Comfort Woman - Tradition or Mental Disorder?
“Comfort Woman” by Nora Okja Keller tells the story of a Korean mother who obsesses over her daughter’s health and safety, protecting her from negative energy, bad luck, and evil spirits. The title of the story, “Comfort Woman” gives some clue to the inner world of the mother. The term refers to the Korean women and young girls kidnapped or tricked during the Second World War and forcibly taken to China to serve as prostitutes for the Japanese army during its occupation of the country. They were imprisoned in brothels called “comfort stations” and forced to service up to fifty men a day (Ok 54). In light of this, it is possible to read the excerpt as an example of someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, however, as the twelve year old daughter is unaware of her mother’s experience, the reader is left to view things through her eyes and to speculate whether her mother is going mad or is simply at the mercy of her spiritual beliefs.
There is a battle of wills between mother and daughter as the young girl does not believe in her mother’s spirit world and wants to embrace her Western American culture as she is half- American. As she grows older she begins to speculate that her mother has mental health problems which manifest in a need to protect her. This protection becomes more deadly than the imagined “evil-energy arrows” she was supposed to have ingested from the doctors during her breech birth: “Years later, when the evil-energy arrows began to work their way from my body, I often wished the sal had killed me outright so that I would not have had to endure my mother’s protection” (58).
The mother in the story is a spiritual practitioner in Korean Shamanism and has clients who she does divinations for (59). She has a spiritual guide, the Birth Grandmother, an ancestral spirit to consult for advice and protection of family members. Survival is a daily battle for her as she sees danger everywhere, especially for her daughter, who she has protected from evil energy and bad luck since the day of her birth. These rituals can be seen as a way of controlling her world after suffering during the war and having no control over her life and her body. She is only semi aware of her earthly life, as her daughter observes: “I took the jar from her, interested in something I could touch from the spirit world where my mother lived half her life” (65). The mother’s spiritual practice also has a dual aspect, almost like two sides of the same coin. In its extreme form it is both a manifestation of her trauma and struggles with sanity, as well as a mechanism to allow her to carry on living by making her world feel protected and safe. Her spirituality is also a link with her homeland, Korea, the place where she last felt safe, where things were done in the proper manner: “It’s not my fault! In Korea, everything is safe for the mother and baby” (65).
The crisis in the story appears in the guise of the Red Disaster, a phenomenon that can be interpreted on many levels. For the mother it is a form of bacteria which emanates from anything coloured red, which will make the daughter ill. This leads to the disturbing scene in which she gathers all the red objects in the apartment and sets fire to them in the kitchen sink (60). Red Disaster can also be seen as the time of puberty and menstruation for the young girl, a fact that may distress the mother as it may trigger memories of her own puberty and abduction during the war. This in turn signals a time of danger for her daughter “who was particularly susceptible to Red Disaster that year” and who could not “wander about in unknown places” (60). There is a lot of reference to catching germs in the story, and this can been viewed as the mother’s fear of disease, especially venereal disease, because of her experience in the comfort station, where they were routinely inspected and vaccinated against sexually transmitted diseases. In her memoir, “Comfort Woman” Maria Rosa Henson recalls the horror of being infected with syphilis and the devastating long-term effects: “Every time I spoke, I began to drool, my saliva dripping from the corner of my mouth like a dog” (81).
Although the mother’s behaviour is sometimes so erratic that it appears she is on the verge of insanity, when viewed through the lens of Korean shamanistic practice, her beliefs and actions appear quite normal. As Donald Baker explains in his text “Korean Spirituality”:
A charismatic shaman will also talk with the spirits and even argue with them in order to determine which spirit is bothering her client and why. She may become possessed by the spirit who is causing trouble so that the offended parties can talk to that spirit and convince it to change its behaviour. (22)
When we revisit the mother’s account of her arguments with Birth Grandmother: “finally I had to get rough with her” (64), we have a greater understanding of her anger and more patience with her seemingly erratic actions.
In conducting a closer reading in this way another layer of meaning is revealed in the story. Initially it is natural to side with the young girl as we see events from her point of view. We feel frustrated by her mother’s inability to stay in the real world, and we collude with the daughter to view the mother as alien, weird and embarrassing. We secretly cheer when the daughter has the courage to forge a note so that she can go swimming; a moment of normality amidst the chaos of her home life:
The trip was worth the teasing and the lies…because when I trudged across the network of coral reef to dive into pockets of water as deep and clear as God’s blue eyeball, I felt perfect, seamless, and as whole as the water that closed over me. (61)
There is a sense of trickery on the part of the mother which is further heightened by her ability to use Korean shamanism for manipulation as is seen when she pretends to know by magical means that her daughter disobeyed her and went swimming before finally admitting that the school phoned and told her (66). However she cannot admit her falseness and instead blames the bad energy in the child for making her speak back and stand up to the “protection.” In a final show of obsession, and religious fervour, the Mother refuses to believe her daughter is not full of evil energy arrows and reassures the child that she “will watch for sal and pluck them out when you show the signs” (67).
At this point the young girl seems doomed but as a reader there is a sense of balance at last, as the realisation occurs to us, that her mother is not completely insane, only terribly wounded psychologically, and that her protective actions are borne out of maternal love and a deep sense of security in Korean folk religion, a sense that the familial spirits, the “Birth Grandmother” will keep her family from harm (63).
Works Cited
Baker, Donald L. Korean spirituality. Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, 2008. Electronic source. 3 Mar 2015.
Henson, Maria Rosa. Comfort Woman: Slave of Destiny. Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 1996. Print.
Keller, Nora Okja. Comfort Woman. In “Island Fire: An Anthology of Literature from Hawai’i.” Ed. Cheryl A Harstad and James R Harstad. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002. Print. 58-67.
Yŏng-ho Chʻoe. From the land of hibiscus: Koreans in Hawai'i, 1903-1950. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000. Electronic source. 3 Mar 2015.
Ok, Bogyean. Humanistic Globalization, Womanhood, and Comfort Women in South Korea. Order No. 1435436 Southern Connecticut State University, 2006. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 8 Mar. 2015.
