A friend of mine is a journalist and had been working on the issue of the "comfort women" - then subsequently banged into this film. So I happened to watch it too (A history major myself). To be honest I don't take sides on this dispute between South Korea and Japan, because it won't take you no where. Truth is all I ask for. Of course this is a delicate, debatable issue indeed because women are so often exploited in battlefields today in places such as Syria and so forth. But then after I saw this Scottsboro girls I reckon this WW2 dispute is not so simple like the sex slave issues in "our times" today - its by far heaps mo complicated due to rampant prostitution that existed not only in Japan but Korea (colonial) back then. Director Taniyama claims Korea had Kisaen system (prostitution) since 10 A.D, explaining Prof. Catherine Moon (Brookings institute, U.S) 's quote that Kisaen eventually became synonymous for concubines in the latter half of Korea's chosen dynasty.
By no means do I justify Japanese army during WW2, but this movie simply made me think the truth on this issue is not exactly how the Guardian or the Times reports. Director uses quotes from well known feminist Susan Brownmiller's book "Men, women and rape" on devastating Vietnam war, and like the Vietnam war when sex industry as a whole, pimps and scavengers swallowed huge amounts of USD from U.S GI's to make a living, the comfort women does have resemblance in one way or the other, based on various testimonies by the comfort women themselves. This film exposes words from some Korean women that actually assert (astonishingly) they were indeed prostitutes during WW2 and did it for money. Wartime prostitution (how you define the issue is of course wholly up to u) is a today's issue, and as a woman myself i reckon we do have to fight for our whats right for mankind.
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