Halmoni Blog — Carly W Read

After my visit to the House of Sharing I requested permission from Halmoni Kang-Il Chul to paint her portrait, which she gave generously. Over lock down I emailed a copy of the final painting to the House of Sharing who printed out a copy and gave it to her.

She was apparently very pleased with it! I hoped to one day give her the real thing in person but unfortunately due to COVID the walls of the world locked down, and then so did the House of Sharing.

I spent the next couple of years waiting impatiently for Korea to welcome me back in. In 2022 after filling in a hell of a lot of paper work I arrived at Incheon airport and got the KTX to Dageu, where I had first come across the peace statue all those years ago, ready for the next stage of Halmoni.

There I met with an activist, who ran a museum in Dageu called Heeum museum. A lovely little museum tucked away just outside the city which does much to support the remaining survivors in the area, while also raising public awareness of the issue. It was there that I had the absolute honour and privilege of meeting Halmoni Lee Yong-soo. The youngest of all the survivors, who at the tender age of 97 is a force to be reckoned with.

Me and Halmoni Lee Yong-soo at Heeum Museum, 2022

Halmoni Lee sat for a portrait for me dressed in a stunning pink and purple Han Bok (tradtional Korean dress). Halmoni Lee has travelled the world advocating for the cause, wanting for nothing more than a genuine apology from the Japanese government. Justice is her life’s work.

Halmoni Lee sitting for her portrait, 2022

For around four hours she sat as I created my preliminary sketches, to be worked upon in the art studio later. ‘Thank you’ she told me, ‘I can’t believe you have travelled all this way just to paint my portrait.’ But really I should have been the one to say thank you. That this woman who had overcome so much was willing to sit with me, and to share with me her story. There I was awestruck by her radiance, her vulnerability and her power.

A week later I was taken to meet Grandma Parc, the other survivor who lives in Daegu. A generous, hospitable and well-humoured lady. Grandma Parc, didn’t tell me her story, not in any verbal form. But I was reminded, while in the sanctity of her home, that sometimes the greatest narratives don’t have words-that’s what art is for.

One things for sure though, I came out of those interactions changed and inspired.

Halmoni, was an art project that began in 2020 during the confines of the pandemic. Like many good things at that time it arose from a zoom call. On the other end of the screen was my future collaborator, activist and photographer Tsukasa Yajima who was then the manager at the House of Sharing in Seoul.

The House of sharing is a government funded residential home for the survivors of Japanese military sexual violence, known euphemistically as ‘the comfort women’. Women now in their 90s and 100s who as young girls were kidnapped from their homes, coerced and sent to so called ‘comfort stations’ situated across Asia, where they were subject to unimaginable sexual violence and abuse. The women are referred to affectionately in Korea as ‘Halmoni’s, meaning ‘Grandmother’ in English, it is a term of both endearment and respect.

But I suppose really the seeds of Halmoni were sown long before lockdown. It would be disingenuous after all to deny the personal and political reasons why this subject resonates for me. In my late twenties I took my own abuser to court, and sadly like so many survivors of sexual abuse I spectacularly ‘lost.’ Shortly after the travesty of my court case, plagued by the cruel injustice of my experience, I moved to South Korea, where I settled in a city called Daegu to start a new chapter.

One day while I was characteristically lost I stumbled across a statue of a girl. She was intriguingly beautiful. I later found out the girl was called ‘Sonyeosang’ in Korean, which translates to ‘the statue of peace’ . I discovered that she symbolised the lost youth of the women trafficked and enslaved by the Japanese military during the second world war. Desperate to learn more about her, and her story I visited the House of Sharing to further educate myself.

While at the House of Sharing I learnt that every Wednesday in the centre of Seoul activists gathered next to the Japanese embassy to protest in the name of the survivors, and to request an apology from the Japanese government for the crimes committed against them. I also learnt that in 1990 the first survivor, Hak Bok Sun bravely came forward, and shared her testimony on public tv, inspiring hundreds of women across the globe-from China to the Philippines- to proclaim, ‘me too.’

I learnt too that those same women created together a document which they called ‘the seven demands,’ requesting for the world to be informed about the war crimes they had suffered. It was this request that was the inspiration for ‘Halmoni.’ The goal, vision and purpose of project Halmoni is to spread and raise awareness in the West of one of the greatest crimes against women in the whole of human history. It’s aim is to give voice to the testimonies of the Halmoni’s and to honour their memory.