Generating tension : memorial of sexual slavery

War crimes, such as slavery and rape can lead to hatred between countries of perpetrators and victims, souring political relationships for generations. Memorials of these atrocities are the physical indication of an effort, however nascent, to continue the dialogue and keep questioning the tragic history. The memorial as a reminder of a specific incident, not only changes the relationship of surrounding spaces within the site but also between different groups that are engaged in that specific history. In South Korea, the history of sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II has been a major cause of anti- Japanese sentiment, leading to international conflict. Since 2011, memorials to the victims of sexual slavery, called Statues of Peace, have been erected throughout South Korea as a call for apology and remembrance of the victims. The first of these statues, which sits in front of the former Japanese Embassy in Seoul, is where weekly demonstrations have taken place for 29 years. Such statues commemorating a sensitive memory that involve specific countries can create a site of confrontation. In fact, the presence of the statue and the weekly demonstration halted the reconstruction of the Japanese embassy in 2019. Acknowledging the state of tension, rather than avoiding it, is the first step in improving the political relationship; and these spaces of confrontation hold real potential. The tension created in the site is not negative energy, but is the fuel that will always facilitate a dialogue. Today, the statue gazes toward a construction fence built around the empty Japanese Embassy plot, provoking critical questions. How should one proceed with sensitive dialogue without being so delicate that no progress is made? As a response, the intervention begins by reconstructing the lost memory, a recreation of the past Embassy building, through re-using the construction fence, and existing political tension as a building material. The gaze of the statue, from the other side of the curb, then penetrates through the new volume of the Japanese Embassy. This creates a corridor that invites visitors into the memorial, which itself grows out of ongoing tension. The intervention that creates a monumental space that starts with the acknowledgment and utilization of the existing political tension as material to build a different relationship

Memorials’ politics:Exploring the material rhetoric of the Statue of Peace

This paper discusses the material rhetoric of the Statue of Peace built in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. Installed in 2011 to commemorate so-called ?comfort women??the former sex slaves forced to work in brothels during Korea?s occupation by the Empire of Japan?, several identical-looking copies of the statue have since spread throughout the country and beyond. While many observers have noted the symbolic politics of the sculpture, I argue for taking into account its material dimension too?with the aim of furthering our understanding of how commemorative practices are enabled by mnemonic installations. Building on the scholarship that has addressed the rhetoric of objects and places of remembrance, I ask how the statue acts on and engages with its viewers. Among others, site visits, observations, own experiences, interviews, and visual documentation serve as the basis of the discussion.This paper discusses the material rhetoric of the Statue of Peace built in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. Installed in 2011 to commemorate so-called “comfort women”—the former sex slaves forced to work in brothels during Korea’s occupation by the Empire of Japan—, several identical-looking copies of the statue have since spread throughout the country and beyond. While many observers have noted the symbolic politics of the sculpture, I argue for taking into account its material dimension too—with the aim of furthering our understanding of how commemorative practices are enabled by mnemonic installations. Building on the scholarship that has addressed the rhetoric of objects and places of remembrance, I ask how the statue acts on and engages with its viewers. Among others, site visits, observations, own experiences, interviews, and visual documentation serve as the basis of the discussion.<br/

Intercultural Communication in Brazil: An Approach to Engage Multicultural North Dakota State University Students in Study Abroad

Intercultural Communication in Brazil (IC Brazil) is a course-embedded program aimed at multicultural students by building off of the curriculum in one of the general education requirement courses at North Dakota State University (NDSU). It has been designed to fit within the confines of NDSU’s existing study abroad structure and uses a targeted approach to student recruitment that can be utilized by other faculty-leaders at NDSU, universities, and members of the IE field. IC Brazil is an experiential learning course-embedded program that contains on-campus learning, fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, and course reflections upon the students’ return. IC Brazil students study the theories of intercultural communication by Edward Hall and Geert Hofstede at NDSU and use this knowledge in various activities in Brazil. A general education requirement faculty member has been chosen as the program leader based on their network of students. The program’s alumni will later serve as student-to-student peer advisors for future recruitment for IC Brazil. Other universities can adapt NDSU’s targeted approach to multicultural student recruitment and expansion of course-embedded programs as a tool for their internationalization efforts. Keywords: North Dakota State University, intercultural communication, Brazi

The Korean Comfort Women Commemorative Campaign: Role of Intersectionality, Symbolic Space, and Transnational Circulation in Politics of Memory and Human Rights

