When the war ended, shame and humiliation, not to mention physical and emotional scars, exiled many of the women from their families and their former lives forever. They were also beaten, tortured and forced to give up their former identities and names. Taken to battlefront “recreation centers,” the women were forced to have sex with dozens of soldiers a night. Some were kidnapped at gunpoint others were recruited with false promises of jobs in factories and restaurants. It’s hard to think of a euphemism more disturbing than the one that gives Nora Okja Keller’s stunning new novel its title: “Comfort Woman.” “Comfort women” were young women and girls (many of them Korean) forced by the Japanese army to work in brothels during World War II.
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