More than 50 years after being kidnapped by Japanese soldiers and taken to Taiwan to serve as a military "comfort woman" during World War II, Lee Mak Dal recounted her painful story of sexual abuse to a packed Kresge Auditorium. A student translated for Lee, who does not speak English.
At the age of 17, Lee was kidnapped from her home by Japanese soldiers, who told her and her family that she would be going to work in a factory. Lee was then transported across Korea to Pusan, a port city in South Korea, and forced onto a boat. Lee's journey ended at a brothel for Japanese soldiers in Taiwan.
"I was 17 when this life started, and then one day, I was 23," Lee said of her time as a military comfort woman.
Lee described the horrors of enduring multiple rapes everyday.
"They were given 30 minutes each. They kept coming in and we didn't have time to clean ourselves," she said.
According to Lee, she was subjected to routine gynecological examinations, but doctors were not concerned with her health. The examinations were to ensure that the women did not have any diseases that could be spread to the Japanese army.
"I still have scars from those days," she said. "I was often covered with blood, but there was no medicine available."
For Lee and the other comfort women, their suffering did not end with the defeat of the Japanese and their return to Korea. According to Lee, she could not share her experiences with her mother once she finally made it back home after the war.
"I could not tell my mom what happened to me. I just told that they made me work hard [in a factory] and did not pay me," she said.
Assistant Professor of Asian Studies Vyjavanathi Selinger, who opened the presentation, emphasized the continued hardships and discrimination that the estimated 200,000 military comfort women have faced since the end of the war.
According to Selinger, it does "an injustice to regard her in the light of a woman whose virtue was deprived."
Instead, she said it should be regarded as a "crime against humanity that didn't start or end in abduction and rape, but continued thereafter."
The Korean American Student Association (KASA) sponsored the event in conjunction with the Bowdoin Women's Association (BWA), V-Day, and the International Club.