LaborFest
LaborFest was established in 1994 to institutionalize the history and culture of working people in an annual labor cultural, film and arts festival.
ADL Spies on Americans
keghart.org/adl-spies-on-americans/
The ADL Legal Case Is Over, But the Struggle Continues
www.wrmea.org/2002-april/the-adl-legal-case-is-over-but-the-struggle-continues.html
Spy vs Spite
first.fpp.co.uk/docs/ADL/ADLitems/OOFimes020200.html
URL: www.sfweekly.com/issues/2000-02-02/feature.html
The Clinton administration has praised theAnti-Defamation League for helping shield kids from Internet hate. But should a group that spied on thousands of Californians be allowed to police the Web? By Matt Isaacs
THE first snow of the season is falling on New York in big fluffy flakes, making the city look new again. The offices of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, located in U.N. Plaza, are stuffy, the windows steamed. Everyone appears a bit disheveled; rumpled clothes and flattened hat hair seem to be in vogue. Jordan Kessler, a handsome young man with a beard, sits at a computer terminal, talking about how he compiles his list.
ADLhate3.gifKessler is personally responsible for the ADL's HateFilter, a software program that blocks access to Web sites that, the ADL contends, contain bigoted or hateful speech. This 25-year-old Columbia grad has accepted the enormous task of seeking out and cataloging inflammatory language among the roughly 800 million Web pages available to the public. He has help, of course. The ADL, a group dedicated to securing "justice and fair treatment for all citizens alike," has 30 offices around the country tracking extremists of every different shade, and each office has Kessler's direct line.
Kessler assembles a list of all the groups his organization deems dangerous; it's a list that must be constantly updated because, he says, hatemongers have a tendency to mutate. To be deemed objectionable by the ADL, a site must be cleared by a committee of the organization's managers before it makes Kessler's list. He won't say how many people are on the committee, or reveal the names of the organizations he has labeled as dangerous.
Some of the groups he watches, Kessler says, also watch him. Some revel, just because their sites have been chosen by the ADL, he says. It's like making the big time. The Web designers for the white supremacist site World Church of the Creator, for example, actually promote their work with a quote taken out of context from a Kessler report in which he grudgingly complimented the graphics for that site.
"If their Web site gets blocked by the ADL, in their eyes they've made it," he says. "They think we are all-powerful, in control of the government and everything that stands in their way."
Kessler's screen displays a number of yellow file folders. One folder is titled "Gays," presumably a file on gay-bashers. Another is titled "Arabs," presumably a list of anti-Arab groups. He says he takes great care in reviewing a site before he brings it to the committee. Many sites may be offensive, he says, featuring anti-Semitic jokes or caricatures, but they won't make the list of those to be blocked by the ADL's HateFilter. On the other hand, he says, some sites might be recommended for the list based on what the ADL knows about the organization rather than the content of the site. His organization has been monitoring hate groups for more than 85 years, he says, bringing an expertise that stretches far beyond HTML or Java codes.
The ADL has been fighting anti-Semitism, in its own way, since 1913. The organization was founded by Sigmund Livingston, a Chicago attorney, hoping to fight the overt presence of anti-Semitism in American society following the turn of the century. Livingston began with two desks, $200, and the sponsorship of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, meaning "Children of the Covenant." Since then the organization has grown into a national nonprofit organization that took in $46 million in revenues in 1998 and employs 200 people in its New York headquarters alone. In the 1960s the ADL fought stridently for the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. More recently it pioneered efforts to create a model for "hate crime" laws.
It is an organization with a unique mission, given that its existence is largely based on the continuance of racism and bigotry. If anti-Semitism had disappeared from the face of the Earth during the 20th century, the ADL might have withered away, too. But even five decades beyond the fall of Nazi Germany, the world continues to be a prejudiced place, and the organization still regularly denounces anti-Semitic statements made in print, over the airwaves, and, more recently, over the Internet.
The Web is a new frontier, presenting the ADL with fresh challenges and opportunities for growth. The medium has given every electronic pamphleteer the reach of a worldwide television broadcasting network, making it easy for anyone with a computer to spread his message, racist or otherwise. Because the Web is essentially unregulated, the ADL believes cyberspace is "a dangerous place for children," according to the organization's literature. "There are no parents or teachers standing by to guide and advise a child who has come upon a site that promotes hate. Without that guidance, there is a real chance children will simply accept what they read as fact."
In response to this supposed threat to young minds, the ADL has stepped up its own efforts to combat intolerance by introducing the HateFilter, which runs on Mattel's CyberPatrol, a software package that blocks a wide gamut of material on the Internet. Consumers who purchase the HateFilter receive all of CyberPatrol's features, including categories other than hate speech, among them graphic violence and pornography. But CyberPatrol purchased on its own does not include the HateFilter, because Mattel has its own version of what it considers hate speech, and does not market the filter, nor does it necessarily approve of what the ADL's HateFilter blocks, company officials say.
So far, the ADL HateFilter has been marketed as a service to be used in the home. But that may soon change. CyberPatrol is already in 15,000 private and public libraries, schools, and universities, and the ADL has not ruled out broadening the distribution of HateFilter software to public institutions. "Right now, the HateFilter is not meant to be used by the government, but over the next few months we will be discussing whether we will advocate for its use in schools and libraries," says Sue Stengel, an ADL attorney.
Foxman.jpegIt appears, however, that the organization, which wields tremendous clout in Washington, has already begun to advocate — at the highest levels. The ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, met with President Clintonat least twice last year, once following the Littleton shooting in May, and again in the wake of an attack on a Jewish community center in Granada Hills in August. After the latter meeting, Malcolm Hoenlein, a top official in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, told reporters that Clinton had agreed to take the lead in persuading Americans to install a "hate filter" on their computers. In October, Clinton again met with the ADL, and began his speech with a tribute to the organization's new software. "Thank you for your pioneering work to filter out hate on the Internet — which, lamentably, was part of the poison that led to the tragedy at Columbine High School," Clinton said.
More recently, Elizabeth Coleman, the ADL's director of civil rights, was asked to participate in a panel discussion concerning a "family friendly" Internet at a conference for the National Association of Attorneys General a few weeks ago — a conference where Attorney General Janet Reno gave the keynote address. Coleman demonstrated the filter for all the law enforcement officials in attendance. She said over lunch that the organization had also shown the filter to Vice President Al Gore, who "loved it."
If made explicit, White House support for the ADL filter could have a significant impact on the policy decisions of public schools and libraries across the country. Although decisions regarding school and library Internet filters are currently made at the local level, a bill before Congress spearheaded by Sen. John McCain, called the Children's Internet Protection Act, would require all schools and libraries receiving federal funds to install Internet filters on computers accessible to children. If the bill wins approval, even a mention by the White House, combined with the ADL's strong regional lobbying, could go a long way toward encouraging local jurisdictions to choose the HateFilter from the filtering software on the market.
But if Clinton likes and Gore loves the HateFilter (at least in the ADL's eyes), many are aghast at the thought of the ADL having any say over what children may or may not see. These critics, whose political and religious affiliations vary widely, repeatedly describe the ADL as a self-appointed agent of Israel that cloaks itself in the rhetoric of fighting hate, while actively attempting to silence those who are not hatemongers, but mere opponents of Israeli government policy.
"The Number 1 goal of the ADL is the protection of Israel," says Pete McCloskey, a former Republican congressman from San Mateo who regularly criticized Israel's policies. "Any group whose sole purpose is to protect a foreign nation should not have anything to say about what's said or written here in America."
On a number of occasions since the 1970s, the ADL has been caught distributing lists of its enemies, replete with detailed descriptions of "black demagogues" and "pro-Arab propagandists," including poet Amiri Baraka in the list of demagogues, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky under the propagandist label. Then, in 1993, a longtime ADL investigator admitted to working with a member of the San Francisco Police Department to illegally gather information on almost 10,000 people, including members of socialist, labor, and anti-apartheid groups.
Some of the targets of that information-gathering effort have gone to court in an attempt to gain access to their dossiers, currently in possession of the ADL, but the ADL has refused to release the files, claiming that its investigator was an "investigative journalist" whose unpublished reporting materials are protected against disclosure by the California shield law, which was originally adopted to help journalists keep confidential sources who reveal important public wrongdoing confidential.
Thus the ADL finds itself in a sticky position: While it advocates for a software product that limits access to the Internet's open exchange of ideas, the Anti-Defamation League is also hiding behind a law put in place to encourage people to speak freely.
The ADL recently added one episode to a videotape it uses in workshops that are meant to promote cultural understanding in schools. The vignette shows a boy, about 15 years old, surfing the Web in his school library. He comes across a page called the Zundelsite, with the headline "Did Six Million Really Die?"
"Hey guys, come here," the kid says to his friends. "Check this out. It says here the Holocaust was a bunch of bull. Like it never really happened like the Jews say it did."
Two blond students lean over his shoulder, as a dark-haired student listens to the conversation in the background. "Wow, big surprise. I hear they always lie," one boy says.
"I guess they just want us to feel sorry for 'em," says a girl, as they look at a page titled "Holocaust Myth 101."
"Well. They can lie all they want," says the boy who found the page. "Looks like we dug up the truth."
At this point, the instructor leading the workshop is supposed to stop the video and begin a discussion, using questions from an accompanying guide. On the whole, the questions are predictable classroom fare: "What happened?," "Has anyone ever experienced a similar situation?," and so on. But one question stands out: "Should the school have some kind of policy regarding what students can access on the Internet?"
In fact, many public secondary schools have Internet policies for minors, as do almost all public libraries. And both types of institutions are leaning toward the use of filtering software to limit what children can access on the Web. The San Francisco Unified School District, for example, employs a systemwide filter to block access to a variety of material, including "intolerance." School officials would not identify the name of the filter.
The policy discussions regarding the protection of minors on the Internet thus far have dealt almost exclusively with pornography. In the heated debate over First Amendment freedoms on the Web, smut has taken center stage because it has already been addressed and narrowly defined. The Supreme Court has ruled that "obscene" speech, meaning material appealing to a prurient or unhealthy interest in sex and lacking serious artistic, scientific, literary, or political value, can be regulated by the government.
The Supreme Court has also ruled that the definition of "obscene" can take the age of the audience into account. Thus, for adults, pornographic films are, by and large, protected by the First Amendment. But the government may prohibit the sale of these films to minors by labeling the material "indecent," a much broader, generally ill-defined category.
In 1996, Congress tried to apply the court's broad definition of "indecent" in its passage of the Communications Decency Act, a law prohibiting the transmission of "indecent" material over the Internet. But in 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the law in Reno vs. ACLU, declaring that communications on the Internet cannot be limited to what is suitable for children. The landmark ruling prevents a library from installing porn filters on terminals intended for adult use. But it still allows schools or libraries to restrict a minor's access to smut.
A school or library may also limit children's access to hate speech, but for a different reason. Ordinarily, in a public forum, anything outside the narrow definition of "obscene" is protected by the First Amendment. But schools and libraries are not the same as the town square (or the Internet), where people can spout hateful rhetoric to their heart's desire. A library has only so much shelf space; thus a professional librarian has the right to choose which materials to include in a collection, and which to leave out. The same goes for schools, which have the right to set their own curriculums and base the selection of library books on those curriculums.
"That's why if you were to go to your local library in search of books on the Holocaust, you would probably find many," says Frederick Schauer, a First Amendment professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. "But it's not likely you'll find any books that say the Holocaust didn't happen. And I think most people would agree that's appropriate."
Schauer says he believes the debate over allowing speech filters for minors into the public forum is only just beginning. Would it be possible for the ADL HateFilter to find a place in public libraries and schools? Yes, he says, although it would be challenged in court, and would probably be more likely to be allowed in secondary schools than in public libraries that serve all ages.
Some First Amendment lawyers find it curious that the ADL would even be getting into the business of speech filters. The Anti-Defamation League, after all, considers itself a civil rights organization. Judging from literature promoting the HateFilter software, it's clear the ADL is thinking about the apparent conflict between the civil right of free speech, and the limitation of speech inherent to Internet filtering software. Almost every page of HateFilter literature mentions the First Amendment, and explains that the ADL does not seek to censor or limit speech on the Internet. The HateFilter does not remove sites or censor their content, says ADL Director Elizabeth Coleman; it only blocks these sites from coming into the home at the parents' discretion.
Parents have good reason for wanting to keep these sites off their computers, Coleman says. Many extremist sites cater to children, she says. For example, the World Church of the Creator site has a special link for kids. Other sites, she says, are highly polished, presenting themselves as mainstream academic thought. This misinformation, she says, can lead to the kind of violence that has made headlines in recent years. Last August, for example, three teenagers firebombed a judge's house in San Jose, believing he was Jewish. (He was actually Catholic.) Investigators say two of the kids had used computers at school to access white supremacist Web sites. Also, Matthew and James Williams, brothers suspected of murdering a gay couple in Redding and setting fire to three synagogues in Sacramento, were reported to have been led astray by radical right philosophies ferried on the Internet. (Although at 31 and 29 years of age, the brothers would not have been constrained by an Internet filter aimed at minors.)
