Red Marten | Valencia (EFE) and separated from their families, and Keum Suk Gendry-Kim has managed to do it in his works ‘Waiting’ and ‘Grass’.
In an interview with EFE at the Valencia Comic Fair, the Korean author is in favor of “sharing that legacy” of strength, which she has approached in many cases through personal interviews, but “not as a journalist would do, but as a woman, as a person”.
Lee Ok-Sun is the protagonist of ‘Grass’, a comic that tells the story of this woman, who is still alive and who today is an activist for the reparation and historical memory of all those who, like her, were uprooted from their homes and forced to sexually serve the Japanese soldiers who, during World War II, occupied Korea.
A real story
He approached her, upon meeting her in the house for survivors of trafficking where she lived, as a “woman who talks to other women”, and in the comic she not only covers the life of her interviewee, but also her own process of “reflection” and knowledge of that violence.
According to the author, although today in Korea “they talk about these things, there is no silence”, it was “difficult” for that woman to open up, and in the process she focused on “trying to understand what she really meant, on culling, because there are things that are hidden.
For its part, ‘The Wait’ turns various real testimonies into fiction to narrate the life of Gwija, a 92-year-old woman who lives in South Korea and who, after decades of waiting, intends to be reunited with her son, whom she lost when she fled from the korean war
One of those testimonies that have helped her to address the issue of forced separations is that of the author’s own mother, who was separated from her sister, who was transferred to North Korea, without having found her yet at the age of 90.
an unfinished drama
“I had to think a lot about whether to write it or not, because they are stories of people who continue to have families in Korea, who are still waiting,” he admits, and assures that he thought a lot about “what part to turn into fiction, how far to go for that continuity, due to the fact that, for many, the issue has not been closed”.
In both works, the first of a trilogy that Reservoir Books is publishing in Spain, violent and dramatic events are narrated through an almost never explicit drawing and text, something that she has tried to do on purpose to avoid being morbid.
“I have done it this way for two reasons: to avoid re-victimizing the victims when they read the book and to enhance the reader’s imagination with what is not told, which is what interested me the most,” he says.
Passing on the legacy of a generation
Keum Suk Gendry-Kim claims to be aware that there are many ways of making comics but says he has chosen politically or historically compromised works because his own parents “lived through the times” that he narrates.
“I am heir to that history, and I wanted to share the legacy because I connect with the narratives of my parents’ generation from the colonial era and the war,” she says.
To do this, he has relied on comics as a more graphic and direct way of “reaching” people and keeping alive the voice of “a generation that lived through difficult times.”
The strength of its protagonists
From these experiences, he assures, of “not having to eat, of not knowing where they were going to be in a few months”, comes the desire for “survival” of its protagonists, their “strength”.
The first woman to recount her experiences in the “comfort stations” did so in 1991 at the age of 74 and after more than 50 years of silence, according to what the author herself recounts in ‘Hierba’, who assures that, today, there is a demand for the reparation of the damage to these women.
In her opinion, understanding that “it is a national responsibility of a country, Japan”, has helped the survivors come together and there is a certain network around the victims. “They thought it had only happened to them, but now they know; now they know it’s not their fault, ”he celebrates.
Memory to change things
The memory of the women who were subjected to sexual slavery, forced marriages, the memory of misery and the separation of parents, children and brothers can serve, he believes, to remember the history of his country, but also to change things .
“Perhaps through these works but also through many others, it is possible to know and understand”, the author values. Something to which she attaches particular importance at a time when some voices deny the history and violence against women, to which she is committed to “reading and informing herself” to “break the barrier” of those silences. EFE