History's "Me Too" Movement: Recognizing the Political Agency of Korean "Comfort Women"

This paper seeks to answer a few questions. Within the context of how justice is delivered in post-conflict settings, in what ways are women’s agency limited? In other words, why is a gendered lens to agency needed? Additionally, how have the South Korean "comfort women" exercised their agency in the political space, and what lessons do they leave behind? The next section delves more specifically into ways that tools of transitional justice have reproduced the silence and invisibility that women experience in pre-conflict and conflict situations. Building off criticisms of transitional justice mechanisms, the paper suggests what a gendered lens to agency may look like, building upon the theories laid out by Björkdahl and Selimovic in their 2015 article "Gendering Agency in Transitional Justice." The consequent section will apply this gendered lens of agency to the case of the South Korean "comfort women," looking at details of how the survivors have exercised agency in their campaign for justice. Here, the central concern of the theorization of a gendered lens to agency or the case examination is not on institutional or policy changes that result from their campaign and activism; even if there is an institutional change or a policy concession, we may not necessarily see women's experiences, their political requests, and needs being fully reflected and incorporated. The ends is not the measure of success; rather, it is the voice that women have articulated and the steps that they have taken that expands our understanding of politics and agency.No embargoAcademic Major: EconomicsAcademic Major: Political Scienc