The counter-monument as mnemonic device: The case of the Statues of Peace in South Korea

Introduction

Constructions of statues and memorials have marked the history of humanity, from antiquity to the present. Similarly, the history of iconoclastic activities and subsequent defacement of statues goes way back to ancient times. In the contemporary context, statues of former slave owners and perpetrators of racism and colonialism are being toppled, with the statues of Cecil Rhodes in Capetown being the most publicized example. With the continual presence of the colonial past, structural inequalities combined with racial discrimination have contributed to similar efforts to destroy monuments in other places, including the United States. Formerly venerated figures such as Robert E. Lee and confederate flags have become the symbols of continued oppression, as the latter are associated with White racism, and are even known to have decorated the dwellings of, and otherwise been popular with, many of the right-wing White supremacists who once frequently murdered Black Americans.

Yet there are cases of monuments that seem to call for acknowledgment of past wrongdoings and restoration of a proper sense of justice. This article analyzes the “Statues of Peace” known as Sonyeosang, or Comfort Woman Statues, in South Korea. These are statues of a girl who represents the victims of sexual slavery organized by the Japanese military during the period from the 1930s to the end of the Pacific War, euphemistically called “Comfort Women” by the Japanese. Unlike conventional statues commemorating heroic figures, these statues commemorate victims of acts of a colonial abuse of power. With the first Statue of Peace built in 2011 in front of the Japanese Embassy Building in Seoul, 124 similar statues representing Comfort Women had been erected around the country as of August 2020 (KBS Data Journalism Team).

Representing victims rather than heroes, the Statues of Peace became an object of contestation as it was located in front of the Japanese Embassy, the same site where the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (KCJR) (n.d.) has been holding weekly demonstrations on Wednesdays since year 1992. The statue there depicts a short-haired young girl seated on a chair, looking in the direction of the Japanese Embassy. Of the 124 similar statues representing Comfort Women in Korea, some were built overseas, including in the United States and Germany. In 2015, the Japanese government attempted to halt the construction of Statues of Peace by offering in exchange 8 million USD aid for the medical care of the Comfort Women in compensation for their suffering. Yet the resulting agreement was short-lived. ¹ After the erection of Statues of Peace around the country, demonstrations against the statues took place, making them contested sites of different interpretations regarding the past. In the city of Busan, a Statue of Peace was pulled down by the city district office but was re-erected when the demolition was reported by media and generated a national fury over the demolition. Some Statues of Peace, although not demolished, went through modifications, with residents and passers-by adding objects for various purposes. The modifications will be discussed in the later part of the article.

In this article, I examine the Statue of Peace’s role as a mnemonic device that connects South Korea’s present with the colonial past, reminding viewers of certain forms of injustice that occurred in the past. In particular, it examines how the removal and re-erection of the statues, and modifications made to them has become a matter of public debate and therefore function as physical manifestations of different memories. All of the surviving Comfort Women are in their 80s or 90s, and most now have passed away. The erection of the Statues of Peace took place in the context of a dwindling number of victims, and the perceived need to retain the memory of their suffering and the sense of injustice was becoming stronger. Yet the portrayal of a young girl in the monument has instigated a debate that blurred the focus of the movement for justice and remembrance. This article illustrates how the contentious processes of the erecting, demolishing, and re-erecting of public monuments has functioned as the staging of a public debate as well as a mnemonic device. I will conclude that the concept of counter-monument, first formulated by James E. Young, can be a useful conceptual tool for analyzing the status of the Statues of Peace. While the concept of counter-monument has garnered criticism regarding its efficacy, this article argues that the concept is still viable if it is considered as a continuum construction rather than a binary one.

Method

I first examined archival data pertinent to the issues surrounding the design of public monuments. The twentieth century witnessed the construction of many memorials related to war and mass destructions, and the monument building boom that followed such tragic events has ushered in academic discussions regarding different strategies of invoking difficult memories. Even for those monuments that depict more continual and less violent historical struggles, the problem of representation in public monuments became a very contentious issue. I draw from examples such as the Lenin monuments in Eastern Europe and monument commemorating the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States to make comparisons and elucidate the common problems facing monument building as well as the peculiarities surrounding different historical contexts.