Coleman says the best part of the HateFilter is that it doesn't just block sites, it also routes Internet surfers back to links on the ADL Web page that provide information about extremists such as white supremacists or Holocaust deniers. "Nobody else has the same educational component," she says.
But critics of Internet filters wonder if they actually do more harm than good. A highly regarded study by Chris Hunter, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, found that the devices block an average of 21 percent of Web sites containing useful, legal information, while failing to block an average of 25 percent of sites containing "objectionable" content. (The ADL's HateFilter was not included in the study.)
Even organizations that have historically spoken out against racism and gay-bashing, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, object to Internet speech filters. Ann Brick, an attorney with the civil rights organization, says that one of the inherent risks of filters is that consumers never know the political or commercial biases of the filter's manufacturer. "The ADL is a partial organization, in that they have a point of view," she says. "And what they consider hate speech might be a complex exposition of the Israeli-Arab conflict."
The Southern Poverty Law Center, another civil rights organizationthat publishes its own annual list of extremists on the Web, is also unconvinced of the efficacy of filters. Joe Roy, director of the center's intelligence project, says his organization supports any effort to fight hatred, but would not endorse a speech filter because, in the organization's opinion, filters simply don't work.
The ADL's software manufacturer, CyberPatrol, has taken an especially hard beating from critics who say the filtering software has mistakenly blocked sites such as Creatures Comfort Pet Care Service and the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computations, for their explicit sexual content.
Because the HateFilter has a narrower scope, ADL officials say, it is more sophisticated than other filters on the market. "You're getting 85 years of knowledge and experience monitoring these groups," says Coleman. "Yet we want to be subtle. You can't use a sledgehammer in this endeavor."
And in a limited test run of the software, the HateFilter does appear to be more refined than its competitors. It doesn't block the Pat Buchanan Web site, though Buchanan has been critical of Israel and made controversial statements about Jews in the past. It does block a site called Radio Islam, which blatantly flaunts its hatred of Jews. It also blocks what appears to be a very thoughtful — and hardly controversial — site called Interracial Voice, containing a long list of essays describing the challenges of growing up with parents from different cultures.
Elizabeth Coleman says the ADL's block on the Interracial Voice page was an oversight.
The ADL will not provide a list of blocked sites, officials say, because in the wrong hands, it could be used as a kind of address book for extremists, allowing them easier communication with one another. Without a list of blocked sites, however, it's hard to get a picture of what the ADL deems inappropriate for children. And an understanding of this bigger picture is important, critics say, because contrary to Coleman's claims, the ADL has a history of making blacklists that do, in fact, attack legitimate schools of thought with a sledgehammer.
In the early 1980s, for example, records show the organization circulated through college campuses a confidential list of pro-Arab sympathizers "who use their anti-Zionism as a guise for their deeply felt anti-Semitism." The report contained the names of respected professors from Georgetown University, Columbia University, and the University of California at Berkeley, among others, who had criticized Israel for its invasion of Lebanon. When the Middle East Studies Association discovered the document, and called for the ADL to disown it, a high-ranking ADL official was quoted in the New York Times blaming it on an "overly zealous student volunteer."
Francis Boyle, a professor of law at the University of Illinois, still has vivid memories of what it was like to be the recipient of the ADL's wrath. He says when he and a colleague began giving lectures critical of Israel's attack on the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon, the ADL and a local Jewish organization went far out of their way to silence them. Boyle says ADL members would sit in the front row during his lectures, simply to shout him down. The organizations also filed a complaint against him with the dean of the law school, he says. "I was really surprised. Here I thought the ADL was this great civil rights organization, and they're doing these things that are totally antithetical to what academic freedom is supposed to be about."
But Boyle says things were much worse for his Jewish colleague. When the colleague began speaking about the atrocities he had seen when he visited Lebanon in 1982, Boyle says the ADL organized for students to boycott the professor's classes and requested that the administration deny the professor tenure. "The ADL was far worse on Jews who criticized Israel than they were on Arabs. They treated them like traitors," Boyle says. "The ADL has turned itself into a dirty tricks organization for Israel."
Steve Zeltzer and Jeff Blankfort had already been active in Middle Eastern politics for many years when, in 1987, they founded an organization called the Labor Committee on the Middle East, a group that, by their description, was devoted to alerting American workers to the plight of laborers in all the Middle Eastern countries. It could hardly be called an organization, they say. It was really just a handful of like-minded people. Or so they thought.
The first meetings were held at Zeltzer's house in San Francisco. Those who attended were familiar with one another, except for a man named Roy Bullock. Blankfort says he had seen Bullock around the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "I recognized him and was a bit surprised to see him at our meeting. I wondered if he was really interested," Blankfort says.
But, Blankfort recounts, Bullock said he liked what they were doing and wanted to be a part of the gang, and, evidently, that was good enough for the other members. As is often the case with those who fashion themselves to be part of the radical left, the members chose as one of their first projects an event that had little to do with the group's core interest. They decided to organize a picket line at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, protesting a luncheon being held by an Israeli organization called Histadrut, which reportedly had financial interests in South Africa, then still in the grip of apartheid policies.
The guests of honor at the event were former California Assemblyman Richard Katz from Sylmar, and then-Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown.
At the time, there was a growing anti-apartheid movement in the U.S., strongly supported by African-American organizations in the Bay Area, and if the public were to become aware of Histadrut's financial ties, Brown's participation in the event would not look good. Evidently he was aware of this, and sent a thoughtful, two-page response declining Zeltzer's request for him to pull out of the event.
The Labor Committee on the Middle East went forward with the protest, organizing about 60 people, including Roy Bullock, to picket in front of the Fairmont.
Not long after the demonstration, Blankfort received an anonymous envelope. Inside was a torn-out page from a newsletter published by the Institute of Historical Review, a Holocaust denial organization. Blankfort wondered why he would get something from a neo-Nazi group he despised. He was shocked to see it was an article accusing Roy Bullock of being a spy for the ADL.
But spies of one kind or another are not uncommon in radical circles, Blankfort says. "My father was a blacklisted writer, and the FBI was poking around for years," he says. "I'm used to it."
As it turns out, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was tracking Bullock's activities; the FBI, however, was concerned with Bullock because he was an operative for the South African government.
When Bullock was questioned in 1993, according to court records, he told FBI agents that he had been instructed by the ADL to gather information on anti-apartheid groups, a statement he would later recant. He told federal agents he had been working as a "fact finder" for the ADL since 1954, when he was asked to gather information on a Communist Party club in Indianapolis. In 1987, he said, he met Tom Gerard, an officer with the San Francisco Police Department, who began supplying Bullock with records such as motor vehicle registrations and criminal histories — records that, by law, are to be used by police and prosecutors only in legitimate criminal investigations. Bullock also admitted to receiving approximately $16,000 from the South African government in exchange for information on anti-apartheid groups. He also admitted to turning over information to Israel. At the time, Israel and South Africa maintained loose diplomatic relationships, because both faced trade sanctions, Israel from Arab countries, and South Africa from a wide variety of nations opposed to its apartheid policies.
The ADL says Bullock was acting on his own while collecting information on anti-apartheid groups.
In an investigation by the city, San Francisco police seized 10 boxes of information from the offices of the ADL. A police officer testified that 75 percent of the material was illegally obtained from confidential government sources, according to court records. Police also examined Bullock's computer files, which contained information on 9,876 people, along with 1,394 driver's license numbers. The people were divided into four categories: "Arabs," "Pinkos," "Right," and "Skins." Zeltzer and Blankfort were listed under "Pinkos." Included in Zeltzer's dossier was a description of the protest at the Fairmont Hotel.
Although thousands of nonpublic documents were found in the possession of both Bullock and the ADL, the city offered a settlement agreement to the organization in November 1993. As a result of the deal, the ADL paid a $75,000 civil fine — most of which went to charitable causes along the lines of the ADL's own interests, such as a Hate Crimes Reward Fund — while denying all allegations of wrongdoing.
Gerard, whom the ADL had sent on an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel in 1991, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized use of a police computer and was sentenced to three years' probation, 45 days in jail, and a $2,500 fine. He is no longer with the Police Department.
Since the city settled its civil case against the ADL, 17 people who had been subjects of the ADL's investigation have attempted to recover their files; they are represented in court by former Congressman Pete McCloskey, whose wife is one of the plaintiffs. So far, the ADL has blocked those efforts, claiming to be a news-gathering organization and invoking the need for journalists to protect their confidential sources. The California Court of Appeals has ruled that plaintiffs who were the target of illegitimate information-gathering that resulted in the transfer of information to a foreign government have a right to see what was transferred.
The lawsuit has certainly shed light on how the organization has gathered information. For example, the former director of the ADL's San Francisco office, Richard Hirschhaut, testified that he was aware that Bullock had prepared reports on hundreds of individuals and organizations. He also said that up to half of the ADL's activities in the seven years between 1986 and 1993 had been centered on discrediting political views that disagreed with the organization's support of Israel, rather than on the ADL's traditional efforts to counter bigotry and anti-Semitism.
The Internet has undoubtedly made it easier for children to access inappropriate information. Few would argue that a child has something to gain by reading the diatribes of the Farm Belt Führer, and, although hate crimes are actually on the decline in terms of numbers, the hate incidents that have occurred recently are conscience-shocking. Last year the country was introduced toBenjamin Smith, who went on a rampage in Indiana, wounding six Jews coming home from Sabbath and killing an African-American and an Asian-American before committing suicide. Buford Furrow Jr. became famous for shooting up a Jewish community center in Los Angeles. And of course there were Columbine's Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two teenagers wreaking bloody havoc on their classmates. Teenagers are laughing while they send bullets into their peers, and the World Church of the Creator has a special section for kids.
Who wouldn't be looking for ways to stop the haters? Potential presidents certainly are.
John McCain is stumping through New Hampshire with his Children's Internet Protection Act, a bill that would require all public libraries and secondary schools receiving federal subsidies for their Internet hookups to install filtering software on computers accessible to minors. Many experts say the bill is very likely to win approval from Congress. Al Gore's campaign Web site has a link to Internet Safety for Parents and Kids, complete with follow-on links to the filter sites Cybersitter and Netnanny.
Judith Krug, a law expert with the American Library Association, says she expects to see an avalanche of Internet filtering laws passed at the state level. (Some states, including South Dakota and Virginia, have already mandated Internet filters for library computers accessible to children.) "Without a doubt, schools have to find ways to protect children from inappropriate material," says CyberPatrol Vice President of Marketing Susan Getgood. "I see schools implementing filters in record numbers."
ADLhate3.gifIt seems that the ADL's pet project, HateFilter, couldn't have materialized at a better time.Throughout its long life, the ADL has spent vast amounts of money collecting information on the groups it considers threatening, all for a small number of ADL publications that few people would ever read.Now the organization has the opportunity to have a major impact on how young people view the world.
It's quite possible that every library and school receiving federal funds across the nation will be forced to install filters on its computers, not just for pornography, but for extremist speech as well. These institutions will have a choice between a few commercial monoliths that provide filtering software — and a civil rights organization that can accurately say it has 85 years of experience in fighting bigotry. Some public institutions will almost certainly choose the HateFilter.
And without a list of sites the ADL has decided to block, parents won't ever know what their children are missing. Perhaps a lecture by Noam Chomsky on the mainstream media monopoly. Or a RealAudio spoken-word monologue by Amiri Baraka, formerly known as Leroi Jones. Or a detailed analysis of the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
So far, nobody is connecting the dots in a public way: An organization with a history of ruthlessly silencing its critics is trying to dictate the Internet content available to the country's young minds. And when asked about the HateFilter, the White House offers this vague comment of apparent support: "The president certainly supports any tool that blocks hate and other inappropriate material on the Internet."
The Labor Committee on the Middle East fizzled out a few years ago, but Steve Zeltzer is still active in radical politics. His Victorian home in Bernal Heights is cluttered with tall stacks of videocassettes, material for the documentary television show he produces, Labor on the Job.
Zeltzer says he's still haunted by the paranoid feelings that began when he realized he was being watched. For the first couple of weeks after his confrontation with ADL "fact-finder" Roy Bullock, Zeltzer says, his phone rang repeatedly; when the answering machine came on, the caller began dialing random numbers, an apparent attempt to retrieve messages left for Zeltzer. Now, if he answers the phone and nobody's there, he can't help but wonder if he's still being targeted.
Zeltzer says he's not surprised that the ADL is creating an Internet filter. To him, it's an extension of what the organization has been doing for decades. "They have always had enemies lists, and they have always wanted to control the flow of information," he says. "The HateFilter is just an extension of that." square.gif
Histadrut: Israel’s racist “trade union”
electronicintifada.net/content/histadrut-israels-racist-trade-union/8121
Zionism In The Age Of Dictators By Lenny Brenner
www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/mideast/agedict/index.htm
51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis \
Lenni Brenner: Zionism in the Age of the Dictators – A Reappraisal (1983)
www.marxists.org
Lenni Brenner: Zionism in the Age of the Dictators – A Reappraisal (1983)
New Exhibition Shows Different Sides of UE Organizer Turned Painter
www.ueunion.org/ue-news-feature/2025/new-exhibition-shows-different-sides-of-ue-organizer-turned-…
Painting of an organizing committee meeting in a room with banners reading Build Your Union and Build a Rank&File Union.jpeg
Ralph Fasanella, Organizing Committee (Fisher Building), 1989. Images courtesy The Ruffed Grouse Gallery and the Estate of Ralph Fasanella.
