Global Plague

Purpose: This activity teaches students about how the human trafficking which was integral to the Japanese wartime institution of “comfort stations” has not ceased with the war, but continues to this day.  It allows students to process the heavy topic of military sexual violence and slavery and gives them the opportunity, in some small way, participate in activism.  This is recommended as a culminating activity for teaching “comfort women.”
 
Objective: Students will learn about how “comfort women” were trafficked and will then learn about modern day human trafficking.  They will then design a campaign to inform their larger community about the issue of human trafficking and start a letter writing campaign to their representatives about this issue. 
 
California History-Social Science Content Standard: 10.8 Students analyze the causes and consequences of World War II.  (Part of addressing that standard in the New HSS Curriculum Framework includes, “‘Comfort women’ is a euphemism that describes women who were forced into sexual service by the Japanese Army…”)
 
Suggested Time: 1-3 class days (at least one hour of class time)
 
Procedure:
  • Teachers should spend 5-10 minutes teaching students about the concept of human trafficking - the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act, and how the people who are trafficked always find themselves in that situation as a result of deception and misplaced trust.  Students can be reminded that the African slave trade was a form of human trafficking, and then informed that that most “comfort women” were trafficked as they were not held captive and forced to serve as sexual slaves in the places where they were originally from, but were transported across borders to other countries to “work” in military “comfort stations” in the Japanese occupied zone. 
 
  • Students should be shown an animated short based on the life of Jeong Seo-woon  www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CmWdrlv3fI  (Up to minute 3:50- 4:00.  STOP at minute 4.  The  minutes following are disturbing for adults, much less children)
 
  • Students should then have a discussion about the video.  Possible discussion questions include:
    • Why did Jeong Seo-woon’s father bury the brass cookware?
    • Why might Jeong Seo-woon’s father have been angry with her for visiting the prison?
    • Why did Jeong Seo-woon ‘choose’ to go work for the Japanese?  Did she have enough information to make an informed choice?  What choice might you have made in her place?
 
  • Next, have students read a short excerpt about how the teenage girls who were used as “comfort women” were taken and transported around Asia.  Either an excerpt from an interview with Kim Soon-duk or an excerpt from 25 Years of Wednesdays by Mee-Hyang Yoon.
    • Noreen Shanahan, "The NI Interview - Kim Soon-duk," New Internationalist, May 1999. newint.org/features/1999/05/05/interview
    • Mee-Hyang Yoon, 25 Years of Wednesdays (Seoul, Republic of Korea: Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, 2019), [Page 77-83].
  • Have students make notes as they read of what the circumstances were that led to the girls finding themselves in the custody of the Japanese, what promises/offers were made to them and what locations they ended up in.
  • Have a discussion with students about their notes, and then ask if they think that human trafficking could be a problem today.
  • Show students the human trafficking chart found here: eac-network.org/modern-day-slavery/
  • Students should then read about modern-day human trafficking from the Human Rights Watch website: www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/05/trafficking-survivors-are-being-failed-world-over
  • (optional local project) Teachers should search their local news ahead of time to find out if there have been any stories about human trafficking in their own area.  If there have been local stories about human trafficking then teachers should invite students to research this topic in their own area.  Students should document as a class where the people being trafficked are coming from, what they are being forced to do, what parts of the students’ city/what industries trafficked people are being found in, and what their local municipality is doing about it.  
  • If there is no local reporting on human trafficking students can research what they can do to stop human trafficking by looking at the UNICEF website. www.unicefusa.org/mission/protect/trafficking/end
  • Students should then be placed in groups where they can brainstorm what they can do to raise awareness about human trafficking and/or help victims (potential ideas include an awareness campaign in their school, writing letters to the editor or OP-ED pieces for their local newspaper, raising funds to give to an organization that helps victims, organizing a letter-writing campaign to their local representatives in support of anti-trafficking laws).
  • After students have come up with their project idea each group should take turns presenting their idea to the class.  The class then should vote on which one (or at most two) projects they want to put into action
 
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