Paper Skin: The Journal of Moon Hae-won

Prelude: The Forgotten War of the East

Oftentimes, the Second World War is remembered as a European conflict—an arena of white armies, white victims, white heroes. We are taught to chart its beginning from 1939, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. We learn of Nazi death camps, Allied resistance, and the fall of Berlin as if the world outside Europe were only a backdrop.

Japan is mentioned—briefly. Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, maybe the Rape of Nanjing if the syllabus is generous. But even then, Japan is cast as an antagonist whose atrocities are considered smaller, peripheral. Lesser than the crimes in Germany.

This framing is not only inaccurate. It is dangerous.

For Asia, the war began far earlier. In truth, World War I and World War II did not unfold as separate conflicts here. They bled into one another like a wound never allowed to scab. The Japanese Empire’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, its brutal campaign across China, and its tightening grip on Korea—annexed since 1910—created a constant, grinding war machine long before the world noticed.

And in this machinery, human bodies were currency.

Especially the bodies of women.

Especially Korean women.

Between 1932 and 1945, the Japanese military abducted or coerced an estimated 200,000 women across Asia—most from Korea, some as young as 12—and forced them into sexual slavery. They were euphemistically called “comfort women.” A name designed to sound soft. Harmless. Humane.

What follows are fragments of one of those lives.

This journal, believed to have belonged to Moon Hae-won, a teenage girl from what is now North Korea, was recovered in 1981 during the demolition of a Japanese-run medical building in Southeast Asia. It was buried in the lining of an old wall, wrapped in oilcloth and sealed with wax. Historians and trauma experts have since verified the ink, paper, and regional dialect.

There are missing pages. Smudges. Scribbles.

But the voice within these pages is unmistakably human. Unmistakably wounded.

We present these entries not as spectacle, but as testimony.

Because if history has taught us anything, it’s that silence is not peace. And forgetting is not healing.

The following pages have been translated and preserved to reflect both the content and emotional tone of the original. Minor notes have been added for clarity where necessary. The grammar and structure are intentionally retained to mirror the author’s mental state across each period of her life.

Part I: Before

1939–1941, Haeju, Hwanghae Province (Occupied Korea)

April 4, 1939

I turned fourteen today. Appa gave me a small leather-bound journal. Eomma said, “Don’t waste it on nonsense.” But Appa smiled and whispered that no one ever said a girl can’t carry the world in her pages. I like that.

Cherry blossoms are blooming outside my window. My brother Joon says they’re prettier in Japan, but I don’t believe him. Ours smell like honey and sea salt.

June 9, 1939

At school today, our teacher made us sing the Japanese anthem again. I hate it. I hate the way my tongue stumbles over the foreign syllables, like I’m swallowing rocks. We’re not allowed to speak Korean in class anymore.

Eomma says to keep quiet and not cause trouble. “Survive now. Speak later.”

But I wonder what if the later never comes?

August 20, 1940

Soldiers came through the village today. Japanese ones. Uniforms stiff, boots like knives on the road. I held my breath when they passed. One of them looked at me. Not like a man looks at a girl but more like a butcher looks at meat.

I ran straight home. Scrubbed my skin with hot water until it turned red. Eomma didn’t ask why. She just brought me salt to rub into the parts I couldn’t reach.

I think she knows.

February 2, 1941

The disappearances are real. Mina from next door. Ji-ae from the riverside. They’re gone. Their families say nothing. Just stare at the ground like the answers are buried there.

I overheard Appa whispering with the neighbor. Something about “comfort stations” and “military requisitions.”

I don’t understand.

But I know I’m afraid.

May 14, 1941

I tried to hide in the rice cellar when they came. Joon screamed. Eomma begged.

They didn’t care.

One of the soldiers pulled me out by my hair. He smiled. I bit him. He hit me so hard my teeth rattled. I saw Eomma fall to her knees. Appa didn’t move. Not even when I called his name.

I think I died a little right then.

