My Story in Korea.

 

To summarize my GAP experience here in Seoul with just 1 word, it would be “eye-opener”. Like what many of you have already known, Seoul is a huge city with modern technology and fast-paced lifestyle. However, in the project that I am matched with, “Over Her Tears”, it showed me how Koreans are moving forward but at the same time never forgetting their past. I witnessed how modernization can coexist together with history. This is my fourth week now here in Seoul and before I tell you more, I would really like to thank AIESEC in University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus for giving me this opportunity. This voluntary job gave me so much that I can’t even describes it in words. I also made a lot of friends, including exchange participants (EP) like me from Tunisia and Kazakhstan.

 

Now I live together will 11 other EPs in an apartment overlooking the Han River, one of the most important river in South Korea. In the evenings, we would sometime go together to the river and have a picnic. Our picnics always involve chicken and beer, “chimaek”, the classic combination for local Koreans. As transportation here is very convenient, we often go out when we have no work to do.

 

Let me tell you a little bit about this project. “Over Her Tears” is a project about the “comfort women” back in World War II. I believe many of us in Malaysia (especially those of Generation Y) know nothing about this. “Comfort women” are women who were captured by the Japanese military soldiers to serve as sexual slaves for the soldiers. The Japanese gave the noun “comfort women” because the Japanese military thought that the comfort women system was essential to provide comfort to the soldiers as they are working hard to fight for their country. Most of these women are between the age of 14 to 18. One of the youngest was just 11 years old. Japan continues to deny that this system actually existed, and they said that the women volunteered to serve. If you think about it, why would young girls of age 14 or 15 volunteer to live their life like this? Korea was the biggest victim of this system as it was colonized by Japan. Japanese simply trafficked Korean girls to all over Southeast Asia, wherever Japan was having war. What was more shocking was that comfort stations (houses where comfort women live in and also where Japanese soldiers would line up outside, waiting to be serviced by these girls) even existed in Malaysia! These girls had to serve up to 40 soldiers per day as there were only about 12 comfort women in each comfort station, but hundreds or even thousands of soldiers in each area. Many young Korean girls were trafficked to Malaysia to serve as comfort women. Besides Korea, China was also a very huge victim of this system.

 

This project has 3 main motives; the first was the “Youth Forum” where we the EPs gave a talk about this system to educate the general public, mainly university students in Seoul. The second is called the “Roots Class” where we held workshops to educate elementary school children about this issue. To my surprise, many of them have already known about this even at this young age. The third one is called “The Rights Camp” where we organized a 2-day 1-night camp with Korean high school students regarding the “comfort women” issue.

I’ve learned so much through this project, even participated in the Wednesday Demonstration, where people would gather in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to ask for an official apology to these women. I’ve also visited the House of Sharing, where a few of the surviving comfort women stay in. Here I will attach a link to a video of one of the women’s testimony. If you are interested, please feel free to ask me more. :) 

 

Besides doing work, I also had a lot of fun in Seoul. I shopped a lot and had a really great time here. I also had the chance to try a lot of great food here. I will try my best to make the best out of this GAP program in the remaining weeks.
 

You may read about my daily updates here in Seoul on Dayre or Instagram. My ID for both these two social network is candicebbblu..