I used media analysis to analyze the political and social context in which the Statues of Peace was constructed. I examined the statements of the KCJR, and their published documents regarding the design and erection of the first Statue of Peace, invaluable resources on the matter. I also reviewed the counter-arguments made by the TICAJS (The Truth Investigation Committee on Anti-Japanese Statues) by examining news articles and the organization’s public statements. Using keyword “statue of peace,” I have searched newspaper articles published between 2015 (the year Comfort Women Agreement between South Korea and Japan fell out) and present. To gain a deeper understanding of their respective positions, I made use of semi-structured interviews with members of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including the KCJR and the Jinbo Hakseng Yondae (Progressive Student’s Coalition). Interviews took place between October 2020 and July 2021. In total, 12 interviews were conducted. Five interviews were held with members of NGOs, four with participants of demonstrations, and three with former members of KCJR. Structured interviews and participant observation at the key sites (the statues of peace in Seoul and Seongnam) revealed important aspects of the controversy that were not reported in the media but were relevant to my research questions. The interviews revealed that complexities surrounding the statues, especially regarding the maintenance of the statues, and different positions within a progressive group, demonstrated that the question of representation remains a contentious issue even among those who support the Statues of Peace.

Debates regarding counter-monuments

After the end of the Second World War, memorializing difficult memories of violence and genocide was a task that was becoming increasingly difficult. The term “counter-monument” was first proposed by Young (1993), as meaning “brazen, painfully self-conscious memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premises of their being” (p. 27). Contrary to typical monuments that seem to force a single narrative history onto onlookers, counter-monuments leave their interpretation to the viewer, by being less figurative and less deterministic in form. Yet the concrete examples of counter-monuments have been the target of many criticisms. For instance, Stubblefield (2011) argued that, contrary to the intended disappearance of the Monument against Fascism, the strategy can reinforce the existing narrative history. Widrich (2019: chapter 6, para. 3, Kindle edition) has also taken a critical view, arguing that the term counter-monument has “obscured the unstable links of recent memorials with practices ranging from landscape design to performance art and the use of social media.”

Yet the concept of the counter-monument need not imply the binary construction of monumental versus non-monumental designs. Crownshaw (2008) has argued that the opposition of memory and history seen in many counter-monuments should be deconstructed. O’Hara’s (2006) analysis of monuments at Kent State University showed that certain counter-monuments, such as Solar Totem, have “[been] put in service of the rigid or subsuming historical narratives they once worked against” (p. 324). Following Crownshaw and O’Hara, I do not regard a counter-monument as an opposite of a monument. Rather, counter-monuments should be understood on a continuum, in which different degrees of monumentality and abstraction or concreteness is involved. If we accept that the absolute neutrality of a given monument cannot be guaranteed, and that artists’ control over the production of discourse is limited, the concept of counter-monument should be considered as malleable. At the same time, the visual strategies counter-monuments employ may vary. For example, DeLappe and Simpson (2011) have shown how virtual memorials commemorating the loss of Iraqi civilians can become an effective form of alternative memorialization. Eross (2016) argued that the installation of a counter-monument in Hungary’s Liberty Square served to question the Hungarian victimhood depicted by the official monument, as the latter betrays Hungarian complicity in the Holocaust. More recently, Alonso and Nienass (2021) have illustrated how the strategies of counter-monuments erected by memory activists in Mexico work to emphasize the role of the state and the military in ongoing violence. Özel’s (2013) positive evaluation of the Karaoğlanoğlu War Memorial in Cyprus showed that the memorial’s counter-monument attributes included “a touchable distance and a moderate dimension” while not “stepping totally outside the conventional boundaries of traditional Turkish war memorials” (p. 131).

Not all forms of counter-monuments are considered successful. A counter-monument can become a monument and vice versa. These case studies show that the effects elicited by a counter-monument can differ according to political and social context. The concept of a counter-monument may continue to be valid, while the aesthetics and visual strategies of the counter-monument can vary. In his later works, Young (2016) suggested that memorials can be ever-evolving, being “a never-to-be-completed process, animated (not disabled) by the forces of history bringing it into being” (Introduction, para. 32, Kindle edition). By examining the case of the Statue of Peace, this article shows that counter-monuments are not always in opposition to official historical narratives and that they do not necessarily weaken the link between the physical structure and performative art.