FEBRUARY 4, 2025
Narrowsburg, New York
BY JONATHAN KISSAM
Ralph Fasanella, the UE organizer who took up painting and became one of the most celebrated self-taught American artists of the 20th Century, is known for his large-scale paintings of strikes, union meetings, and urban working-class life. One of his paintings of the 1912 “Bread and Roses” strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts hangs in the headquarters of the AFL-CIO, and posters of his Lawrence strike and “Organizing Committee” series adorn union halls throughout the country (including the UE National Office).
However, as a new show of his work at the Ruffed Grouse Gallery in Narrowsburg, New York makes clear, Fasanella was interested in every aspect of working class life, not just union struggles. Here we see working people at home and at the beach, vacationing, eating hot dogs at the iconic Nathan’s in Brooklyn, and enjoying America’s favorite pastime in Baseball, Holy Cow!, from 1996, one of the last years of his life. (Fasanella passed away in 1997, at the age of 83.)
Painting of a baseball game
Baseball, Holy Cow!, 1996.
Many of the paintings in the show are studies of single individuals: a woman in a green sweater leaning against a chest of drawers from 1955, a man in a maroon coat seated in front of a city scene from 1960, a Black woman in a blue coat applying for jobs at a U.S. Employment Services office from 1955.
Seeing Fasanella’s sensitive characterization of his subjects in these portraits gives one a new appreciation of the care he took in painting each of the dozens (or even hundreds) of people in his larger-scale paintings. While other artists might render crowds as repeating figures, or even as an amorphous mass, Fasanella depicts each figure as a distinct individual. Their wide range of hair styles and colors, skin tone and dress reflect the diversity of the American working class, especially the working class of New York City, where Fasanella lived his whole life.
Three painted portraits, of a woman in a green sweater leaning against a dresser in a home, a man in a maroon coat sitting on a chair in front of a city scene, and a woman in a blue coat filling out a form in an office.
Left to right: Woman in Green Sweater, 1955; Seated Man, City Scene, c. 1960; and Applicant U.S.E.S., 1955.
One could say that Fasanella paints his subjects the way an organizer might, aware of the potential of the collectivity but always attentive to the personalities and interests of each individual worker. In fact, two paintings in the show, both painted in 1989, specifically depict organizing committees.
Organizing the Big Three is set in the heyday of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s or 1940s. Its title refers not to the “big three” auto companies, but to the big three mass-production industries — auto, steel, and electrical manufacturing — and the CIO unions that organized them in the 1930s: the UAW, Steelworkers, and UE. Banners on the walls read “Vote UE-CIO” and “Build a rank and file union now!” and announce a Labor Day rally with CIO President John L. Lewis, CIO Vice President Sidney Hillman, and Harry Bridges, the fiery leader of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
Painting of a meeting in a union hall, with signs reading Vote UE-CIO and Build A Rank-and-File Union Now.
Organizing the Big Three, 1989.
Organizing Committee (Fisher Building), shown at the top of the page, is set in a more recent era, and specifically in New Bedford, Massachusetts. A poster on the wall reads “Support ERA,” referring to the Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution prohibiting sex discrimination, which UE actively supported in the 1970s and 80s. The chalkboard and the text of a copy of the UE NEWS on the wall both mention “Morse,” presumably a reference to Morse Cutting Tools in New Bedford, where UE Local 277 successfully used the threat of eminent domain (the city seizing property) to keep their plant open for five years after a plant-closing threat in the early 80s.
Painting in dark hues of a city scene
Nocturne, 1947.
The show also includes several early Fasanella paintings, from when he was still teaching himself to paint by “going to museums and looking at Picasso and Matisse,” as Ryan D. Ward, the owner and director of the Ruffed Grouse Gallery told me when I visited the gallery in January. While Fasanella was labeled as a “primitive” artist when he was discovered in the early 70s (he was featured on the cover of New York magazine with the headline “This man pumps gas in the Bronx for a living. He may also be the best primitive painter since Grandma Moses.”), he actually took the time to both study art history and immerse himself in modern art. Nocturne, from 1947, demonstrates this clearly, with bold, contrasting colors, abstract figures like those of Matisse’s famous Icarus, and a semi truck turned at an impossible angle, reminiscent of Marc Chagall’s Birthday but locating the painting firmly in working-class New York.
However, perhaps the most fascinating painting in the show, and one of only a very few of Fasanella’s large-scale paintings that is not currently owned by an institution or a private collection, is the massive and magnificent Love Goddess. Painted in 1964, it depicts a religious service of sorts, but one that would probably shock most church leaders — it is devoted to romantic and sexual love. The service occurs outdoors, where groups of young people lounge on a grassy lawn. Even in the early days of “the sixties” Fasanella, ever a keen observer of the diversity of the working class, was alive to, and interested in, the cultural changes taking place among young people.
Painting of an outdoor altar with a woman and two crosses, with people sitting on the lawn around it, a church to the right, and city buildings behind it.
Love Goddess, 1964.
Historian Joshua B. Freeman writes in his 2000 book Working-Class New York that in the middle of the 20th century “the New York labor movement led the city toward a social democratic polity unique in the country,” one “committed to … popular access to culture and education.” Ralph Fasanella, one of our country’s great artists, was a product not only of his own genius but of that effort to create a city of, by, and for working people, a city that believed in the potential of every one of its residents. Fasanella believed in them all too.
Seen: Six Decades of Ralph Fasanella Paintings will be on display at the Ruffed Grouse Gallery in Narrowsburg, New York through April 6. Ruffed Grouse will also be exhibiting Fasanella paintings, alongside those of other artists, at the Outsider Art Fair in New York City from February 27 to March 2.
Also see “Remembering Ralph Fasanella, UE Organizer and Painter of Working-Class Life and Struggle” from the Winter 2023 issue of the UE NEWS.
All images courtesy The Ruffed Grouse Gallery and the Estate of Ralph Fasanella.
About the Author:
jonathan-kissam's picture
Jonathan Kissam has been UE's Communications Director and editor of the UE NEWS since August 2017. Prior to that he was a rank-and-file member of UE Local 203 in Burlington, VT. From 2002-2004 he served on UE's General Executive Board as the secretary-treasurer of what was then UE District Two.
New Exhibition Shows Different Sides of UE Organizer Turned Painter
www.ueunion.org
A new show of his work makes clear that Ralph Fasanella, the UE organizer who took up painting, was interested in every aspect of working class life, not just union struggles. Although he is known for…
Contest: Songs and Chants for the Strike Line
www.labornotes.org/blogs/2025/02/contest-songs-and-chants-strike-line
February 27, 2025 / by Kira Yeversky and Edwin Everhartenlarge or shrink textlogin or register to comment
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It's easier for a crowd to join in singing if they already know the melody. (Writing the words out on big paper helps too.) The lyrics shown here, by Edwin Everhart (pictured with guitar), can be sung to the tune of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Photo courtesy of Pittsburgh Labor Choir
Music has special power to raise our morale in times of fear and grief. In the Pittsburgh Labor Choir we’ve learned that songs have their greatest power when everyone is participating, not just listening.
When the crowd takes the responsibility for chanting, or the whole assembly sings together, we feel our collective power. We may still be grieving and scared, but we’re also filled with hope. From rhythm, to morale, to endurance—to victory.
What makes a chant or song good for large-group participation? Making it consistent and predictablemakes it easy for people to join in. In chants as well as songs, lots of repetition is useful—way more than you might expect.
The words can remain simple, with room to be adapted to any struggle. People will join in singing fast if you use an easy melody—and even faster if you use a melody that everyone already knows.
To get people thinking about and acting with crowd participation in mind, we decided to hold a contest for songs and chants—organized by our friends in Pittsburgh Labor Choir and other volunteers.
Since we first heard the call for a 2028 general strike, we wanted to support that ambitious goal. It’s important to aim for big victories, and win smaller victories along the way. But we invite chants and songs for the labor movement, whatever your struggle is.
With that in mind, we are pleased to announce the:
General Strike Song Contest
SUBMISSIONS
Songs and chants must be submitted in the form of a video recording, audio recording, or in writing (sheet music preferred for any original songs submitted in writing) by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday, April 12. Direct links to files are strongly preferred over social media links.
CRITERIA
1. Is the chant or song broadly relevant to the theme of a general strike?
2. Is it likely that a group of 100+ people who have never heard the chant/song before can learn it quicklyin the street?
3. Songs and chants that rely excessively on a single performer/leader will be disqualified.
4. The quality of recordings or transcriptions will be set aside, as much as possible, with a focus instead on the overall quality of the composition, and its potential for supporting collective action.
5. One submission per contestant, please�
WINNING ENTRIES
The most successful 10-12 songs and chants will be featured in a special FREE online teach-in, from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday, April 26. Recordings and written versions of all contest entries will be compiled and shared.
To register and submit your entry, visit this link.
If you would like to be involved in judging the contest, managing or organizing it, or even changing some of the details listed above, please reach out.
Edwin Everhart (MSP/NEA) and Kira Yeversky (Steelworkers Local 3657) are members of the Pittsburgh Labor Choir.
Contest: Songs and Chants for the Strike Line
www.labornotes.org
Music has special power to raise our morale in times of fear and grief. In the Pittsburgh Labor Choir we’ve learned that songs have their greatest power when everyone is participating, not just list…
Hundreds gather at ‘comfort women’ memorials in Germany on International Women’s Day
english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/1186442.html
Posted on : 2025-03-11 17:04 KST Modified on : 2025-03-11 17:42
Statues of Peace were unveiled on Saturday in Cologne and Kassel
A Statue of Peace was unveiled in Cologne, Germany, outside the EL-DE Haus, the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne, on March 8, 2025, as part of its exhibit “The Third World in World War II” put on ahead of the 80-year anniversary of the end of WWII. (Jang Ye-ji/Hankyoreh)
On March 8, International Women’s Day, pink poppies and roses filled the chair next to a recently installed Statue of Peace in Cologne, Germany. The seat is left empty and available for anyone, inviting onlookers to sit and commune with the victims of imperial Japan’s “comfort women” system of sexual slavery, as well as serve as a reminder of the victims who are no longer with us.
On Saturday, hundreds of Germans gathered at identical memorials in Cologne, Kassel and Berlin to remember the history of the comfort women and to mourn the women who were lost to the system’s violence.
Over 250 people (police estimate) attended the unveiling ceremony for the Statue of Peace next to Cologne’s NS Documentation Center, a memorial for victims of Nazism, on Saturday. When the purple curtain covering the statue was lifted, cheers erupted from the crowd. Those who had brought flowers to commemorate the unveiling and International Women’s Day laid them at the feet of the statue.
During WWII, the building of the NS Documentation Center was the infamous headquarters of the Gestapo. Now, a statue dedicated to the horrors of sexual violence during war sits next to it, gazing at those who pass in front of the center.
“I saw news about the ceremony in the paper, so I came,” said Suzanne, 59, who brought roses. She said that the statue’s story “was connected to all women.”
“Even now, it’s not too late to acknowledge history and to pay respect to those who lost their lives,” she said.
Around 250 people were gathered for the unveiling of a Statue of Peace in Cologne, Germany, outside the EL-DE Haus, the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne, on March 8, 2025. (Jang Ye-ji/Hankyoreh)
As was the case in other regions, erecting the statue in Cologne proved difficult. The exhibition had been in the works for two years, but earlier this month Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker placed a ban on the display of the statue out of concern for worsening diplomatic relations with Japan. However, civic groups in Germany, Belgium, France and the US issued a public letter of protest. Eventually, local government councils and even the called for the statue to be erected, and Reker withdrew the ban.
Recherche International, the organization that had been planning the exhibition, gathered up materials related to its conflict with city authorities, including media articles and the Cologne city government’s public statement, and included them in the exhibition at the museum. Karl Rössel, the curator, said, “We decided to show people what happened while we were trying to erect the statue, how it was not an easy process.”
Christa Aretz, who helped plan the exhibition, said, “No matter where the statue goes up, there is pressure from the Japanese government. This is an obstruction of the effort to memorialize women who were kidnapped and subjected to sexual violence by Japanese soldiers during WWII.”
“However, this statue represents not only sexual violence perpetrated by Japan but by German soldiers and the sexual violence that continues to this day,” Aretz added.
Plans for the Statue of Peace in Cologne originated during plans for the NS Documentation Center’s exhibition to commemorate the 80-year anniversary of the end of WWII, titled, “The Third World in World War II.” The statue will remain in front of the center during the period of the exhibition (March 7-June 1). The statue was also included in an exhibition hosted by the Museum of Ethnology Dresden in 2021. The statue was deliberately placed in the garden of the Japanisches Palais.
