeongsindae) and Comfort Women (wianbu). It did not give it as an overall meaning of "comfort women".

I have absolutely no objection to the phrase being used in the article, but not as what comes across as a definition in the lead section. --John B123 (talk) 18:44, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Please see WP:OTHERNAMES. And commonly the "Japanese military sexual slavery" means "comfort women" only, not "volunteer labour corps". Thanks. --Garam (talk) 10:05, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Comfort women are part of (and the victims of) Japanese military sexual slavery. They are not the entirety of it, it also includes the people who ran the brothels, the soldiers who used the women etc. The people who ran the brothels were part of Japanese military sexual slavery but that does not make them comfort women. As far as both factual accuracy and WP:OTHERNAMES are concerned, "Comfort women", which means "Japanese military sexual slavery" is incorrect. --John B123 (talk) 17:21, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Then, you means, is "Comfort women or Japanese military sexual slavery" okay? --Garam (talk) 15:55, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

I would prefer: "Comfort women (Japanese military sexual slavery) were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during World War II."

From a readabity point of view, that wording is redundant. Jusenkyoguide (talk) 23:02, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Per WP:AT, the article title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles. What is this article about?

• A system of sexual slavery operated during WW-II by the Japanese military
• The term Comfort Women
• The practice of sexual slavery by Japan during WW-II
• The practice of wartime sexual violence by the Japanese military in WW-II
• Wianbu
• Jeongsindae (re that term, see [1], [2], etc.)
• Some or all of the above in some combination of subtopics

This is just a drive-by comment, but it seems to me that the article content is mainly about the first of these, with some of the other topics also covered to some extent. Perhaps a split is in order, with a short summary style overview article summarizing two or more detail articles separately covering individual subtopics more completely. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:31, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion:

• Glendale Comfort Woman Plaque.jpg (discussion)
• Palisades Park Comfort Women Plaque.jpg (discussion)

Participate in the deletion discussions at the nomination pages linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 06:51, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Southfield Comfort Woman Plaque.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:21, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 October 2019

Please delete the sentence: Abe again expressed his most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women and acknowledged that they had undergone immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women. (Found under "Apologies and Compensation")

The reason for this is that according to various news sources including the New York Times and such, Abe did not express his "most sincere apologies and remorse" and has always doubted whether "Japan's imperial military actually coerced Korean women into sexual slavery" numerous times. ("Critics, however, noted that before becoming prime minister for the second time in 2012, Mr. Abe publicly questioned whether Japan’s imperial military actually coerced Korean women into sexual slavery." Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/world/asia/japan-south-korea-comfort-women.html

Thank you. NK1711 (talk) 00:17, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

 Done EvergreenFir (talk) 05:51, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

The source is listed already, it's from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs press release on the occasion and is a direct quote from it. Jusenkyoguide (talk) 22:50, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Edit: Er, I see that EvergreenFir already got it. ^_^; Thanks! -JG

Semi-protected edit request on 04 November 2019

Sarah Soh, a Korean American scholar, deplores in her book "The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan" how equating comfort women’s experiences into a uniform sexual slavery narrative overlooks the complexity of an evolving empire-wide system incorporating “licensed prostitution and indentured sexual labor, wartime military rape and battlefield abduction into sexual slavery.”. This view is shared by many other historians, including Korean scholar Park Yu-ha.

There is no question that the Comfort system led to the sexual violation of tens of thousands of women. In spite of this, definitions such as the one provided in the first sentence of the article, i.e. "Comfort women were women and girls forced into being sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army" do not offer an accurate view of the complex comfort system, and rather further aggravates the misalignment between the academic understanding and the much needed public discourse.

Considering this, and according to wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, I think it would be appropriate to reformulate the first sentence in order to reflect the ongoing debate and complexity, especially considering the nuance initially existed, but was removed in edit Comfort_women&oldid=426326787 without much justification.

I do not have a proposal at this point, and can come up with suggestions if you deem it appropriate as well.