With the critique of the conventional monument came that of monuments that commemorate oppressive political structures such as slavery, racism, and colonialism. The recent demolition of statues of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town and the destructions of Confederate statues in the United States exemplify this movement. The new concept of “fallism” or “urban fallism” became a topic in scholarly journals, with some defining it as:

the contestation, transformation and pulling-down of public monuments by minority, marginalized and/or oppressed civic groups in today’s socially, politically and ethnically diverse cities as a means of political struggle for social recognition and inclusion. (Frank and Ristic, 2020: 556)

Thus, fallism does not simply refer to the act of toppling down controversial statues but also includes the processes of contestation that have led to such destructions. Fallism calls for a re-evaluation of monuments in light of the perspectives of minorities previously under-represented.

Yet some scholars argue that destruction of the statues of controversial political figures is not always the answer. For instance, Stevens and de Seta (2020) noted how the statues of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan have elicited different responses (rather than a single voice to overthrow them) and that such diverse responses instantiate democratic pluralism. Similarly, Ristic (2020) noted that a new method of displaying the statue of Lenin has generated multiple ways of interpreting the associated authoritarian past. Demolished statues of Lenin have been rediscovered and displayed in a new way, with its head displayed on its side, in an attempt to make room for critical engagement. Thus, instead of either keeping the monuments or unilaterally destroying them, these authors call for a more reflective turn. Zarandona and Munawar (2020) likewise showed that the simple act of taking down a controversial statue does not always result in a long-term solution, as the resurrections of statues of Hafez Al-Assad in Syria show.

Thus, instead of understanding fallism as a single and unidirectional movement, the process of demolishing and resurrecting monuments may be considered as a dialectic process in which opposing forces compete to make a spatial statement in an urban environment. The case of the Statues of Peace is perhaps the most controversial case of public monuments in contemporary South Korean and Japanese societies, as both states have still not come to terms with how to settle the matter of the Comfort Women. Japan maintains that it has issued an apology, and South Korea rescinded the agreement reached on the settlement. The South Korean government argues that the former agreement, which was proposed in 2015, and which called for the demolition of the Statues of Peace in return for monetary compensation, was not based on popular support. After the breakdown of the agreement, diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea soured further, generating a boycott of Japanese imports among many South Koreans and increasing expressions of anti-Korean rhetoric in Japanese right-wing political organizations. Analyzing the case of the Statues of Peace contributes to the discussion of memorials and public monuments. This article illustrates that the removal, re-erection, and modifications of Statues of Peace itself show the resilience of these monuments as a mnemonic device, especially when much media attention and various discourses shape and are shaped by activities related to the statues.

Background

The first Statue of Peace (Figure 1) was erected in 2011 in front of the Japanese Embassy Building in Seoul to commemorate the 1000th week in demonstrations held by former Comfort Women and the KCJR. The bronze structure was designed by Kim Seoh Kyong and Kim Wun-seong. It consists of an empty chair, and another chair with a figure of a girl seated on it. Interestingly, the shadow of the girl is that of an old woman, representing the passage of time and the current old age of the surviving victims. Sculptors revealed that the empty chair symbolizes two things. First, it represents the vacant place of the deceased Comfort Women, and second, the empty chair invites visitors to commemorate and participate in the movement to demand a sincere apology and acknowledgment (Kim and Kim, 2016). The rough haircut of the girl represents the violence by which the Comfort Women were separated from their home country. There is a small bird sitting on the shoulder of the girl, which represents a spiritual medium that connects the deceased Comfort Women with people living today.

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Figure 1.

The Statue of Peace in front of the Japanese Embassy Building in Seoul (photo taken by the author).

The responses from the Japanese government were, and continue to be, negative. As its siting facing the embassy was, of course, part of the issue, Japanese politicians, including Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan at the time, demanded that the monument be removed from the current site. In 2015, the issue came up again in the negotiations regarding the Comfort Women between South Korea and Japan. The Japanese government requested the removal of the statue on the condition of its offering both an apology and monetary compensation. Although agreement on this was reached, it soon was practically nullified after former Comfort Women objected to the process. Both governments at the time failed to inform the victims of the full conditions of the agreement, while stating that it was to be a final and irreversible agreement and that both the victims and the South Korean government should refrain from discussing the matter in international settings in the future (Lee, 2020). The fact that the Japanese government requested the removal of the monument became another contentious issue, with many criticizing this conditional agreement.