Since the end of WWII, Korea has experienced a miraculous economic development despite its devastated economic and political conditions originating from Japanese colonialism and the Korean War. However, while Korean society has concentrated on its socioeconomic advancement, few victims having traumatic memories of Japanese colonialism have been cared for by systematic and social treatment until recently. Especially, comfort women, who were sexually abused and exploited during WWII by the Japanese army, had not been able to testify their narratives in military brothels due to structural oppressions and distorted views against women in Korean society. In this respect, Wednesday Demonstration encouraged by feminist activists since the early 1990s can be seen as a protest against both the Japanese government and Korean society that had compelled comfort women to be marginalized for more than half a century. Paying attention to commemorative campaigns of comfort women, this study wanted to explore the strategies of marginalized females using symbolically-contested nature of space to memorialize the forgotten history of sexual slavery and restore their human dignity. Analyzing data collected through fieldworks and archived narrations of comfort women, I could draw significant implications regarding the reasons for marginalization of victims of sexual slavery and the diffusion of their traumatic memories. First of all, as comfort women had been located at intersectional margins during both Japanese colonialism and the postcolonial era in Korea, they could not obtain any opportunities and rights to representing their memories. To overcome this vulnerable status, comfort women and civic activists began to use sensory information produced by symbolic meanings of a comfort women statue constructed in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. By doing so, marginalized experiences of comfort women could be handed over to the public, and eventually, conducted through scaled-politics in the US. By exploring commemorative campaigns of comfort women, this study could find out an example of strategies and practices that can be used by marginal subjects for human rights movements. Despite their vulnerable conditions and social status, it is notable that place-based politics provides them with a potential power to conduct scaled-politics and transnational memory work

Russian terrorism in Tehran: a Qajar Princes’ letters during the “Minor Tyranny” of 1908

During the Minor Tyranny of 1908, a daughter of Naser al-Din Shah named Malakeh-ye Iran suffered the indignity of having her house in Tehran plundered when the autocratic Shah attempted to re-assert control over the newly won powers of the democratic Constitutional movement. It is generally thought that the ransacking of her house was due to the sympathetic views towards the Constitutional movement that she shared with her husband, Zahir al-Dawleh and their radical son, Zahir al-Soltan. Malakeh-ye Iran’s letters to her husband, who was in Gilan at the time of the attack, graphically describe this traumatic event and are intriguing because neither her supposed “pro-Constitutional” views are apparent, nor does she blame the autocratic Shah (and her nephew), Mohammad ‘Ali for the destruction of her home. It is to be speculated whether her reluctance to blame and criticise the Shah was due to her family connections or whether she feared that the letters might be intercepted and read by the Shah’s spies. Aside from shedding light on one of the most dramatic periods of the Constitutional Movement, the letters also demonstrate the erudition of a Qajar princess, and the bravery and courage of a hitherto unexplored character whose exploits and role during the Constitutional period deserve greater attention

Socio-Legal Approaches To The Problems of Troubled Indonesian Overseas Workers In Tanjung Pinang City

Tanjung Pinang City is one of the transit areas for the Troubled Indo- nesian Overseas Workers (TKIB) who are deported from Malaysia and Singa- pore. As a transit area, a number of problems and challenges faced by TKIB and relevant stakeholders in Tanjung Pinang City. This research aims to investigate the problems of TKIB and relevant stakeholders in Tanjung Pinang City.  This research adopts a socio-legal/empirical research method and all data was analyzed based on its content (a content analysis) by using the qualitative approach. The research found that the main hardship in tack- ling TKIB was related to the lack of funds to carry out the tasks and functions of the Task Force. This research argued that the House of Representative of Tanjung Pinang City (DPRD) did not have legal grounds to reject the alloca- tion funds from the City Budget for the Task Force. This research concluded that the House of Representative of Tanjung Pinang city was not familiar Arti- cle 16 (6) of Presidential Regulation No.45 of 2013 regarding Coordination of Returning Indonesian Workers which permits the allocation of funds from the City Budget to fund all expenses carry out tasks of the Task Force.KeywordsPresidential Regulation No.45 of 2013; Troubled Indonesian Overseas Workers; Tanjung Pinang.      

Honour and Dignity: Trauma Recovery and International Law in the Issue of the Comfort Women of South Korea

Despite the decades of work undertaken by the international legal community to attain full and satisfactory reparation for the consequences of Japan’s actions during World War II, the emotionally-charged bilateral dispute between Japan and South Korea over the issue of the so-called ‘comfort women’ continues to this day. This paper is focused on analysis of the discourses surrounding the issue through the lens of a psychoanalytic methodological framework. Based upon the therapeutic work of one of the world’s leading sexual trauma specialists Judith Herman and her text Trauma and Recovery (1992), the paper examines the issues at stake in the comfort women issue through the themes inherent to Herman’s three stages of recovery for survivors of violent trauma. The research concludes that, while there are limitations in applying psychoanalytic methodologies to diplomatic disputes, there is value in pursuing and campaigning for holistic and therapeutic approaches to historical trauma in the context of feminist legal activisms

Newsletter / House of Finance, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt 4/09

Editorial: Jens Weidmann : "Central Banks and Monetary Policy after the Crisis" Research Finance: Holger Kraft,Claus Munk : "Optimal Housing, Consumption, and Investment Decisions over the Life Cycle" Research Money/Macro: Ester Faia, Eleni Iliopulos : "Financial Globalization and Monetary Policy" Research Law: Andreas Cahn, D. Schöneberger : "Shareholder Governance in Europe" Policy Platform: Michael Haliassos, Dimitri Vayanos : "Getting Greece Back on Track: How?" Interview: Raimond Maurer, Ralph Rogalla : "Longevity Risk and Capital Markets Solutions