Nataly Jung-Hwa Han, the chair of Korea Verband, an organization of Korean expats in Germany, spoke at the unveiling, where she said that the Japanese government had “interfered with the Dresden exhibition as well.”
“The Statue of Peace that’s been blocked so many times now shines again in Cologne. I hope that she will stay here not just for a few months but for a long time. The Statue of Peace has the power to attract people who seek justice to one location,” she said.
Some of the people who attended the unveiling of the Statue of Peace in Cologne on International Women’s Day and brought flowers. (Jang Ye-ji/Hankyoreh)
The unveiling ceremony brought the likes of Monika Hauser, the founder of Medica Mondiale, a Germany women’s rights group that advocates for women who have been victims of sexual violence in war zones. Also in attendance were Agisra, a civic group that supports migrant and immigrant women and black women.
“I heard from a friend that the Japanese government was picking a fight about the erection of a Statue of Peace,” said Berena Yogarajah, 33, who works for an advocacy group that represents Asians in Germany. “So we offered our support as an ally to make sure the unveiling ceremony happened.”
“The Statue of Peace is connected to issues that women currently face,” she added.
The Statue of Peace in Kassel that had been removed from the campus of the University of Kassel on March 9, 2023, due to the Japanese government’s pressure on local authorities was also brought out of storage on Saturday. “Nujin,” as the statue is familiarly known, was unveiled in a new home on the grounds of the nearby Neue Bruderkirche (“New Brotherhood”) church, where it will stay up for one year.
On the same day, people gathered in front of “Ari,” the Statue of Peace in Berlin’s Mitte borough, to celebrate International Women’s Day while condemning the borough government for its plans to remove the statue. People in Berlin also erected a memorial for Gil Won-ok, a survivor of the “comfort women” system and women’s rights activist who passed away on Feb. 16.
People pose with “Nujin,” the name given to a Statue of Peace erected outside a church in Kassel, Germany. At the unveiling of the statue on March 8, 2025, a Ukrainian refugee women’s choir performed a song. (courtesy of Hong So-hyeon, an activist with Initiative Save Nujin)
By Jang Ye-ji, Berlin correspondent
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
Hundreds gather at ‘comfort women’ memorials in Germany on International Women’s Day
english.hani.co.kr
Statues of Peace were unveiled on Saturday in Cologne and Kassel
The ‘Parasite’ Director Brings Class Warfare to Outer Space Bong Joon Ho has turned his funny-sad excavations of life under capitalism into unlikely blockbusters. With “Mickey 17,” he’s bending a whole new genre.
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/magazine/bong-joon-ho-mickey-17.html
By Jonah Weiner
Jonah Weiner, a contributing writer for the magazine, writes frequently about film and pop culture. This article is based on interviews over several days in Seoul.
Published March 4, 2025
Updated March 7, 2025
Bong Joon Ho sent a text message a bit past noon, naming a subway station in Seoul and asking me to meet him there at 7 p.m. In his imperfect English, he signed off with a cryptic tease: “I’ll show you some ordinary but strange area. See you in front of GATE No. 4.”
Listen to this article, read by Robert Petkoff
It was the summer of 2023, and I’d gone to South Korea to watch Bong work on his eighth feature film, “Mickey 17,” a sci-fi action-adventure featuring Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie and Toni Collette. Bong — or Director Bong, as he’s known among Koreans and collaborators — is his country’s highest-profile filmmaker, at home and abroad. His last movie, “Parasite” (2019), won four Academy Awards, including best picture and best director.
Bong is drawn to confrontational, tone-scrambling material. “Irony and paradox,” he told me at one point, are “the driving force for me when I make films.” His style is to deploy genre conventions while subverting them in audacious and ingenious ways. As he once put it to a Korean interviewer, “Whatever genre I choose, I intend to destroy it.”
His movies are also fun, which explains why Bong has enjoyed a long run not only of critical acclaim but also commercial success. His 2006 monster-movie deconstruction, “The Host,” broke all Korean box-office records. Among its champions is no less of a genre-subverter than Quentin Tarantino, who likened Bong to “Spielberg in his prime.” “Parasite,” a home-invasion deconstruction, earned even more, planting him firmly in the pantheon of bankable contemporary auteurs.
Originally conceived for the stage, “Parasite” was a tightly focused Korean-language suspense story with an achingly ambiguous ending, no supernatural creatures and, unless you count its operatically grisly climax, zero action sequences. “Mickey 17” is a different beast entirely. Based on a 2022 novel by Edward Ashton, called “Mickey7,” the film is about a desperate loser named Mickey Barnes, played by Pattinson, who signs onto the crew of a spaceship as part of a campaign of intergalactic colonization. He’s tasked with the crushing work of an “Expendable”: His memories are uploaded so that his consciousness can be installed, as often as needed, into endlessly reprintable replicas of his body. These come in handy, because his job includes gulping down lung-liquefying airborne viruses and bathing himself in radiation, among other torturous and fatal work. At its core, Bong said, “it’s a story about working-class people. And I was attracted by the idea that his job is dying.”
Social stratification has been the dominant theme in Bong’s films since he was a student. Whether he is working in more-realist registers or more-fantastical ones, he situates his heroes within superstructures of class and power that determine, and frequently deform, their lives. “Quite many of my characters are confused,” he said. “They’re in the middle of a situation and don’t know what’s going on. It’s sad and comic at the same time.”
Arriving outside the subway station a few minutes early, I heard muffled voices, raised in what sounded like celebration, through the fabric-sided walls of a nearby shack. It was 87 degrees, and cicadas wove a psychedelic drone through the swelter. Across the street, high-rise apartments were under construction, rising to meet others looming nearby. Two CCTV cameras peeked through the branches of a ginkgo tree, mounted to a yellow surveillance pole — one of thousands like it around the city.
Soon, a scuffed white Hyundai pulled up, and Bong emerged from the passenger seat. He wore black Nike Air Max running shoes, black jeans and a black short-sleeve button-up shirt. His hair was tousled, and his eyes glinted behind rectangular, rimless glasses, in what has become his trademark look. He greeted me warmly, then drew my attention to something I hadn’t noticed, even though it was in plain sight.
Behind a concrete wall some 20 feet in front of us stood a rambling, grayish, four-story house. It was a mishmash of architectural styles and materials, suggesting a kind of down-at-heel, lunatic improvisation: brickface, aluminum, fabric, corrugated plastic, all of it grungy and weathered. There was a balcony with circular stone ornaments arranged at regular intervals and, behind these, an irregular span of wire fencing that tilted forward precariously. The roof was covered in tarp.
“This house is fascinating to me,” Bong said. “We are basically in Gangnam. A very fancy area, where you see these modern, high-rise apartments, and more being built. But this house is a very classic 1970s kind of architecture that is very uncommon in Seoul now.” He added: “I think someone is still living here. I’ve seen a light on inside.”
He stepped a bit closer. “I’ve never talked to them, but I have a fiction where I imagine that greedy developers — which is all developers — tried to buy everything around here, but they, for some reason, resisted.”
‘I was attracted to the idea that his job is dying.’
Bong brought me past the house, up a dirt path, where a dozen or so shanties came into view. Some were overgrown with weeds. Others had simple stacked-stone cairns decorating tidy front yards. Almost all had tarp roofs, secured in place by car tires. Down an alley, an elderly woman crouched in the dirt in flip-flops, staring blankly.
Bong took my pen and notebook from me and wrote down the words panjachon. “‘Flat wooden town,’” he translated. “I like these because they remind me of my first film” — his 1994 student short, “White Man.” “I shot it 30 years ago. That neighborhood was not far from here. And there’s a scene where you see houses like these surrounding a high rise.
“Now, it’s the reverse,” he went on. “The high rises surround the panjachon. I don’t know why they’re still here, so close to Gangnam. Maybe it’s the result of successful organizing. It’s very interesting to me.”
He added, “It’s almost like two different times exist in one space.”
Bong led us back to the sidewalk, toward the fabric-sided structure where I’d heard muffled voices. It turned out to be one of his favorite restaurants in town. “It’s dirty and stinky,” he said with affection, “but very friendly drinking and food place.” He pulled open the door. “Let’s get dinner?”
Inside the restaurant, the décor was funky, with gourds strung from the ceiling alongside bare bulbs and pendant lamps. The walls were clad with bamboo matting here, tree bark there. The clientele seemed to draw more heavily from the high-rises than from the panjachon. Bong chose a corner table, ordering Terra beers and assorted grilled dishes from the small open kitchen. In a hospitable gesture, he plucked a battery-powered fan from his bag and pointed it at me, to help with the heat.
I asked Bong why he thought his films — and so much of Korean pop culture — seemed to resonate so deeply with Americans. In answering this, he described Korea as a “crazy melting pot” of “different, incoherent” influences, extending back into the dynastic era, as Chinese and Japanese imperialist incursions gave way to warring Soviet and Western interests. This “incoherence,” as he put it, was “quite inspirational to creators.” Bong ventured that since America had exerted such strong influence over contemporary life in South Korea — occupying it immediately after World War II and then backing repressive dictatorships for decades — “maybe you guys are using Korean culture as a mirror of something in yours.”
ImageA still from “Mickey 17” with two of Robert Pattinson’s characters side by side.
In “Mickey 17,” Robert Pattinson plays Mickey Barnes, who joins an intergalactic mission as an “expendable.” He dies with every job, only to be reprinted.Credit…Warner Bros. Pictures
Image
A still from “The Host” of Song Kang-ho with a bloodied face.
Song Kang-ho, who appears often in Bong Joon Ho’s films, in the hit monster movie, “The Host” (2006).Credit…Magnolia Pictures/Everett Collection
Image
A still from “Parasite” with two of the character taking photos from their bathroom.
In “Parasite” (2019), a family of schemers sets its sights on finding a way into Seoul’s upper echelons by worming their way into the lives of a wealthy couple and their children.Credit…Neon/Everett Collection
He emphasized, though, that American audiences were not front of mind while he was making “Parasite”: “I never had the thought of ‘This will translate well globally.’ But I talked with Hwang Dong-hyuk, the director who made ‘Squid Game’” — the hit streaming Korean series in which impoverished contestants enter a sadistic survival tournament spectated by the hyperrich — “and he told me he never intended it, either. He just made it, and it’s on Netflix, so it spread all over the world. But it wasn’t surprising, because ‘Parasite’ and ‘Squid Game’ were about the hierarchy of society. Simply speaking, they’re about capitalism. And except for one or two countries, everyone’s living under capitalism — it’s a universal language.”
With little more than a piece of fabric separating the restaurant from the shanties, I thought about something that has occurred to me watching Bong’s films. No other director is as skilled at mapping action, pathos and intrigue onto vividly rendered physical spaces — spaces that arrange and undo the lives of the people within them and that embody the unequal distributions of power and freedom that are his career-spanning concern. This is perhaps unsurprising for a Korean filmmaker. Following the postwar ouster of the Japanese, who controlled Korea from 1910 until 1945, American military bureaucrats took a map and drew a profoundly consequential line across the 38th parallel. Soviet forces occupied the peninsula to the north of the line, while Americans, pursuing a strategy of anti-communist “containment,” took hold of the south.
But Bong has followed his interest in space further than any of his compatriots. You can see it in “White Man,” the student short, in which a white-collar worker climbs a staircase from a low-lying slum to Seoul’s affluent heights — a cosseted milieu that Bong disturbs when the protagonist discovers a severed finger outside his home and, in a bit of Lynchian perversity, decides to keep it. He extrapolated on that upstairs/downstairs schism in “Parasite,” whose action unfolds between a cramped basement apartment and a glass-and-concrete hilltop mansion. The mystery in “Mother,”from 2009, revolves around the peculiar sightlines of an abandoned dwelling. All these sets were chosen or built to accommodate the precise geometries of Bong’s scripts: When the films’ big twists arrive, they are narrative shocks that double as architectural ones.
In other Bong movies, the spaces he imagines are vessels. “Snowpiercer” (2013) follows a revolutionary underclass, jammed into the back of a train, as they fight their way toward the front. “Mickey 17,” set on a spaceship, is another vessel movie. Like the ship in “Sea Fog,” a 2014 Shim Sung-bo film about a fishing boat that Bong co-wrote, the spaceship has its own caste system, with Mickey at the very bottom. He spends much of his time in a dark, damp boiler room, whereas the ship’s despotic commander, Kenneth Marshall, played by Mark Ruffalo, lives in opulent chambers decorated in a garish Beaux-Arts pastiche.
‘Everyone’s living under capitalism — it’s a universal language.’
Bong is no polemicist though. His protagonists — often portrayed by the wonderful actor Song Kang-ho — have included charmingly bumbling agents of the state, as in “Memories of Murder,” about 1980s-era detectives who, while searching ineptly for a killer, find time to beat up student protesters and to violently interrogate a suspect with developmental disabilities. Other characters are flawed would-be revolutionaries, as in the factory-farming parable “Okja” (2017). Still others are working-class strivers who simply fight tooth-and-nail against fellow working-class strivers, as in “Parasite.” In “Mickey,” it’s Pattinson’s sad-sack grunt, who signs a contract granting him everlasting life in exchange for everlasting servitude — a human being transformed into an immortal cog.