The fallout contributed further to a souring of the relationship between Japan and South Korea. Soon thereafter, more Statues of Peace were built in South Korea, and some in other countries. Although they vary in design, all of them feature the figure of a girl as representing the Comfort Women. As of August 2020, there are 124 of these statues in South Korea (KBS Data Journalism Team). According to the KCJR’s data, there are additional 32 overseas statues (located in countries including the United States, Germany, Australia, China, and Canada) that commemorate Comfort Women, although not all of them are called “Statues of Peace” (KCJR official Website). In total, there are 156 statues commemorating Comfort Women. In order to distinguish the original Statue of Peace in Seoul from the others, the KCJR has started calling the other statues Girimbi, or Memorial Statue. Yet this article uses the term statue of peace to refer to the statues commemorating comfort women, since the term girimbi is not widely used with regard to the comfort women issue.

The issue of the Comfort Women was first brought up in the early 1990s by Professor Jeong-Ok Yune, who established the KCJR (Jeong Ui Yeon, formerly known as Jeong-dae-hyop) along with some victims who were willing to come forward. Although victims became more involved in the movement of seeking justice for the war crime, their numbers dwindled significantly after the 2000s, as most of the victims then were in their 80s and 90s. As more and more former Comfort Women passed away, and the Japanese government was unwilling to settle the issue, statue building became an important strategy to make sure that the issue of Comfort Women would not be forgotten. Thus, statue building became an important activity that helps to maintain the force of the movement and strengthen solidarity among victims of Japanese colonial rule.

The NGOs

Funding for the construction of the Statue of Peace was provided by NGOs and civil society organizations. The KCJS funded the construction of the original Statue of Peace located across the Japanese Embassy. Other NGOs, including Korean ethnic organizations overseas, and numerous individuals, have donated funds for the construction of statues in other locations. The Statue of Peace in Jongro District is owned by the KCJS while other statues are owned by various civic organizations. Since the monument was not erected by the government, it is considered private property. After the erection of the statue, the focus of controversy surrounding the matter of the Comfort Women quickly moved to the physical presence of the statue. Many attempts at physically damaging or removing the statue were made by the anti-statue camp, and those in favor of the statue are actively keeping the statue intact by setting up a camp near the statue to make sure that it is not defaced. Anti-statue NGOs also have put up their camp near the statue as well to protest the placement of the statue.

The most prominent NGO opposing the Statues of Peace is the TICAJS, which was formed in 2019. TICAJS has voiced opposition to the erection of other statues which represent “Anti-Japanese” sentiments, such as the Forced Conscription Laborer’s Statue located in the Yongsan area of Seoul. TICAJS has been charged with libel by the artists who designed this statue after TICAJS argued that the figure resembled an image of a Japanese laborer whose photo had been published in 1926. TICAJS alleges that most Comfort Women knowingly entered into the service and that there are only a few exceptional cases of unknowingly being used as one. TICAJS argues that the Japanese government has made many apologies along with offers of financial aid to the victims and believes that the KCJR is exaggerating the matter to an extent that is detrimental to foreign relations. In addition to arguing that the facts presented regarding the Comfort Women are distorted, TICAJS’s demonstration pickets and posters showed charged statements describing how the statues “dishonor Korean people” and have become a form of “national shame.”

Those who support the statue’s construction argue that the statues are not anti-Japanese, but anti-colonial. For instance, Kang (2020), a sociologist at Sungkyunkwan University, has noted how the right-wing organizations have continually belittled anti-colonial and nationalistic movements as “anti-Japanese tribalism,” rendering their justice claims appear culturally backward. KCJR and many scholars counter the claim of TICAJS and those who argue that Comfort Women willingly entered into the prostitution, noting that the historical evidence suggests otherwise (Choi, 2016; Kim, 2017). Many women in Korea at the time lacked Japanese language skills and did not have access to military-related information, and it is unlikely that they knew what they were getting into. Yoshiaki (1995) has shown that the Japanese military was directly involved in the management and control of comfort women partly in order to prevent STD (sexually transmitted disease) among soldiers. International travels of comfort women through borders and their movements after arrival at the “comfort station” were closely monitored by the Japanese army, making the claim that only civilians were involved in the matter untenable. More recently, scholars have started to examine the issue of the comfort women from a feminist rather than a nationalist angle, arguing that the patriarchal system has played a role in silencing comfort women for so long (Yang, 1998). Also, Soh’s (2008) work emphasizes a complexity within the experiences of the comfort women, which previously have tended to be flattened in the more nationalist version of the comfort women narrative. Yet while arguing that push factors—such as patriarchy, sexism, and class in both Korean and Japanese societies—must be considered as factors, such recent works also confirm the involvement of the Japanese army in the rounding up and management of comfort women system. Examining the historical details on the Comfort Women is not within the scope of this article, whose focus is on issues of representation in monuments. But it is worth noting that the scenario of most Comfort Women willingly entering into prostitution and being treated “justly” (the scenario supported by TICAJS) is highly unlikely, given that much historical evidence suggests otherwise.

