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우리는 절대로 잊지 않겠습니다. 김복동 할머님.
▲ 문재인 대통령이 찾아서 영정앞에서 큰 절하시는 모습을 보니 할머님 위대함이 크게 다가온다.
BBC, 김복동 할머니 조명..
BBC가 장문의 부고 기사로 김복동 할머니의 일대기를 다루었다.
유명한 정치인도 아닌, 유명한 과학자도 아닌 저 한반도 남쪽의 90세가 넘은 노인의 죽음에 대해 BBC가 그의 일생을 따라가며 되짚어내고 그의 죽음의 의미를 온 세계에 상기시킨 것이다.
그의 죽음과 삶을 되살리며 BBC는 일본의 전쟁 범죄와 사과하지 않는 파렴치함에 대해 전 세계에 알렸다.
BBC는 그 가해자 일본에 대해 김복동 할머니가 마지막 숨을 거두면서까지 강한 분노를 표시하며 '절규하며 죽었다'고 전했다.
BBC는 3일 'Obituary: Kim Bok-dong, the South Korean 'comfort woman(부고: 한국의 '위안부' 김복동 할머니)라는 제목의 기사를 실고 김복동 할머니의 참혹했던 일본군 성노예 실태, 해방 후 귀국, 어머니의 고통스런 죽음, 자신의 과거를 알리고 일본에 사과를 요구하며 싸움에 나선 치열한 삶, 그 후 인권운동가로서의 삶과 끝내 사과하지 않는 일본에 대한 분노에 대해 끝까지 싸울 것을 당부한 죽음에 이르기까지 상세하게 다루었다.
Obituary: Kim Bok-dong, the South Korean 'comfort woman'
By Flora Drury ㅣ BBC News
The coffin passed the Japanese embassy in Seoul, accompanied on its final journey by mourners waving banners and holding yellow butterflies.
Cries of "Japan must apologise" rang out above the crowd, while others quietly sobbed.
It was not your usual funeral procession. But then, Kim Bok-dong was not your usual woman, and this was her final act of resistance against a country which had stolen so much from her.
Kim was one of thousands of so-called "comfort women" rounded up by the Japanese army and forced to work as sex slaves for years on end.
She died on Monday, at the age of 92, without ever receiving the apology she wanted; still railing against the injustice; still angry with Japan for taking the life she could and should have had.
"I was born a woman," she said, "but I never lived as a woman."
'I had to comply'
It took Kim Bok-dong almost 40 years to find the strength to tell her story.
She was just 14 when the Japanese soldiers arrived at her family's home in Yangsan, South Gyeongsang. They said she was needed to work in a factory. If she did not come, they warned her mother, the family would suffer.
But Kim was not taken to work in a factory. Instead, the teenager found herself transported to one of hundreds of "comfort stations" set up by the Japanese Imperial Army across the territory it had seized.
These "stations" were, in reality, brothels where some estimate as many as 200,000 women were forced to work as sex slaves.
Kim, who should still have been in school, was among them.
Her young age did not go unnoticed after she arrived in China.
"When they found out I was only 14, they talked among themselves saying 'Isn't she too young?'," she told YouTube channel Asian Boss during an interview in October 2018.
Apparently, it was not a problem. She was sent to start work.
"The first time, I got dragged into one of the rooms and beaten up a bit," she recalled. "So I had to comply."
Afterwards, she said, the bed sheets were covered in blood. It was too much to bear, and she decided there was only one way out.
Using the little money she had been given by her mother, she and two others convinced a cleaner to buy them a bottle of the strongest alcohol they could find.
They drank until they passed out, but it wasn't enough. The three girls were found, and their stomachs were pumped.
When Kim finally woke up, she made a choice - no matter what happened, she would live to tell the tale.
'How could I tell anyone?'
The Japanese Imperial Army first introduced the idea of "comfort stations" in the early 1930s. It was supposed to stop their soldiers going on "raping sprees", and keep them free of sexually transmitted diseases.
In the beginning, it is thought they used prostitutes. But as Japan's military grew, so did demand. Eventually, they turned to slavery.
The men, Kim Bok-dong later recalled, would line up outside, waiting their turn.
Weekends were particularly dreadful. On Saturdays, she would work for six hours, the men arriving one after the other. On Sundays, it was nine hours.
Sometimes she would see almost 50 men in a day. Some days, she lost count. By the time her "shift" ended, she could barely stand up or walk.
Kim was moved from station to station, and in 1945 she found herself in Singapore. The Japanese began to move Kim and the other comfort women out of the brothels. Kim found herself working as a nurse, still waiting for rescue.
It was 1947 when she was finally brought home to South Korea. She didn't know how long she had been gone; she also didn't know how to find the words to explain what had happened to her.
"How could I have told them about my experiences?" she asked. "I had things done to me that were unfathomable."
She wasn't alone in her silence, as the University of Connecticut's Alexis Dudden explains.
"I think her history following her return to Korea is a really good explanation of the double victimisation of those who survived," the history professor said. "There was not space in this society for the women to go public."
Kim did find her voice though, a few years after her return. Her mother wanted her to marry, and she felt she had to explain why she would not.
"I confessed that, given all the abuse done to my body, I didn't want to screw up another man's life," she told Asian Boss.
Her mother, she said, became distressed. Unable to share her daughter's secret, she died shortly afterwards of a heart attack. Kim believed it was the pain of the secret which killed her.
'It's not about money'
It would take decades for Kim Bok-dong to talk again about what happened to her. She moved to Busan, where she ran a successful fish restaurant.
And then Kim Hak-sun came forward, sharing her own story of being imprisoned as a "comfort woman" by the Japanese in China - the first South Korean victim to break her silence so publicly. It was 1991. By March 1992, Kim Bok-dong had come forward to tell the world her account.
