Chunghee Sarah Soh or Sarah Soh is an American professor of

Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

. She is a sociocultural anthropologist who specializes in issues of women, gender, sexuality. Her book '' The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan'' delivers new insight into the nature of the

comfort women Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term ''comfort women'' is a translation of the Japanese , a euphemism ...

issue.

Careers

She graduated from Sogang University in

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

and earned master's degree and then Ph.D. from the

University of Hawaii A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

in 1987. She taught cultural anthropology at universities in Hawaii in 1990, Arizona from 1990 to 1991 and Texas from 1991 to 1994. She joined San Francisco State University in 1994.

Comfort women

Soh has said "there can be no denial of the tragic victimization of forcibly recruited women who suffered slavery-like conditions." According to Soh, "it was Japan's colonialism that undoubtedly facilitated the large-scale victimization of tens of thousands of Korean women". She wrote a book titled ''The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan''. In the book, she provocatively disputes the simplistic view that comfort women were victims of a war crime were solely the fault of Imperial Japan. Instead, she argues that both the Japanese military and the Korean patriarchy are at fault. She asserts that because of the patriarchy that dominated Korea at the time, homes were unstable and thus young girls were more likely to leave, a situation which allowed comfort station owners to recruit them into brothels. Additionally, she argues South Korean nationalist politics and the international women's human rights movement have contributed to the incomplete view of the tragedy that still dominates today.

Works

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References

External links

Home pageBook reviewPages 10-11 of her book 'The Comfort Women'
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people South Korean academics San Francisco State University faculty American anthropologists Sogang University alumni University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni American women anthropologists South Korean women anthropologists South Korean anthropologists 20th-century South Korean scientists 20th-century South Korean women scientists 21st-century South Korean scientists 21st-century South Korean women scientists {{Korea-academic-bio-stub

Careers

Comfort women

Works

See also

References

External links