Bong suspected that Korean audiences would readily identify with Mickey. “Korean history is very traumatic and quite harsh to the people,” he told me, drinking his Terra. When the dictatorship ended, it gave way to a merciless rat race and ever-widening wealth gap that many Koreans find unbearable. “We have a very workaholic country,” Bong said. “People are very hard to be relaxed.” In the late 2010s, some young Koreans took to bitterly calling South Korea “Hell Joseon” on social media. It is “a very sarcastic and very sad term,” Bong said, that nods at the stifling hierarchies of the country’s feudal past. (Joseon was Korea’s last imperial dynasty.)
“Hell Joseon” reflected a hopelessness about the future that Bong captured in the bleak coda of “Parasite.” But it has since been supplanted, he said, with the “very popular concept” of sohwakhaeng. He translated this for me as small but touchable happiness. “There are some young people saying, ‘I reject this, I hate all this, I’m not joining this craze of competition,’” he said. “And their lifestyle is different. They are not hippies, but they organize a calm and small life. My generation, and older generation, never had that. But the younger generation, they invented that concept. Don’t need a lot of money. Not that ambitious goal. Relatively less interested in politics, just trying to keep their own small universe.”
Our food arrived, steaming hot. Noticing sweat on both our brows, I picked up Bong’s electric fan and turned it toward him. “I want to share this fan,” I said.
“This is a small happiness,” he replied. “Clear and evident.
“Mickey 17” is the first feature that Bong has made with a Hollywood studio, and his most expensive one yet, with a budget just under $120 million. On this last score, though, he was ambivalent. “I prefer small productions, and I dislike big productions,” he said.
I’d heard chatter that when Warner Bros. greenlighted “Mickey 17,” the studio hoped it might spawn a new franchise, centered on a hero conveniently defined by his own potential for infinite undead sequelization. But Bong’s sensibility has proved consistently idiosyncratic in ways that fly against the logic of the multiplex. Most of his endings are depressing, and his English-language features, all of them science fiction, can feel especially strange, with heightened performances and a tonal volatility that has become his signature — a “switchback energy,” as Tilda Swinton, who has acted in two of his films, put it to me.
This energy is an effect not of wild abandon on Bong’s part, however, but of an extreme degree of control. He creates highly detailed storyboards for all his films, and these serve as unbudging blueprints during production. The cinematographer Darius Khondji, who worked with Bong on “Mickey 17” and “Okja,” and who has shot films for David Fincher, Alejandro Iñarritu and the Safdie Brothers, said that Bong “functions on a different wavelength I never felt with anyone before.” He compared the storyboards to a musical score. “Everything is written, and you can change the rhythm and the way you play the notes, but if you try to pull out a note, or a group of notes, he’ll say, ‘That doesn’t make sense.’”
Mark Ruffalo described this as a productive constraint. “It’s the most auteur-centric filmmaking style I’ve worked in,” Ruffalo said. “Every shot, every angle, every gesture is storyboarded, and he shoots the storyboard frame for frame. But that’s not to say he’s controlling. The exciting thing as an actor is that you’re free, in that frame, to reinvent the performance.”
For some actors, that feeling of freedom arrives only after a period of intense disorientation. “Normally you shoot a whole scene,” Pattinson explained, but with Bong’s approach, “he knows exactly which shot he wants for exactly which line, so sometimes we’re just shooting one line at a time. You show up on the first day and they say, ‘We’re gonna shoot the seventh line of this scene.’ You go: ‘What do you mean? I don’t know how I’m going to say the firstline.’ Usually, I’d have to do the whole scene to get the line right.
“So, everyone has a nervous breakdown for a week,” Pattinson went on. “But then you say, ‘Oh, this is great.’ If you’re shooting an entire scene, there’s a more legato rhythm, a crest and a fall, some gradation. But you don’t really need it for the style of performance Bong wants, and that frees you up to do these very discordant turns: If you’re just doing one line, you can do maximum intensity out of nowhere. It has this feel of anime — it can go from completely placid to enraged in a split second.”
Pattinson told me that Bong “seems very pleasantly amused by everything.” They talked a lot about the movie in the months preceding the shoot, but when it came to filming, Pattinson said, the director gave him license to explore: “It got to the point where I was just trying to make him laugh, trying things in playful ways. And he’d say, ‘Yeah, do whatever you want.’”
Image
A storyboard for “Mickey 17.”
For every film, Bong Joon Ho, who grew up reading graphic novels, carefully storyboards every scene.Credit…Bong Joon Ho
Bong explained that, despite the rigor of his storyboarding, he invites his actors to “relax,” because “good actors always do good improvisation that reinforces the story.” His own methods have grown more relaxed, too, over the years. He used to insist on shooting a large number of takes, in a spirit of perfectionism. “Ten, 15, sometimes 20 takes,” he said. “But during ‘Okja’ and ‘Parasite,’ I would only shoot four, five, six, seven. ‘Mickey 17’ also. I don’t know why. Maybe now I have a small insight of, This will all look the same in the editing room.”
He credited his son with inspiring this change. “When I was shooting ‘Memories of Murder,’ my son was 6, and he was on set, watching his daddy working. I was on Take 16 or 17, and my little son came to me and said, ‘Dad, you look so stupid.’ ‘Why?’ ‘You repeat the same thing again and again and again.’ And I told him, ‘No, no, no, it’s all different, very subtly and delicately.’ And he said: ‘No. It’s all the same. You look stupid.’” Bong chuckled. “That was the start of an awakening,” he said.
Bong was born in Daegu, in 1969, the youngest of four siblings. His grandfather, Park Tae-won, was a novelist who defected to the Communist North during the Korean War. His books were banned from South Korean bookstores. Bong’s father was a graphic designer and professor. His mother raised the children. When Bong was in third grade, the family moved to Seoul. “It was a rather normal, average family,” Bong said. “There was no tragedy or huge drama. But one thing is that we didn’t really go out camping or enjoy any leisure or sports — we watched TV, lots of it, all the family members. No trips, no traveling around. It was just, keep watching TV every day.” He added, in a deadpan, “This wasn’t particularly a sad thing for me.”
Bong spent his childhood reading graphic novels and watching domestic and international movies on VHS, South Korean television and AFKN, the American armed-forces network. “Most of the masterpieces I watched when I was younger played on TV,” he said. “Almost all of them were quite censored, though.”
These included films by Sidney Lumet, Brian De Palma, Sam Peckinpah and Alfred Hitchcock, who left a lasting impression. “Hitchcock’s movies overpower me,” Bong said. “I often have unsettled feelings and anxiety — I have a history of getting prescriptions for my anxiety — and that part of me is maybe drawn to Hitchcock’s movies. He translates the anxiety and fear I have in me into beautiful cinema.”
It was in middle school that Bong decided to become a director himself. In 1988, he enrolled in Yonsei University, cofounding a film club called the Yellow Door. They organized screenings of uncensored, black-market copies of films. “My major was sociology,” he recalled, “but I’m not interested much in sociology. I spent all my time at the cinema club.”
Campuses at this time were rocked by frequent demonstrations, as students agitated for expanded democratic rights, labor unions and reunification with North Korea. The government’s response was violent. In June 1987, a Yonsei student named Lee Han-yol suffered a skull fracture after a tear-gas canister hit him. He became a symbol of the movement and later died of his injuries.
Bong regards his own involvement as minimal. “I didn’t see myself as a very strong politically opinionated person,” he told me. “I participated in demonstrations, but it was very common at the time. I wasn’t part of the leaders. I was on the bottom of the pyramid.” Nonetheless, there are traces of this history throughout his work. Discussing “The Host” several years ago, Bong said he “was able to teach” the actor Park Hae-il “how to throw a Molotov cocktail because I had seen many protests.”
Bong briefly attended film school in the early ’90s, but “I spent one year,” he said, describing himself as mostly self-taught. He benefited from the spread of VHS and the gradual loosening of government restrictions on the arts. “Pop culture exploded, and everything poured out,” Bong said.
He taught himself screenwriting by buying and studying the scripts for three movies: the Korean crime comedy “No. 3,” by Song Neung-han (whose daughter, Celine Song, directed the critically acclaimed 2023 film “Past Lives”); the Coen Brothers’ “Fargo”; and “Silence of the Lambs.” You can sense a Coens-ish streak in Bong’s debut feature, “Barking Dogs Never Bite,” from 2000, a queasy dark comedy about a young academic living in a vast apartment complex who murders two of his neighbors’ pets. Bong expresses no great affection for this movie today, and few people have seen it. But after this relative misstep, he refined his formula. His breakthrough serial-killer deconstruction of 2003, “Memories of Murder,” harnessed his interests in social critique to a propulsive genre vehicle.
In that film, Bong suggested that the Korean state, unable to catch the country’s most infamous serial killer, functioned with ruthless efficiency when it came to quashing populist demonstrations. In his follow-up, “The Host,” an amphibious beast emerges from Seoul’s Han River, spawned by toxic pollution from an American military base. (This last detail is based on a true story.) It eats people, causes vast destruction, and — in a signature Bong twist — provides the government with the perfect pretext for an authoritarian crackdown more insidious than the monster attack.
With “Mickey 17,” Bong brings these themes into space. Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner, who oversee the production company Plan B, first sent Edward Ashton’s novel to Bong. Kleiner said the book “felt like something Bong might have come up with on his own: There was this class allegory, this funny mix of comedy and violence and an anti-authoritarian ethos that feels so core to who he is.”
On an enormous screen, in extreme close-up, an eyeball filled the frame. It was large and glistening, ringed by lustrous eyelashes and pebble-grained skin. Horselike hair drifted across the shot, catching snowflakes.
It was a couple days after our dinner, and I was with Bong in a postproduction suite on the west side of Seoul, watching as he fine-tuned the look of the creatures in “Mickey.” When the earthlings reach their destination planet, they encounter a population of many-appendaged beings they nickname Creepers. These are treated by some of the colonizers as objects of curiosity, but mostly with revulsion and fear.
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A portrait of Joon Ho through his glasses.
Bong Joon Ho in Los Angeles last month.Credit…Djeneba Aduayom for The New York Times
Bong was cycling through chunks of footage and giving notes to his visual-effects team in Los Angeles. Sitting beside him was an assistant named Michelle Youngbin Ha, who translated for him intermittently as he drifted in and out of English.
“One question here,” Dan Glass, the film’s VFX supervisor, said, “is whether you like the veins visible in the whites of the eye.” Bong replied, “The amount of vein is good.”
“Mickey 17” marks the third time that a Bong Joon Ho movie has featured a fantastical creature, all of which he designed in collaboration with Jang Hee-chul. They gave the toxic river monster in “The Host” a hideous look — an enormous legged fish with an overbite. They made the titular, sweet-natured superpig in “Okja” lumberingly cute, like a puppy crossed with a hippo. For “Mickey 17,” they intended the Creepers to split the difference. From some angles, they look like fleshy, nubby, writhing centipedes. From others they resemble majestic buffalo or woolly mammoths. In their squeaking infancy, they call to mind Tardigrades crossed with Baby Yoda. “In the very early stage of creature design, we shared many images of armadillo,” Bong noted. “Also croissant.”
This duality suited the story. “In the opening, I make it feel like the Creeper is scary and disgusting,” Bong said. “But gradually, we discover how they’re intellectual and some of their other characteristics. So we designed the Creeper in that direction. Once you’ve spent some time to look at it, you discover the loveliness.”
Bong moved from the close-up of the Creeper to a wider shot. He used a stylus to circle the creature’s mouth, requesting a modification to “the wave of the three tongues.” Then he drew a U shape on its belly, and said, “That part should be wet.”
Next came a shot of Pattinson pushing a cart through the spaceship’s claustrophobic innards. Bong told me that, while developing the film with his production designer, Fiona Crombie, “we talked about the spaceship as a factory flying in outer space.” He added that, “if you think of luxury hotels and department stores, there are spaces for the guests and shoppers, then you enter through the door for employees and suddenly you see pipes on the ceilings. Mickey occupies the staff-only space.” Bong had hoped to release live rats into the set — “it would have been the first time in cinema that we’d have rats in a spaceship,” he said — but that proved too impractical.
'We have this saying in Korea: “We fall for it, even though we know what’s up.” ’
Bong shot “Mickey 17” over four months, starting in August 2022, in the same studios, north of London, where “Harry Potter” was made. “We were in an old hangar,” he said. “They were making ‘Barbie’ on another soundstage at the same time, and ‘Fast and Furious.’ I bumped into Vin Diesel at lunch one day.”
Postproduction began in tandem, with an on-set editor assembling provisional cuts of scenes as Bong shot them. “Next to me is an editor, plugged into the monitors,” Bong explained, “and I’m telling him, ‘Use Take 4, cut it here.’”
That efficiency allowed him room to fiddle now, and the VFX work progressed methodically, at times pixel by pixel. A snowy exterior shot needed a bit more haziness. A light bulb glowing behind Steven Yeun in another shot needed a fixture inserted around it. The degree of digitally simulated camera rumble during a Creeper stampede was good. But Bong wondered if the needle of a syringe shouldn’t glint a bit more brightly before it plunged into Robert Pattinson’s neck.
