Essay Questions

What were "spirit girls’’?

"Spirit girls’’ or "comfort girls’’ were Korean women and Chinese women used by Japanese men during the war. The women, or more than often, young girls, were lied to and promised a better job in another city or maybe another country. Pushed by the need to earn more money, the women accepted the opportunity and then were packed intro trucks and sent away. Instead of being offered work, those women were transferred in countries and colonies with a great number of Japanese soldiers. The women were then put into special houses which the soldiers were able to visit and chose a girl for themselves. The women were used as sex slaves, being forced to offer sexual intercourse to the soldiers. To make the woman more compliant, they were often drugged and turned into addicts. When Japan lost the war, most of those women were killed in an attempt to hide what had happened. There were however some who did manage to escape and return to their families.

Why did the narrator and her family want to flee to South Korea?

After the Second World War, North Korea was under the rule of the Soviet Union which eventually put in power a leader who agreed with their point of view. As a way to maintain power, the leaders of North Korea did everything in their power to make sure every person who opposed the regime would be harshly punished. North Korea imposed many of the Communist ideas popular in Russia as well which many people found to be unacceptable. Also, because the country was virtually split in half, may people from the North Korea often had relatives and friends in the South part of the country which they were not allowed to visit. Pushed by the austere conditions in North Korea, by the punishments many had to endure and by the promise of a better life, many decide to flee to South Korea, even if they were risking their lives doing it.

What country ruled over Korea in the beginning of the book?

Korea was first conquered by Japan in 1910 when the Korean Emperor was forced to sign a treaty giving power to the Japanese Emperor. From that point on, a large number of Japanese men and women moved to Korea where they take up lands and tried to build a life for themselves. The native Koreans were treated as cheap and sometimes even as slave labor. Korean men were forced to move to other territories and work for the Japanese government in appalling conditions. Because of this, most of them died as a result of exhaustion, disease or being killed by the Japanese soldiers. Women were forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese soldiers and were sent to military bases where they had to sleep without countless men every day. The Japanese occupation ended in 1945 with the end of the Second World War. After the end of the war, the country was split in two what is nowadays knows as South Korea and North Korea, each being under the influence of America and the USSR, respectively.