Part II: During

1941–1944, Comfort Station, Unknown Location (Somewhere in Southeast Asia)

(Entry – date unknown, writing smeared)

name moon haewon

age 16

not a whore

not a wife

not a toy

just girl

just girl

just girl

(Entry – faint)

they take my blood

every night

with their hands

with their hunger

they never ask my name

they just say “do your duty”

like i owe them my skin

(Entry)

there are rules here

don’t scream

don’t fight

keep legs open

never say no

my stomach won’t stop bleeding

doctor gave me water with white pills

said if i make trouble

they’ll bury me under the latrines

(Entry – scratched through, rewritten)

today i bit one

hard

he bled

he cried

they all laughed

then they held me down

five of them

i left my body somewhere else

i haven’t found it again

(Entry)

a girl named so-hee stopped breathing

just stopped

eyes open

not crying

not anything

we wrapped her in an old futon

she looked peaceful

lucky

(Entry – scrawled diagonally)

how long has it been

i forget the sky

i forget the word for butterfly

i used to dream in colour

now everything inside is grey

Part III: After

1946–1951, Post-liberation, Seoul

March 3, 1946

They told us we were free.

The war ended.

The soldiers left.

But no one told the people.

When I came home, Eomma wouldn’t meet my eyes. Joon had grown taller. Appa was dead. Stroke, they said.

I didn’t cry.

They say “comfort woman” like it’s a thing I volunteered to be.

No one wants the truth.

They want silence.

So I give them silence.

August 20, 1947

A man at the market tried to flirt with me. Called me miss.

I spat on his shoes.

He slapped me.

I didn’t flinch.

His hand was soft.

He had no idea what pain felt like.

January 1, 1949

New Year. Another lie.

At the temple, they prayed for peace. For forgiveness.

I didn’t kneel.

I watched the smoke from the incense rise into the air and thought about all the girls who never got to breathe again.

Girls like So-hee. Like Mina.

Like me.

October 6, 1950

I’ve started visiting the Japanese embassy. I stand outside with a sign.

It says nothing. Just a red stain on white cloth.

Sometimes they look.

Mostly, they pretend I’m not there.

They don’t know that pretending is how we all got here.

April 4, 1951

I turned twenty six today.

I don’t remember my favorite food.

I don’t remember what it felt like to love anything.

But I remember the boots. The sweat. The screams.

I still dream of soft things, sometimes

blossoms, waves, Joon’s voice when he was small.

But when I wake up, I sharpen my memory like a knife.

Final Entry – undated

I do not forgive.

I do not forget.

This ink is my war.

My words are my body

and I will not let them take me again.

———————

I did not write this journal. But I carry its weight.

Moon Hae-won never asked to become a symbol. She did not survive to become a headline or a footnote in someone else’s war. She was a daughter. A sister. A girl who loved cherry blossoms and dreamed in colour—until history came with a uniform and a flag and stole her name.

This is not fiction.

This is not the past.

This is ongoing silence, dressed up as history.

Japan’s system of wartime sexual slavery—what it euphemistically called the “comfort women” program—remains one of the least fully acknowledged atrocities of the Second World War. Estimates suggest that tens of thousands of girls and women, the majority of them Korean, were forced into military brothels by deception, coercion, and violence. And yet, to this day, their suffering is minimized, denied, or ignored by many in power.

Yes, there have been moments of recognition: the 1993 Kono Statement acknowledged the military’s role, and the 2015 agreement between Japan and South Korea offered money and apologies. But apologies without legal accountability are not justice. Financial gestures without moral reckoning are not reparations. Survivors—those who are still alive—have said again and again: it is not enough.

Because what good is an apology if it is retracted by the next administration?

What good is a statement if textbooks still erase the truth?

What good is funding if it comes with the condition of silence?

Japan has not done enough—not nearly enough—to reckon with this crime. Refusing legal responsibility, pressuring foreign governments to remove memorials, and denying the coercive nature of the system all work to erase what was done. But refusing to acknowledge atrocity does not absolve the perpetrator. It only deepens the wound.

This journal is not justice.

But it is memory. And memory is resistance.

To read this and feel pity is not enough.

To turn the page and move on is not enough.

Let this live in you like it lived in her.

Let it fester. Let it ache. Let it never be erased.

Because forgetting her is how it happens again.

And again.

And again.