“Years ago,” Bong said, “a Japanese actor told me that sometimes you shoot movies with a telescope and sometimes you approach them with a microscope. I prefer shooting with the microscope. So even when the budget is huge, I always try to look through a microscope.”
Now Bong was in electron-microscope mode. This work had been going on “for six months or so,” he told me, and it would continue, along with the rest of postproduction, for several months more, until the film was due at Warner Bros. ahead of a scheduled Spring 2024 release.
On the screen, Glass scrawled one of hundreds of directives like it across a Creeper, to be tackled later: “More wetness.”
At the start of 2024, word broke that Warner Bros. had pulled “Mickey 17” off its release calendar. Variety reported that this was done, according to unnamed sources, “to allow more time to finish the project, which had been affected because of last year’s strikes and other various production shifts.”
Several months later, the studio slotted “Mickey 17” for January 2025. Some speculated that Warner Bros. was unhappy with the film, since January is often a dumping ground for anticipated flops. But then the film moved again, and again, finally landing — dizzyingly, if you were paying attention, but more auspiciously — in March.
Not long ago, I got on a video call with Bong, who was at his office in Seoul. He wore a fuzzy brown-wool cardigan over a black T-shirt and was sitting in front of a wall of bookshelves. “I’m very happy with how things turned out,” he said. (Bong spoke to me both in English and through his longtime interpreter, Sharon Choi.) He waved off all the rescheduling, pointing to the fact that other Warners films, such as “Dune 2,” had moved around as well. He attributed the delay in the case of “Mickey 17” to “the SAG strike,” to the fact that Darius Khondji had been “very meticulous” during postproduction and to his own time-consuming attention to the Creepers: “I was quite ambitious with the visual effects.”
When I asked if he ever got the sense that Warner Bros. was unhappy with the cut he first submitted, Bong was politic. “I have to confess that, during 24 years, I made eight films, including ‘Mickey,’ and the marketing and distribution teams have always had a difficult time.” Bong furrowed his brow and added, “They start with a clear-cut answer about what something is, and my movies defy that.”
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Joon Ho on set with Pattison.
Bong Joon Ho shot “Mickey 17” in the same London studios where “Harry Potter” was filmed. Here, Pattinson gets ready for another fatal mission on the planet of Niflheim.Credit…Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros. Pictures
Bong has said he sees “no distinction between commercial and art films.” “Mickey 17” bears that out. The film looks beautiful, the way you would expect from a visionary director given a huge canvas and a large amount of money to spend filling it. And though Bong’s script tells a classic story of a hapless nobody who gets the chance to become a hero, it behaves in all kinds of unlikely ways for a top-dollar sci-fi action-adventure movie. Its protagonists take hits of a drug called Oxyfozol and act loopy. Pattinson wears a Lloyd Christmas “Dumb & Dumber” bowl-cut and speaks in a golly-gee, aw-shucks 1940s register out of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” Toni Collette’s character is obsessed with blending the Creepers into what she insists is a delicious condiment.
In interviews, Bong has referred to “Parasite” as “a staircase movie.” When I asked him how he describes “Mickey 17,” he said: “Maybe it’s a repetition movie. Repetition of foolishness, repetition of death.” In an expository montage early on, we see Mickey dying a string of grisly and goofy deaths and emerging over and over again, slippery and naked, from what looks like an M.R.I. machine crossed with an inkjet printer.
It’s a nightmarish vision of immortality that Bong plays for morbid slapstick laughs. But partway through, it occurred to me that “Mickey 17” was also a kind of fun-house-mirror companion to “Parasite.” In that film, the underemployed Kim family, which sees itself as locked for life into a zero-sum economic game, expends immense ingenuity in pursuit of nothing more than systematically replacing the domestic staff of the wealthy Park family. Early on in “Mickey 17,” the dopey titular Mickey is mistaken for dead and reprinted as Mickey 18, and these doubled Mickeys see themselves in competition — for the ship’s food rations, for its most miserable jobs and, since “multiples” are strictly prohibited by law, for survival. But with time, they join forces against the ship’s ruling elite in an act of solidarity that never arrives in “Parasite.”
Given that “Mickey 17” was shot in 2022, one scene in particular thrums with remarkable prescience: an assassination attempt on Ruffalo’s blustering Commander Marshall, in which a bullet grazes his left cheek. Bong filmed this scene some two years before a gunman shot at Donald Trump, grazing his right ear. “I remember watching the breaking news, and I thought, My god, what?” Bong said. “Mark joined me in the screening room, and when we watched that scene, we felt an uncanny feeling.”
Some audiences may be tempted to read the film as an allegory for the current American political and economic environment, with Marshall as a direct stand-in for Trump. Anticipating this, Bong said: “There’s no one-on-one match with someone in real life. I was wondering, What are the common characteristics of all these crazy leaders across history?” One of his answers was “they’re kind of contemptible and grotesque and strange, violent leaders, but what’s ironic is you see this dangerous charm they use to appeal to the people at the same time. That’s what makes them dangerous.” He went on: “We have this saying in Korea, almyeonseodo sogajunda: ‘We fall for it, even though we know what’s up.’”
The film’s final act revolves around Marshall’s plan to commit genocide against the Creepers, clearing the way for settlement of the alien planet by wiping its Indigenous inhabitants from its face. “There were contemporary tragedies that influenced my process,” in writing this story line, he told me, but Korean history was heaviest in his thoughts. “I grew up witnessing the military dictatorship, I saw the Gwangju massacre on TV,” he said, referring to a series of protests in May 1980 that were brutally suppressed. After students, activists and everyday citizens took up arms against the police, the Korean government sent in troops with support from the Carter administration, which feared the unrest might spread and lead North Korea to interfere. Hundreds were tortured and killed by the South Korean Army. “It’s a layer I carry with me,” Bong said. “It’s always in the undercurrents of my creative process.”
This plotline in “Mickey” tied into the film’s broader themes of repetition, he went on. “What’s most tragic is that these genocides repeatedly happen, throughout mankind. That’s what causes fear for me. We see these things repeat.” The most Hollywood thing about “Mickey 17,” in that light, is its ending, which suggests that maybe we are not doomed to repeat tragic errors forever.
“There is an optimism planted in there,” Bong said. “I see it as an optimistic movie.”
Before we ended our call, I asked Bong about the panjachon he took me to in 2023. Was it still there? “I recently passed by,” he said, “and everything around it is going through major construction. More skyscrapers are going up. But the food stalls are still there. And that house is still there. Even more surrounded now. Even higher fortress.” He craned his neck for effect, as though peering at a point some 100 stories high.
“Spaces like that can become inspiration for me,” Bong said. He thought he might make a movie about it someday.
Read by Robert PetkoffNarration produced by Krish Seenivasan and Emma KehlbeckEngineered by Anj Vancura
The ‘Parasite’ Director Brings Class Warfare to Outer Space
www.nytimes.com
Bong Joon Ho has turned his funny-sad excavations of life under capitalism into unlikely blockbusters. With “Mickey 17,” he’s bending a whole new genre.
Selling sex, selling dreams: Sex workers in Korean cinema
www.koreaherald.com/article/10435494
Published : March 6, 2025 – 17:28:08 Updated : March 6, 2025 – 19:14:09
From "Western princesses" to hostesses — trace Korea's turbulent modern history through the stories of those who bore its heaviest costs
When Sean Baker took home four statuettes at this year's Oscars—a feat unmatched since Walt Disney in 1954 —it cemented the director's reputation as cinema's preeminent chronicler of the sex worker community.
His film "Anora," about a Brooklyn stripper whose fairy-tale marriage to a Russian oligarch's son unravels spectacularly, won five Oscars, with four going to Baker himself: best director, best original screenplay, best editing and best picture.
From "Tangerine" (2015), with its transgender sex workers on a Christmas Eve adventure, to "The Florida Project" (2017), featuring a struggling single mother who turns to sex work to make rent, Baker's lens consistently finds humanity in those living on society's margins. His films dip into classic Hollywood genres only to reimagine them for worlds where the promised reward of the American dream is always just out of reach.
Baker's attention toward sex workers has an unlikely precursor halfway around the world. Long before Baker turned his camera toward American sex workers, Korean cinema had developed a notable preoccupation with prostitution that evolved into a genre unto itself. The evolving portrayals of sex workers in Korean films reflect the nation's dramatic transformation across war, industrialization and political upheaval. Each era produced its own cinematic archetype of the sex worker, their representations speaking volumes about Korea's social conditions and ideological currents.
Western princesses and hostesses
After the Korean War, a distinct category of sex workers emerged — the so-called "Western princesses" ("yanggongju") who mainly served US servicemen. These women, often adopting Western nicknames and styles of dress, were viewed as embodying an interesting duality — socially stigmatized yet often financially better off than many others. Korean filmmakers, in turn, saw them as a symbolically potent vehicle for exploring their country's complicated postwar relationship with the United States.
A scene from "The Flower in Hell" (KOFIC).jpeg
A scene from "The Flower in Hell" (KOFIC)
Shin Sang-ok's 1958 classic "The Flower in Hell" examines this positionality through the character of Sonya, played by the director's wife Choi Eun-hee. The film's quasi-documentary opening sequences capture postwar Seoul with startling directness, focusing on the sexual transactions between US soldiers and Korean prostitutes. Sonya emerges as predatory, self-confident, capable and alluring — qualities that shocked viewers accustomed to seeing Choi, then a major star of Korean cinema, in more demure roles.
Shin's integration of documentary footage and on-location shooting bears distinct traces of Italian Neorealism, while the film's melodramatic spectacles create a heterogeneous style that effectively captures postwar chaos. Its unflinching portrayal set a precedent for Korean cinema to address uncomfortable social realities through the life of the prostitute.
By the 1970s, South Korea's rapid industrialization under military strongman Park Chung-hee's economic development initiatives had profoundly transformed the social fabric. More young women migrated from rural villages to urban centers and found work in factories or as domestic workers; financial difficulty and limited opportunities pushed many into sex work. This socioeconomic change formed the backdrop for the so-called "hostess films" — a cinematic phenomenon that would dominate Korean screens for the next decade.
The term "hostess" (hoseuteseu) emerged as a blanket euphemism for prostitutes and bar workers during this period. A veritable cultural industry sprang up around these women's lives: tabloid newspapers and magazines fueled public fascination with the hostess underworld with sexually charged reports of their lifestyle and exploits.
Real-life sex workers published novels based on their experiences, which went on to become bestsellers and led to successful film adaptations. "I am a No. 77 Girl," a major 1978 box office hit starring top star Jung Yoon-hee, was adapted from the firsthand account of Yoon Go-na, a former sex worker. "Ms. O's Apartment" (1978) similarly originated from ex-hostess Oh Mi-young's tell-all writings.
As fetishized narratives of sex work circulated across media, the distinction between fictional portrayals and documented realities of hostess women began to dissolve in the public imagination.
Canonical hostess films
Two films in this era served as the template for the hostess film genre: Lee Jang-ho's "Heavenly Homecoming to Stars" (1974) and Kim Ho-seon's "Young-ja's Heydays" (1975). Both were phenomenal commercial successes that dominated the box office.
A scene from "Heavenly Homecoming to Stars" (KOFIC).jpeg
A scene from "Heavenly Homecoming to Stars" (KOFIC)
"Heavenly Homecoming to Stars," based on a novel by Choi In-ho, follows Kyoung-ah, a young woman who moves to the city and falls into prostitution after failed relationships with four men. Lee's directorial debut was an instant landmark in Korean cinema. Its blending of traditional melodrama centered on the tragic downfall of a virtuous woman sacrificing herself for unworthy men, with stylistic innovations including dreamlike slow-motion sequences and popular folk music soundtracks, proved a smash hit especially among younger male viewers.
The film's success spawned two sequels and opened a new cinematic movement led by young directors. It is widely considered the touchstone of 1970s youth culture, with its candid take on sexuality and urban disillusionment resonating with a generation chafing under authoritarian rule.
A scene from "Young-ja's Heydays" (KOFIC).jpeg
A scene from "Young-ja's Heydays" (KOFIC)
"Young-ja's Heydays," much like "Heavenly Homecoming," follows a rural woman's journey to Seoul that spirals into a cascade of misfortunes. After being sexually assaulted by her employer's son, Young-ja is dismissed from her position and later loses an arm in an accident while working as a bus conductor (In the film's most surreal sequence, her severed limb rockets skyward without shedding a drop of blood — a moment so divorced from reality that it momentarily transforms the social drama into some kind of abstract expressionism).
When she encounters her former lover Chang-su, who has returned from serving in Vietnam, she chooses to marry a disabled man rather than burden Chang-su with her "tainted" status.
Both films stand as exceptionally crafted melodramas by 1970s standards — working within a genre deeply embedded in Korean cinema that derives its pathos from a profound sympathy for the victim-heroes. Their formal approach marks a real breakthrough though, not least in juxtaposing gritty documentary-style footage of urban squalor against the dreamlike, often hypersexualized images of their protagonists. Yeom Bok-soon shines in her leading role in "Young-ja," her performance balancing quiet resilience against devastating vulnerability without a hint of artifice.