In the context of rising tensions over the issue, pro-statue camp members took turns camping outside to guard the statue to make sure that anti-statue members would not destroy or deface it. The anti-statue camp had set up its own camp adjacent to the pro-statue camp, and the high tensions between the two groups necessitated the presence of police officers near the statue and a police truck in front of the Japanese Embassy Building (Figure 1). During the site visit, a student from Jinbo Hakseng Yondae (Progressive Student’s Coalition), who agreed for a brief unstructured interview, explained to the researcher that they placed a vase of flowers on the monument to prevent the anti-statue people from sitting on the chair with the intention of insulting and/or defacing the monument. At the time of the interview (27 October 2020), the political tensions between the two groups were especially high, as another Statue of Peace built in Berlin was gaining international attention. Ironically though, such a high level of tension does not facilitate the artist’s original purpose of inviting people to reflect upon the sufferings of the victims. Rather, the site has become a rather uninviting place for passers-by, due to the presence of police trucks and the militant vigilance, which are necessitated by the need to protect the statue.

The Statues of Peace and other memorials to the Comfort Women (girimbi) present challenges to those who support the basic principle of remembering the victims. While the KCJR was officially involved in the erection of the Statue of Peace in front of the Japanese Embassy, other statues and memorials were built by independent organizations. The construction of memorials and statues in remembrance of the Comfort Women boomed after 2015, when the terms of agreement angered many. Maintaining them has become difficult. During interviews, several activists expressed concern regarding the maintenance of the statues. For instance, Professor Jeong, the former head of the KCJR, mentioned that while the intention of erecting statues of peace is to maintain the force of the movement, some are not properly maintained. ² In another interview, Professor Lee Na-Young, the current head of KCJR, mentioned that some NGOs were formed simply to erect the memorials, and were disbanded after their construction, making it difficult to keep the maintenance accountable. ³ Lee noted that while some NGOs, such as Gyeonggi Peace Nabi Yondae, and various organizations in Tongyong, Geoje, and Busan, remain strong, others have dissolved since the construction of the statues. Thus, the long-term maintenance of those statues whose sponsors have disbanded remains uncertain.

The fall and the unfall

After the installations of the Statues of Peace, many attempts were made to remove the statues. The Statue of Peace in the city of Busan, erected in December 2016 in front of the Japanese consulate building, was removed by the police and the Busan Donggu Administration staffs only hours after its installation on the sidewalk. The Donggu administration office had not issued a permit to erect the statue on the site, stating that it is a violation of the road law since the statue is not considered “structures or facilities that can occupy a road” (Kim, 2016). It was not immediately clear what constitutes permissible structures, but the swift removal of the statue revealed that a statue, especially a controversial one, was not among them. The members of the NGO who pushed for the erection resisted the demolition, resulting in the arrest of 13 individuals. The media report regarding the incident brought nothing less than a national fury, with many people criticizing the district office for acting as if it represented the political interests of the Japanese government (Yoon, 2016). Yet some supported the act, since the removal was considered one of the conditions of the 2015 agreement between the two governments. For instance, Gongtae Oh, the head of Jaeil Mindan (a group representing Korean nationals residing in Japan), supported the removal, because he thought the agreement should be honored and (he at the time believed that) many Korean nationals living in Japan suffered more from the frosty relations between the two states (Kim, 2017).

Yet more South Koreans were against the demolition of the Statue of Peace, and, faced with mounting criticism, the Busan Donggu district office reinstalled the statue after just 2 days. This did not put the end to the controversy, however. One incident in 2012 involved a Japanese national placing a white post with the text “Takeshima (Dokdo) is Japanese territory” on it. Intermittent demonstrations by unidentified individuals calling for the removal of the statue were reported in February 2017. In July 2020, a man in his thirties tied a bicycle to the statue, resulting in a series of controversies regarding what his act symbolized, and if he should be prosecuted for it. While it was not immediately clear why he chose the statue as a bicycle stand, he asked the police why it was illegal to use it as a bicycle stand when others put different objects, such as flower vases, nearby. ⁴ Such incidents show that although the statue’s erection was intended primarily to address colonial ills, it has become a site for different nationalist claims to be presented in. The post was soon removed, and lawsuits have been filed against the man who placed it.

