New Style of Representing ‘Comfort Women’ in the Post-Survivor Era - A Case Study of the Film COMFORT

This paper examines the significance of the documentary film COMFORT by tracing the representational trends of “comfort women” in popular culture and analyzing the film’s conceptual direction and strategies of representation. COMFORT critically engages with the dominant portrayals of ‘comfort woman’ in popular media, where they have often been depicted either as sexual objects or as pure, innocent victims. The film seeks a more complex and multi-layered representation, focusing on the life of a single individual, Kim Soonak. Rather than reducing her to a fixed image, the documentary follows her life trajectory—marked by silence and survival within a patriarchal society after liberation—highlighting the long-term impact of wartime sexual violence. Kim Soonak’s life, sustained through work in brothels, entertainment restaurants, and U.S. military camp towns, reveals the enduring consequences of such violence and the irreducibility of her existence to a single victim identity. The film centers on her testimony, exploring how the past can be remembered and represented through various interpretative and performative approaches. Rather than aiming for a singular, definitive image of truth, it constructs multiple versions of Kim Soonak through diverse voices and forms. Participants in the #MeToo movement read her testimony in their own voices and emotional registers, enabling intergenerational solidarity and the circulation of affect. In reciting her words, they connect with Kim’s pain and reflect upon their own struggles, using her narrative as a mirror. The film weaves together animation, pressed flower art, interviews, and testimonial readings to create a multi-layered semiotic space, where overlapping voices and images foster empathy and consolation. Visually, it constructs solidarity through techniques such as two-shots that frame Kim alongside #MeToo participants, and projections of testimony onto their bodies and faces. These formal and aesthetic choices contribute to a new representational strategy and politics for remembering comfort women in a post-survivor era.