Censorship and sacrifice
A curious aspect of these films' success was their ability to flourish under the military dictatorship’s strict censorship laws.
The Park Chung-hee regime's film censorship targeted works that were, among others, deemed "socially critical" or "overly realistic" in their depiction of poverty or political dissent. Park revised the Motion Picture Law four times during his rule. The most draconian revision was the "Yushin Film Law" of 1973, which gave officials broad powers to halt productions at any stage based solely on their whim.
How did hostess films, with their explicit portrayals of prostitution and urban poverty, manage to slip past the censor's scissors? Film scholars point to their embrace of patriarchal narratives about female sexuality and sacrifice — themes that served the authoritarian regime's playbook. While these works didn't shy away from the gritty underbelly of Korea's rapid industrialization, they simultaneously packaged female sexuality as something nobly surrendered for the family and the nation, a message that dovetailed neatly with Park's rhetoric about national service and sacrifice laid out in state-led development campaigns.
The heroines of these films were typically framed as virtuous country girls who chose prostitution for selfless motives like sending money home or supporting the men in their lives. Yet, these stories invariably ended with some poetic punishment — through death, illness or disappearance. This coda satisfied the censors while still delivering the titillation audiences craved.
The 1980s: New freedoms, new films
The 1980s brought another military strongman to power. After seizing control in 1980 and brutally crushing the Gwangju Democratic Uprising, President Chun Doo-hwan implemented his "3S" policy — a shorthand for Sex, Sports and Screen — a strategic campaign of mass entertainment including professional baseball leagues, late-night theater hours and relaxed censorship on sexual content aimed at distracting the public.
These loosened restrictions came with a crucial caveat. Political dissent remained off-limits. Works with just a whiff of government criticism were swiftly banned even as those featuring nudity got free passes. The message was clear: show all the skin you want, just don't mention the student demonstrations or labor organizing.
The result was an unprecedented explosion of erotic films. Japanese-inspired "soft-core" films tested sexual boundaries. Historical dramas moved bedroom scenes to Korea's dynastic past. The "Madame" series, kicked off by "Madame Aema" (1982), followed middle-class housewives on their sexual adventures. Many directors saw these films as necessary compromises, while others found creative space within these constraints.
The hostess genre evolved through this period, maintaining a presence as directors pushed well beyond their predecessors' limits with more explicit content and pulpy storytelling.
Amid this trend, director Im Kwon-taek's "Ticket" (1986) offered something more substantial. Considered one of Korea's most revered auteurs, Im took the genre in a new direction by exploring the contradictions facing women in the sex industry with hard realism and daring narrative ambitions.
A scene from "Ticket" (KOFIC)
"Ticket" follows five women working at a "dabang" — a now-rare type of Korean coffee house that often doubled as a brothel. Veteran actress Kim Ji-mee plays the madam who maintains strict control over her business but grapples with her own troubled past.
Im's directorial approach rejects both didactic moralism and manipulative spectacle. He employs an austere aesthetic that captures social reality with unflinching clarity. The film builds toward a climactic transgression that at once deconstructs the system it portrays and acknowledges the structural impossibility of resolving its contradictions through individual action. This self-reflexive quality squarely places "Ticket" as both a culmination and critique of the hostess film tradition.
A scene from "Prostitution" (KOFIC)
Meanwhile, the 1988 film "Prostitution" directed by Yu Jin-sun took a different approach, embracing sensationalism with an impressive commercial outcome. With 432,600 tickets sold, it was the year's second-highest-grossing film and continued with five sequels through the early 1990s. The film's formulaic plot primarily functions as a setup for its audacious denouement: Protagonist Na-young arranges for her fellow sex worker's funeral hearse to arrive at the wedding of her former lover, forcing him to kneel before the coffin as guests watch in shock. This cathartic act of revenge offers a more radical imagination of justice than the passive suffering depicted in earlier hostess films.
While they maintained many conventions of the hostess melodrama, these later works of the 1980s increasingly allowed their protagonists to express agency, anger and resistance rather than merely suffering virtuously for others' benefit.
Films discussed in the article — "Flower in Hell," "Heavenly Homecoming to Stars," "Young-ja's Heydays" and "Ticket" — can be viewed on the Korean Film Archive's YouTube channel with English subtitles.
moonkihoon@heraldcorp.com
Selling sex, selling dreams: Sex workers in Korean cinema
www.koreaherald.com
From “Western princesses” to hostesses — trace Korea’s turbulent modern history through the stories of those who bore its heaviest costs When Sean Baker took home four statuettes at this year’s Osca…
Attacks on ‘comfort women’ heralded the violent far right seen today in Korea, advocate says
english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1184826.html
Posted on : 2025-02-28 17:34 KST Modified on : 2025-02-28 17:34 KST
Lee Na-young says the issue of history denial “cannot be ignored any longer,” and that legal measures must be established to combat attacks on survivors of Japan’s system of sexual slavery
Lee Na-young, the chair of the board of the Korean Council, reads messages in a new memorial space created at the War & Women’s Human Rights Museum for the recently deceased Gil Won-ok, a survivor of the Japanese “comfort women” system of sexual slavery and advocate for women’s rights, on Feb. 24, 2025. (Jung Yong-il_Hankyoreh).webp
Lee Na-young, the chair of the board of the Korean Council, reads messages in a new memorial space created at the War & Women’s Human Rights Museum for the recently deceased Gil Won-ok, a survivor of the Japanese “comfort women” system of sexual slavery and advocate for women’s rights, on Feb. 24, 2025. (Jung Yong-il/Hankyoreh)
A memorial service did not deter right-wing protesters determined to heckle advocates for the rights and dignity of victims of Japan’s “comfort women” system of sexual enslavement.
When activists seeking a resolution for women forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II held their 1,688th Wednesday Demonstration near the former Japanese Embassy in Seoul’s Jongno District, the rally doubled as a memorial for Gil Won-ok, a survivor of the “comfort women” system who had passed away three days earlier.
But near the service held in Gil’s memory, members of a group called National Action to Abolish the Comfort Woman Act chanted slogans denying that the Japanese military had even run comfort stations.
“Gil Won-ok went there [to the comfort station] of her own free will to earn some money,” one protester shouted.
For the past two years, members of this group have been performing what they call the “comfort woman statue removal challenge.” They travel around the country to statues of a young woman representing the victims of wartime gender violence and place a mask that reads “removal” on the statue’s head or drape a black plastic bag over the statue.
The number of living survivors who are registered with the Korean government as victims of the “comfort women” system is now down to seven, and the chances of them ever receiving an official apology and compensation from the Japanese government are remote. Yet an increasing number of people are denying the historical facts and attacking the victims.
“The groups denying history that we’ve dealt with at the Wednesday Demonstrations over the past five years heralded the rise of the far right that we’re witnessing today,” said Lee Na-young, the chair of the board of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. As an example, she mentioned a recent riot at the Seoul Western District Court.
“This is an issue that cannot be ignored any longer,” Lee said during an interview with the Hankyoreh on Monday at the council’s office in Seoul’s Mapo District. The interview took place shortly before Korea commemorates the March 1 Independence Movement, which is a flashpoint in the ongoing fight over history.
Lee, who has been monitoring history deniers since she assumed her position in May 2020, said it was in late 2019 that people who had been disrupting the Wednesday Demonstrations organized the “Group Opposed to Installing Statues for Comfort Women and Conscript Laborers” (for short, the “Anti-Statue Group”).
In July of that year, a number of “new right” theorists — including Rhee Young-hoon, chair of the Naksungdae Institute of Economic Research — published a book called “Anti-Japan Tribalism” that rejected the established history of Japan’s compulsory mobilization of Korean sex slaves and conscript laborers.
A coauthor of this book and researcher at the institute only identified by the surname Lee took the lead in setting up the Anti-Statue Group and became co-president of another group that called itself the “Alliance for Liquidating the Comfort Woman Fraud” in 2023.
(Top) On May 22, 2024, the Korean Council and Lee Yong-soo, a survivor of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, hold a press conference outside the German Embassy in Seoul. (Bottom) Around 30 meters from the Korean Council’s press conference, a counterprotest by the far right calls for the removal of “Statue of Peace” memorials to “comfort women.” (Kim Ga-yoon_Hankyoreh).webp
(Top) On May 22, 2024, the Korean Council and Lee Yong-soo, a survivor of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, hold a press conference outside the German Embassy in Seoul. (Bottom) Around 30 meters from the Korean Council’s press conference, a counterprotest by the far right calls for the removal of “Statue of Peace” memorials to “comfort women.” (Kim Ga-yoon/Hankyoreh)
Lee Na-young mentioned the 2021 controversy over a research paper written by Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer describing the comfort women as “voluntary prostitutes.” Just as Ramseyer’s paper was “not a spontaneous development, but rather the culmination of the Japanese far-right network’s encroachment on the US,” she regards the rise of history negationism inside Korea as representing the first fruits of a long-running effort to organize people for this cause.
“The ‘war over history’ with Korea’s far right has lasted for more than two decades now, since the ‘new right’ went public in 2004,” Lee commented.
The new right took shape during the presidency of Roh Moo-hyun. Under conservative Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, the movement sought to revise history books and to celebrate Aug. 15, 1948, as the day when the Republic of Korea’s government was established. (This initiative is controversial because it’s seen as rejecting the legacy of the Provisional Government of Korea, which was established after the March 1 Independence Movement in 1919.)
The Syngman Rhee School was set up by the authors of “Anti-Japan Tribalism” in 2016, followed by a YouTube channel called Syngman Rhee TV in 2017, both named after the first president of Korea.
Multiple figures who reject the history of Japan’s military sexual slavery system have taken the lead in defending President Yoon Suk-yeol’s short-lived martial law declaration last December and opposing his impeachment. Perhaps the most prominent of them is Jun Kwang-hoon, the pastor of Sarang Jeil Church, who has denigrated the Korean women who survived such horrors in nasty remarks about them occupying “official brothels.”
Other groups belonging to the movement are the Mothers’ Brigade, the New Freedom Union, and the National Enlightenment Movement.
A YouTuber identified by the surname Choi who has disparaged the comfort women in live broadcasts of rallies by the Alliance for Liquidating the Comfort Woman Fraud over the past four years was recently jailed on charges of trespassing during the riot at the Seoul Western District Court.
“Far-right history deniers who want to eliminate certain memories are similar to insurrectionists in the sense that they reject key values of democracy,” Lee said.
“The normalization of the far right has grown more severe during the presidency of Yoon Suk-yeol,” she added.
Large numbers of figures affiliated with the new right have been appointed to positions under Yoon including Kim Tae-hyo, first deputy national security advisor; Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho; Kim Hyoung-suk, president of the Independence Hall of Korea; Kim Nak-nyeon, head of the Academy of Korean Studies; Park Yi-taek, board member at the Independence Hall of Korea; Lee Bae-yong, chair of the National Education Commission; and Kim Kwang-dong, former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The Yoon administration’s foreign policy with Japan has also been problematic.
Lee observed that Yoon had rammed through a “third-party compensation” plan that seeks to compensate Korean victims of forced labor through a foundation that collects donations from Korean companies.
“Yoon has jumped on the bandwagon of far-right history denialism, robbing Korean victims of their rights and siding with the Japanese government,” she said.
These trends have been very painful for the former comfort women.
“The attack [by the far right] grew fiercer during the pandemic, when people weren’t able to join the Wednesday Demonstrations,” Lee said.
National Action to Abolish the Comfort Woman Act has harassed the former “comfort women” by filing nuisance complaints with the police (all of which were dismissed) asserting that the women had falsely claimed to be victims of the Japanese military’s sexual slavery to collect illicit subsidies from the government.
Lee said that “the time has come to set up legal measures” to combat the proliferation of such attacks.
It’s not feasible for the elderly survivors — who are 95.7 years old on average — or their family members to take legal measures, such as filing slander or defamation lawsuits, in each of these cases.
“A complaint about defamation against the dead can only be filed by immediate family members. But most of the deceased victims do not have any living family members, so it’s impossible to file defamation charges,” Lee said.
A photo of the Statue of Peace defaced with a mask reading “remove” and a sign reading “eyesore” taken as part of an online “challenge” among the far right to affront and deface the memorials across Korea and call for their removal. (from social media).jpeg
A photo of the Statue of Peace defaced with a mask reading “remove” and a sign reading “eyesore” taken as part of an online “challenge” among the far right to affront and deface the memorials across Korea and call for their removal. (from social media)
Following a meeting of its legal policy advisory board in 2021, the Korean Council has been pushing to revise the Act on Protection, Support and Commemorative Projects for Sexual Slavery Victims for the Japanese Imperial Army.
The proposed revision would redefine damage under the law and criminalize those who spread falsehoods about victims of Japan’s systematic sexual exploitation. Offenders could face up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 50 million won.