There were less overt and more ambiguous modifications to the statues as well. For instance, media coverage of a Korean man who put a padded jacket on a Statue of Peace in front of the Seongdong district office provoked controversy among South Koreans in early 2021 (Figure 2). While this may be interpreted as friendly behavior (providing warmth to the victims during the cold winter), the jacket’s brand (Descente) was Japanese, making this act controversial. Later, it was found out that the man had a mental disorder, and the lawsuit that had been filed against him was dropped (Shin, 2021). ⁵ It was unclear what this act symbolized, especially as there were other instances of putting objects or clothes on the statues. For instance, a local NGO in Seongnam City put a hand-knitted muffler and winter hat on a Statue of Peace in Seongnam City (Figure 3) in December 2014 (Yoon, 2014). Yet this act was deliberately supportive of the statue; the NGO members held an official ceremony, which included the presence of the mayor, prior to dressing the statue. Such symbolic modifications to the statue, by citizens and others, illustrate that monument building does not always end when the sculptor/artist finishes work. Rather, the monument becomes engaged in a process of providing a new meaning, sometimes provided by those who are against the monument and sometimes by those who wish to protect it.

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Figure 2.

On a winter day in 2021, the Statue of Peace in Seongdong district office in Seoul was discovered with a black padded jacket on it (photo by Wee, Jeong-Ryang).

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Figure 3.

Members of an NGO placed mufflers and a hat on the Statue of Peace in Seongnam City to symbolically support the victims (courtesy of Seongnam City).

A similar process of removal/defacement and restoration unfolded with the Statue of Peace built in Mitte district of Berlin, erected in September 2020. The statue is identical in design to the first Statue of Peace built in Seoul in 2011. The installation of the statue was carried out by the Korea Verband, a German-based NGO that promotes understanding of Korean cultural issues. Although the Korea Verband (2021) had obtained a permit for the installation of the statue, the Mitte district office ordered the removal of the statue in early October after receiving protests from Japan’s Foreign Minister. As of now, the statue still stands, after the removal order was met with demonstrations held by Korea Verband members as well as various members of other NGOs. In early December, the Mitte City Council voted in favor of maintaining the statue’s installation until September 2021 (Korea Verband, 2021). It remains unclear what will happen after that date, as the Japanese government continues to voice opposition to the presence of the statue there.

Unlike Holocaust memorials and other instances of troubled heritages whose legal status is undisputed, the future of some Statues of Peace remains uncertain, as many of them have been the object of threats to remove them. In the interview, Lee Na-Young, the Chair of KCJS, noted that efforts to erect the Statues of Peace in Dresden, Germany and Aurora, Colorado were being thwarted by the lobbying of the Japanese government. Some statues are in danger of being demolished. Removals or defacements and subsequent restorations of the statues suggest that the fall and re-erection of a statue represents something bigger than the physical removal or installation of a monument. The current nature of the ongoing diplomatic conflict between the two nation-states makes the statues the poignant symbol of a colonial historical past which has not been settled. While the attempts at fall of the Statue of Peace represent the desire to forget certain parts of the colonial past, the re-installations of the statue represent the will to remember, and thus function as a mnemonic device. This dialectical process extends beyond the issue of Comfort Women, stretching to the current territorial dispute between the two nations, as the case of the post erected by a Japanese national indicates. At the same time, this monument stands as a symbol of collective suffering under colonialism and seems appropriate now as many elderly Koreans remembering the exploitative colonial time survive.

