Attempts to Connect Comfort Women with Peace, for Peace in History - ‘The Big Picture’

Attempts to Connect Comfort Women with Peace, for Peace in History 

- ‘The Big Picture’

Title: The Big Picture

Cast: Yundeok Kwon, DalyeonSim, Tashima Seizo, Hamada Geico

Initial Release: 2012 (Republic of Korea)

I thought this movie, ‘The Big Picture’, would be interesting to watch because it is regarding to both comfort women and peace. How could anyone combine these two words? 

It stimulated my curiosity.

Some Japanese illustrators suggested to gather Korean, Chinese and Japanese illustrators and to publish a picture book regarding PEACE. It was because they had perception that peace can be achieved only if all the countries take part in, not just a country. Among them, an illustrator Yundeok Kwon took comfort women as its motif for peace.

The word ‘comfort women’ shows how horrendous it was, and how cruel the war was. It came from the concept that women could be brought to serve soldiers under the war and from the false belief that it would bring about good results in the war. However, the fact that ‘good results’ refer to killing someone is there for all to see. In this situation women had to follow the wherever the war took place. They had to go over the dead in the battlefields and again used to make the army move. They had no rights to be human beings but just to be sexual tools for men. How cruel it is. There were no human beings in the battlefield.

The history of comfort women shows one of cruel sides of the war. However, it has been not shown as it is. it used to be used as a political term. Japan supported Korea in 1980s. In return, it wanted to clear away the remnants of its colonialism. And the money went straight to the Korean government to develop and the women were not compensated anything

There is one more reason the women were ostracized. This problem showed the shameful history of Korea which is the history ruled by Japan. The moments that the people who did not have any choices but obeyed the Japanese laws, the reality that people who shared same blood should suppress each other, the people who had to join the other country’s army and left for war against their will.

We should remember that the remnants should not be meant everything cleaned up. Paying some money back should not be meant it is clearly finished the fact they slaughtered Korean indiscriminately. However, unfortunately, they do so in the name of law at that time

The war is so legal. It is so legal that the war can occur easily. People who are conservatism want to keep themselves, so the last solution they can make would be breaking out war. They will not allow the opponents to have power and the will cause war with their very legal laws.

Koreans have used this matter as a political issue. They have usually appealed their offensive feeling about it and inspired patriotism themselves. That is one of the things what Japan wants. It can bring war which means, those dividing ideas between Japan and Korea can cause a war.

This movie is giving you a difficult message in this matter. Since peace is opposite side of war, the war must be stopped. Ms. Sim, she is telling you the wars should never happen again. She knows how horrible situations a war brings. Having peace seems to be getting difficult as Japan seeks for the conservatism. It looks like there are no solutions. What can we do?

I would say that the only thing we can do is to remember and act according to what we have realized, which is the cruel and horrible memories that the war has brought us. I’ve learned it from the illustrator Yundeok Kwon who told that Korean soldiers had committed the same things; having ‘comport women’ in the Vietnam War in her book. She pointed out that it was not each individual person who should have been blamed but the war. And she tells about peace.

In that reason, I think the ‘The Big Picture’ should be published in Japan. The message of peace the illustrator is talking about starts from remembering the history. She doesn’t want her book causes the political issues since she didn’t draw it by focusing on the view of patriotism at all. Japanese students said they didn’t know about the comport women with confident voices. They said they have never heard of that. They don’t know how cruel a war can be. They don’t know their family and beloved people had to die because of war. They don’t know the sad stories someone lost his whole family members at once. They even know nothing about the women who were dragged to a strange land and played around by the soldiers just like dolls. They don’t know anything what horrible results the war will bring to them. That’s why the book must be published in Japan to instill the mind of peace to them by letting them know the history.

This book shows you how a person can die so easily in the name of war. Of course, the Japanese conservatism has problems and need to be changed somehow, but this book does not tell you to fight against it. It shows the problems of wars and tells you not to cause the cruel wars again and make the world peacefully.  

It’s not easy to do so. We need to make an effort to make it. We should know the history of war ourselves and let our neighbors know it. Let’s know, remember, and try to keep the peace. Those are the purposes of this book.