"She had incredible strength - she was a survivor," says Prof Dudden, who first met her more than two decades ago. "She came forward to tell her truth. That is when she makes her mark on the page."
Her story would not just impact her fellow survivors in South Korea, though. It would bring together survivors from around the world - including women in Vietnam who had been attacked by South Korean soldiers during the US war. In 2014, she set up The Butterfly Fund to support fellow victims.
"The survivors of sexual violence in conflict from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, address Kim Bok-dong... as 'our hero', 'our mama', and 'our hope'," a spokesman for The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan recalls.
Kim did not just share her story. When she had money, she gave it. In 2015, she started a scholarship for children in conflict regions with her own money. The fact her own education had been cut so short was a regret until the end of her life. When it became clear she was dying of cancer in 2018, she began to give away what little money remained.
But through all this - speaking around the world, campaigning outside the Japanese embassy every Wednesday - she still did not get the apology she felt she and the other victims deserved.
She was derisive of the 2015 deal between the Japanese and South Korea, which saw her former captors pay 1bn yen ($8.3m, £5.6m) to fund victims.
What Kim wanted - what she was fighting for - was a full admission of guilt. Some still allege the women were not forced to work in the stations.
"We won't accept it even if Japan gives 10bn yen. It's not about money. They're still saying we went there because we wanted to," Kim told lawmakers in 2016.
South Korea's President Moon Jae-In has since said he will renegotiate the fund, focusing more on the victims.
But it came too late for Kim. As she lay taking her final breaths, she expressed "strong anger" towards Japan, her friend Yoon Mee-Hyang told reporters. As Prof Dudden puts it, she "died screaming".
But her legacy will not be lost. In among the crowd at her funeral was Kim Sam, 27, who first met Kim "sitting up straight even in the rain as she spoke about her struggle".
"Upright, dignified - that's how she always was, first as a victim and later as a human rights activist," she recalled.
"She's a role model I respect the most."
ⓘ 국내 관련 기사
영국 공영방송 BBC가 지난달 28일 별세한 일본군 위안부 피해자이자 여성인권운동가였던 김복동 할머니의 일대기를 상세히 조명했다.
BBC는 지난 3일(현지시간) '김복동, 한국의 '위안부'' 제목의 부고 기사를 통해 일본군 위안부로 연행됐던 만 14세 때부터 93세로 별세하기까지 김복동 할머니가 걸어온 삶의 궤적을 자세히 다뤘다.
BBC는 1940년 김 할머니가 공장에서 일할 사람이 필요하다는 말에 속아 일본군 위안부로 연행된 이후 중국, 싱가포르 등에 끌려다니며 '성노예'(sex slave)로 피해를 봤으며 죽기 직전 마지막 한 마디도 "일본에 대한 분노"였다고 설명했다.
김 할머니가 생전에 진술했던 피해 내용도 상세하게 다뤄졌다.
만 14세 나이로 일본군 위안부로 끌려가 하루에 50명 가까이 성관계를 맺어야 했으며 어떤 때는 세는 것을 포기했다는 김 할머니의 진술을 토대로 BBC는 일본군 위안부 피해자의 처참한 실상을 묘사했다.
BBC는 김 할머니의 위안부 피해자로서의 삶뿐만 아니라 인권운동가로서의 삶에도 주목했다.
김 할머니는 한국에 돌아온 후 40년 넘게 피해 사실을 이야기하지 못하다가 1991년 위안부 피해자 고(故) 김학순 할머니가 위안부 문제를 세계에 처음 공론화한 것을 계기로 이듬해 3월 세상에 위안부 피해를 공개하며 본격적인 여성 인권 운동의 길을 걸었다.
BBC는 "민주 콩고와 우간다 내전의 성폭행 생존자들은 김복동 할머니를 '우리의 영웅', '우리의 엄마', '우리의 희망'이라고 부른다"는 정의기억연대 대변인의 말을 인용했다.
BBC는 김 할머니가 2015년 전쟁·무력분쟁지역 아이들에게 장학금을 기부했으며 이후에도 기부 활동을 이어갔다고 덧붙였다.
BBC는 김 할머니가 생전 바라던 것은 일본의 진정한 사과였으나 이 바람은 끝내 이뤄지지 못했다며 2015년 이뤄진 한일 위안부 합의에 대한 김 할머니의 분노도 지적했다.
2015년 12월 한일 정부는 위안부 피해자의 '명예와 존엄의 회복 및 마음의 상처 치유'를 위해 한국 정부가 '화해·치유 재단'을 설립하고 일본 정부는 자금 10억엔을 출연하기로 합의했다.
김 할머니는 당시 "일본이 100억엔을 준다고 해도 받지 않을 것이다. 이건 돈 문제가 아니다"라며 "일본은 여전히 우리가 원해서 그곳에 갔다고 말하고 있다"며 한일 위안부 합의에 강하게 반발했다.
BBC는 이후 문재인 대통령이 출연금에 대해 재협상을 하겠다고 나섰으나 이는 김 할머니에게는 뒤늦은 일이었다고 평가했다.
김 할머니는 결국 일본에 진정한 사과를 듣지 못하고 마지막 순간까지 일본에 대한 "강한 분노"를 표하며 숨을 거뒀다.
BBC는 김 할머니의 유산은 이어지고 있다며 김 할머니의 장례식에 참여한 평화 나비 활동가 김샘(27) 씨의 말을 인용했다.
김 씨는 "할머니는 항상 강직하고 위엄 있으셨다"며 "김복동 할머니는 가장 존경하는 롤모델"이라며 김 할머니를 추모했다.
김복동 할머니는 지난달 28일 향년 93세의 나이로 별세했다.
김 할머니의 별세로 위안부 피해자 생존자는 23명으로 줄었다.