The Statues of Peace as counter-monuments

One of the objects of contention surrounding the Statue of Peace is the fact that the victims are identified with the figure portrayed, a young girl in her teens. The anti-statue groups quote Park’s (2013) argument that Comfort Women were older women and that they were “in a comrade-like relationship” with the Japanese soldiers. In other words, the anti-statue group believes that most Comfort Women willingly entered into prostitution and that the few cases of younger women unknowingly becoming Comfort Women were due not to the Japanese army but individuals engaging in pandering. This viewpoint removes ethical responsibility from the Japanese military and relegates the victimization to unfortunate incidents and thus the accidental. Yet, as many scholars (Choi, 2016; Kim, 2017) have pointed out, this argument does not consider the real, structural violence that helped make possible the exploitation of young women in Korea at the time of Japanese imperial regime. Many historical studies note that Comfort Women were led to believe that they were getting jobs working in factories or other industrial sites and point out that once in the war zone they had no way of choosing to return to their hometowns. Jeong (2004), Kang (2020), and Kim (2017) pointed out that the reason behind the younger age of Comfort Women from the Korean Peninsula was that it was difficult to find qualified Japanese Comfort Women (who were expected to be “prostitutes older than twenty-one years of age, and without STDs”) willing to travel to unfamiliar territories, sometime including war fronts (Notification for the Head of Interior Police Department, 1938).

With the publication of Park’s book, which was a response to the construction of the Statue of Peace, the focus of the Comfort Women issue has shifted onto the average age of the victims. Unfortunately, this has blurred the issue of justice and remembrance by shifting the focus to the victim’s qualification. In other words, the more important issue of the violence and deception of the colonial regime was replaced by the question of whether these victims were in fact mostly very young girls in their early teens. Yet this shift in focus hides the fact that the age or the sexual status of victims does not make the victims any more or less deserving of oppression and exploitation. Although the sculptor of the statue intended to portray the victim’s childhood rather than the exact age at which she became a “comfort woman,” this portrayal nevertheless has invited a controversy. It was the artist’s intention of allegorically depicting the victims’ stage of life that prompted discussion of the victim’s age.

Such hostile reactions to figurative monuments memorializing an historical event are not unique to the case of Comfort Women. For instance, Rooney (2020) has shown how the design of the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in New York elicited different reactions when the figure of Sojourner Truth was placed among two White female suffrage activists. In this case, many academics have raised concerns over historical accuracy, although it was the sculptor’s intention to include the minority figure to allegorically depict sisterhood and solidarity. Critics argued that such portrayal has a potential to gloss over the tension between the suffrage movement and male abolitionists. Similarly, some feminist scholars in South Korea raised the concern that the portrayal of a young girl in the Statue of Peace may inadvertently contribute to the binary conception of “pure” or “impure” females produced by the patriarchal social structure (Choi, 2016). In other words, the way the statues depict victims may strengthen the notion that those deserving protection (and therefore who can be victimized) are only sexually inexperienced women.

Yet constructing a figurative monument does have an advantage, especially when commemorating a group that has been historically under-represented in monuments. The Statue of Peace can be considered a counter-monument in the sense that it commemorates unknown victims rather than victorious leaders or well-known figures. Although the recent history of Korea is filled with tragic events such as colonialization and wars, the abundance of negative memories did not preclude the erection of heroic monuments. For instance, the War Memorial of Korea, erected in 1988 during the regime of Roh Tae Woo, is an example of a heroic monument. Kal (2011) has shown that depictions of soldiers and civilians in the memorial work to emphasize “heroism and resistance under colonialism” rather than suffering, thus “redeeming the humiliating experience of being colonized . . . through images of family, ethnicity, patriotism and masculinity” (Where has Japanese colonialism gone?, para. 2, Kindle edition). The Statue of Peace, on the other hand, is not masculine or heroic in the sense that it “generally recognize[s] darker events, such as the Holocaust, or the more troubling side of an event . . .” (Stevens et al., 2018: 722). Like many counter-monuments, the Statues of Peace are anti-heroic. The anti-heroic character of the Statue of Peace is partly the reason why some Koreans were against the erection of the monument. Although the figurative aspect of the statue added to the level of controversy, constructing an abstract version of the Statue of Peace may not have made sense, since the history of Comfort Women is not widely known, especially outside Korea and Japan. Unlike many Holocaust monuments that have become more abstract over the years, the monuments that commemorate the Comfort Women could not afford the luxury of becoming too abstract or self-disruptive. By taking up the nuanced understanding of the counter-monument and acknowledging that visual strategies of counter-monuments can differ, it is not unreasonable to argue that the Statues of Peace do function as counter-monument. Continuing conflict between South Korea and Japan over the issue of the Comfort Women contributed to this trend, as well as the relatively shorter time that the Comfort Women issue has been subject to international attention.

The Statues of Peace can be considered counter-monuments, since they invite many interpretations, including interpretations that have brought much political controversy. This shows that being non-figurative and non-descriptive is not the only way to invite reflections regarding the past. While the figure of a young girl has generated debates regarding the victim’s age, the presence of an empty chair can be interpreted in many ways. Despite the artist’s contention that it represents a connection between the deceased victims and the living, visitors and passers-by may think that the chair is meant to be occupied, whether they are sympathetic to the cause of the statue or not. Others used the chair to place different objects, flower vases to commemorate the victims, or other objects with the intention to humiliate the victims. Objects people placed on or near the statue have added another dimension to it, using the statue as a basis to make a counter-monument of their own. Very interestingly, these modifications worked in different ways, even when they were similar in function. While some item of clothing, such as a scarf or a jacket, were interpreted as supporting the victims, others, such as the Japanese-brand padded jacket, were considered pejorative. This illustrates the fact that even figurative statues can become counter-monuments, when the practices of using statues as a basis to express one’s political position open up different possibilities.

Although the status of the Statues of Peace overseas remains uncertain due to opposition from the Japanese government, the simple removal of statues does not put an end to the issue. This can be glimpsed from the sale of miniature Statues of Peace, which can be bought at 25,000 Korean Won (approximately 20 USD). The miniature Statue of Peace is currently being sold by the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum, with the profits from the sale used to support war victims, including Comfort Women. Reduced in size, this miniature version can be carried easily to different places. Thus, removing the existing statues or prohibiting constructions cannot preclude the making of reproductions of the original statue. Rather, it can circulate as a meme, in a smaller version of the original.

Conclusion

This article has illustrated the process of monument-making in the case of the Statues of Peace, memorializing the suffering of the Comfort Women. While the issue of the Comfort Women was first raised in the early 1990s, the reduction by attrition over time of the number of surviving Comfort Women and the unresolved status of reparations have led to series of monuments being built. The seemingly never-ending controversy has caused much constraint in the diplomatic relation between South Korea and Japan. In both countries, the view on the matter had material consequences, especially for the Statues of Peace, with some being defaced and others going through a cycle of removal and restoration in situ. In the meantime, the portrayal of Comfort Women in the statues became another contentious point about which the pro-statue and anti-statue camps made different claims. This article has analyzed the Statues of Peace as counter-monuments, as the statues acquired different meanings with the addition of different objects. Statues of Peace were controversial in their depiction of victims in a narrative style that is not entirely abstract. The portrayal of the victims through the image of young girl evoked various objections coming from both pro-statue and anti-statue groups. From the right-wing Japanese point of view, this was inaccurate (as most of the women were older) and was resented, since it brought the atrocities of the Japanese colonial regime into relief. Also, several South Korean scholars coming from a feminist point of view argued that the conception of the victims as pure blurs the focus of the movement and inadvertently contributes to the binary and sexist conception of female victims as either “deserving” or “undeserving.” Despite the possible validity of some criticisms, I have argued that they should not make the statue any less important as a public mnemonic device that commemorates the suffering and wrongdoing of the Japanese colonial regime. The histories of various monuments tell us that no monument that commemorates historical conflicts has ever been free of criticism of representation.

Although controversial status alone does not make the monument in question more prone to demolition and re-erection, controversy often leads to political tensions that play a big role in determining the fate of a monument. In the case of the Statues of Peace, the controversy has negatively affected the diplomatic relation between South Korea and Japan. While the structural violence during the Japanese colonial regime and the historical truth of the Japanese use of “Comfort Women” during the war is widely accepted, the denial of colonial ills continues to resurface. Recently, publication of an academic article justifying the Japanese colonial military in the issue of the Comfort Women has surfaced, angering many. Ironically, the controversies surrounding the statues of peace betray the name. Yet, as Kim’s (2012) analysis of peace memorial parks in East Asia noted, naming a statue with such a name hints at the faith that peaceful methods should be the only means to achieve an operable East Asian political order in the post-Cold War era. While the current series of acts of removal/defacement and re-erection/restoration seems chaotic and even worrisome, such processes should perhaps be understood as a necessary step to reach a wider social agreement on the terms of settlement of the issue. As statues replace dying victims, a halt in the series of statue building can only occur when postcolonial conditions are met—including the freedom to discuss past ills.