Lee noted that “our society is sensitive about the freedom of expression because of the dictatorships of the past,“ but stressed that this was the “minimum safeguard” needed to ensure that history is properly remembered.
Paradoxically, the very presence of groups advocating the denial of history reveals the power of memory. That’s also why the Korean Council is hard at work on building a digital archive.
Since becoming chair of the board, Lee has hired several archivists. The group opened a website called “War and Women’s Human Rights Archives” in 2023 and has been posting a backlog of digitized materials.
“The reason we need to remember history is so that when we find ourselves in the same situation as before, we don’t repeat the same mistakes as before. Preventing their recurrence isn’t as easy as it sounds. There must be an unending effort to bring the past into the present,” she stressed.
By Kim Hyo-sil, staff reporter
Attacks on ‘comfort women’ heralded the violent far right seen today in Korea, advocate says
english.hani.co.kr
Lee Na-young says the issue of history denial “cannot be ignored any longer,” and that legal measures must be established to combat attacks on survivors of Japan’s system of sexual slavery
‘Comfort woman’ survivor Gil Won-ok remembered as tenacious, caring women’s rights advocate
english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1183077.html
Posted on : 2025-02-18 18:20 KST Modified on : 2025-02-18 18:20 KST
The former “comfort woman” used her voice and her stories to endeavor to bring an end to wartime violence against women
Messages of mourning from members of the Peace Nabi Network, a nationwide network of student groups organizing for the survivors of the Japanese military’s wartime sexual slavery system, fill a poster in memory of Gil Won-ok at her wake at the Incheon Red Cross Hospital. (Kim Hye-yun_Hankyoreh).jpeg
Messages of mourning from members of the Peace Nabi Network, a nationwide network of student groups organizing for the survivors of the Japanese military’s wartime sexual slavery system, fill a poster in memory of Gil Won-ok at her wake at the Incheon Red Cross Hospital. (Kim Hye-yun/Hankyoreh)
“They bought me for 20 won and I followed them to get my father out of prison.”
In 1940, Gil Won-ok, a 12-year-old girl living in Pyongyang, journeyed to China to earn money for her father, only to become a “comfort woman” — a victim of the Japanese military sexual slavery system. She was deceived by promises of employment. Unable to return to her hometown with the Korean War and subsequent division of the Korean Peninsula, Gil made Incheon her new home.
A television program she watched in 1998 prompted her to break her silence and register with the South Korean government as a victim of military sexual slavery by imperial Japan. Not every former “comfort woman” became an activist. Up until 2002, Gil stayed out of the limelight, worried that her acquaintances would learn of her tragic past. To those trying to record testimonies for the sake of history, Gil avoided giving straight answers, saying, “If I remembered everything that happened, I would not have been able to live.”
Gil, who had no choice but to forget aspects of her past to survive, changed after participating in the Wednesday Demonstrations for the “comfort women” victims, which for over 30 years have demanded that the Japanese government issue an official apology and compensation, and meeting other former “comfort women,” such as her best friend Kim Bok-dong. She realized that the shame from her experiences was not her responsibility, but something the Japanese government should own up to.
She spent the rest of her days as a women’s rights and peace activist. Traveling all over the world to testify in countries such as Japan, Switzerland and America, Gil publicized the “comfort woman” issue at home and abroad. In 2017, she founded the Gil Won-ok Women’s Peace Prize, a fund to discover and support Korean women activists who work for peace and Korean unification.
The funeral altar of Gil Won-ok, a survivor of the Japanese military’s wartime sexual slavery system, at her wake at the Incheon Red Cross Hospital on Feb. 17, 2025. (Kim Hye-yun_Hankyoreh).jpeg
The funeral altar of Gil Won-ok, a survivor of the Japanese military’s wartime sexual slavery system, at her wake at the Incheon Red Cross Hospital on Feb. 17, 2025. (Kim Hye-yun/Hankyoreh)
The Incheon Red Cross Hospital Funeral Home in Incheon’s Yeonsu District, where Gil’s wake was held, welcomed a wealth of people who came to honor her memory on Monday. Those who knew her in life remembered Gil as a tenacious and caring advocate for women’s rights.
Anna Song, the co-founder of Friends of “Comfort Women” in Australia, stated, “Journeying so far from her home to recollect old memories would’ve been excruciating, but she always had a warm smile on her face while she comforted the hearts of South Korean diaspora in Australia. Gil always emphasized the importance of peace. She constantly talked about how she wanted to stop the repeated violence experienced by women during war and crises through her testimonies.”
Song said, “When we informed Carol, the daughter of the Dutch Australian who first spoke out publicly about the atrocities of the Japanese military, Jan Ruff-O’Herne, of Gil’s passing, she expressed her condolences by telling us that Gil was a force to be reckoned with and expressing thanks that Gil and her own mother were able to share their grievances and gain solace in one another. Gil will be remembered not only by the people of South Korea but also by the people she met on the various trips she made around the world.”
Ryu Ji-hyeong, the leader of the solidarity movement team at the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, told the Hankyoreh, “Gil often said that she forgot her woes through singing. I remember how she would sing through her day.”
“During their time together at Peaceful Our Home, Gil was always seen with Kim Bok-dong. If Kim vented her frustration at the Japanese government, saying whatever was on her mind and what it needed to hear, Gil would lighten the mood by making jokes or singing. When Gil was by herself, however, she would show a different side by making eloquent speeches. That made me think that the two made quite a good team,” Ryu said.
Around 20 members of the Peace Nabi Network, a federation of university groups, participated in the wake and gave Gil’s remaining family cards with messages of condolences. “We will continue to uphold Gil’s wishes and ensure that her songs are heard. We will remember Gil’s courage and commitment to building a just world. We will etch Gil’s belief that ‘our children should roam the world in peace’ in our hearts and cherish them forever,” one read.
Kim Yoon-duk, 31, who became familiar with Gil when in college as they participated regularly in the weekly Wednesday Demonstrations, stated, “Gil always welcomed the college students participating in the demonstrations with open arms. I remember how she once shed tears while reminiscing about how she, as a young girl, romped around near a stream. My heart aches to think about how she left us without ever having been able to go back to her hometown in the North.”
Lee Yong-soo, another victim of Japanese military sexual slavery and activist who worked tirelessly alongside Gil, also visited the wake to say her last goodbyes to her old friend and comrade. Lee and Gil, along with Kim Bok-dong, who passed in 2019, actively campaigned to raise awareness across the world about the abominable acts committed by the Japanese military during the Japanese occupation of Korea.
As a Catholic, Lee bowed her head in front of Gil’s portrait for a few moments of silence before making the sign of the cross. She also joined Gil’s remaining family to see Gil’s body be placed in her coffin.
“Every victim of sexual slavery has been waiting and waiting to receive compensation from the Japanese government. Knowing that my friend passed without receiving anything fills my heart with so much sorrow,” Lee wept. Lee went on to emphasize how “the National Assembly and government should persistently put pressure on the Japanese government to receive an official apology on the issue of ‘comfort women’ and adequate compensation.”
Activists with the Peace Nabi Network arrive at the wake of Gil Won-ok, a survivor of the Japanese military’s wartime sexual slavery system and women’s rights activist, at the Incheon Red Cross Hospital on Feb. 17, 2025. (Kim Hye-yun_Hankyoreh).jpeg
Activists with the Peace Nabi Network arrive at the wake of Gil Won-ok, a survivor of the Japanese military’s wartime sexual slavery system and women’s rights activist, at the Incheon Red Cross Hospital on Feb. 17, 2025. (Kim Hye-yun/Hankyoreh)
With National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik, chair of the National Assembly’s Gender Equality and Family Committee Lee In-seon, Democratic Party lawmaker Jin Seon-mi, People Power Party (PPP) lawmaker Lee Dal-hee, Vice Gender Equality Minister Shin Young-sook as her audience, Lee lambasted President Yoon Suk-yeol, saying, “When Yoon was still only a candidate for president, he stopped by the Museum of Sexual Slavery by Japan and declared that even if he failed to become president, he would solve the issues faced by the victims of sexual slavery. However, he has done absolutely nothing since becoming president.”
“The victims’ funerals should not be undertaken in this manner. We need to receive compensation from the Japanese government and then go forth with the funeral,” she went on.
Government officials and politicians including former President Moon Jae-in, acting President Choi Sang-mok, Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung and interim PPP leader Kwon Young-se sent wreaths bearing messages of condolence to the funeral home to pay their respects as she left on her final journey. Gil’s funeral procession departed the Incheon Red Cross Hospital at 9:30 am on Tuesday. The Korean Council, which ran Peaceful Our Home, the shelter for former comfort women that Gil stayed at from 2004 to 2020, will hold a memorial for Gil during this week’s Wednesday Demonstration.
By Chung In-seon, staff reporter; Kim Hyo-sil, staff reporter
‘Comfort woman’ survivor Gil Won-ok remembered as tenacious, caring women’s rights advocate
english.hani.co.kr
The former “comfort woman” used her voice and her stories to endeavor to bring an end to wartime violence against women
Some 300 million migrant workers in China live as second-class citizens without proper documents. This worker-poet is trying to get new “hukou” and live the Chinese
Dream.
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/02/14/china-migrant-worker-hukou/
Today at 4:00 a.m. EST
Wu Xia was a part of a new generation of working-class writers in China. (Video: Yuhong Pang/The Washington Post)
By Lyric Li, Christian Shepherd and Yuhong Pang
As a teenager living in a spartan dorm with 11 other factory workers, Wu Xia dreamed of becoming a published author and leaving the assembly line behind. It was the 1990s, a time in China when anything seemed possible.
“I wrote like crazy, believing I could become somebody if I did it for long enough,” recalled Wu, now 42.
It didn’t quite work out as planned, although there was a time when she was hailed as an exciting voice in China’s new generation of working-class writers.
These days Wu is instead using her pen to pursue a different dream that would dramatically improve her family’s prospects: to swap her “hukou,” or household registration, in her rural hometown in western China for prized residency in one of the biggest cities on the affluent east coast.
Wu is one of the 300 million people who left their hometowns in rural China in search of work in the big cities. Over four decades starting in the mid-1980s, they formed the largest wave of internal migration the world has ever seen.
This “floating population” fueled China’s dramatic economic growth, building skyscrapers and highways, and staffing the factories that supplied the world with cheap clothes, toys and gadgets.
But they were rarely granted hukou, or residency, in the cities where they lived and worked, remaining bureaucratically domiciled in their faraway hometowns.
Wu Xia hopes to get her "hukou," or permanent residency, in Shenzhen, China, where she currently lives; but it requires an exam she’s struggled to pass. (Video: Yuhong Pang/The Washington Post)
The hukou system acts like an internal passport: Everyone in China has a maroon booklet that legally binds them to a particular locality. With hukou documentation for the city where they live, residents can access a wider array of public services, including schools, health care and housing. They also have an advantage in applying for high-paying jobs, which employers often limit to local hukou holders.
But residents without local hukou are always, officially, outsiders. That means their children can find it difficult to attend local public schools, leading millions of parents to leave their kids behind in rural hometowns while they work in first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Many experts consider slow hukou reform a key obstacle to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s goal of delivering “common prosperity” — Communist Party lingo for curbing inequality and expanding the middle class.
Xi himself, according to official propaganda, wrote in his doctoral thesis that the system had prevented farmers from assimilating into cities.
Under Xi, the government has tweaked the system to make it easier for people to move from the countryside into smaller cities and towns. But it has kept restrictions high for movement between cities, and it is especially hard for low-income families to get papers for a first-tier city without being born there.
Wu Xia buys breakfast for her daughter on their way to the bus station in Shenzhen's Bao'an district. (Yuhong Pang for The Washington Post)
Wu has called Shenzhen — a southern city of 18 million people — home for nearly three decades. But she, and the 14 million other internal migrants in the city, are not officially residents.
China may now be wealthy, but not having local hukou papers has prevented working-class families like Wu’s from properly settling in big cities and carving out a better life.
Wu has been trying to get that paperwork. Toward the end of last year, she sat in her shabby rented apartment in a run-down “urban village” on the outskirts of Shenzhen, studying for an exam that would vastly improve her chances of securing increasingly elusive hukou for the city.
Even as she prepared, her chances were growing slimmer. The Shenzhen government is increasingly prioritizing migrants who have bought homes, have college degrees or have paid more than $32,700 in income tax over the previous three years combined.
With Shenzhen hukou, Wu would be able to send her children to cheaper public schools with better teachers. She would have access to better and more-affordable housing for her parents and two teenage daughters. Her father is bedridden after being paralyzed by chronic shingles and multiple strokes.
Wu was determined but fretful about her prospects. “A factory worker with no connection or degrees has little chance of rewriting her fate,” she said.
Wu Xia has called Shenzhen home for nearly three decades. (Yuhong Pang for The Washington Post)
Into the city and escaping the factory
Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, became the test bed for China’s economic reforms and opening to the world in the 1980s. Its transformation from fishing village to manufacturing hub would soon become a symbol of China’s economic success.
With factory after factory opening, millions flocked to Shenzhen from the Chinese hinterlands in search of work as low-cost laborers.
One of those was Wu’s mother, Li Jinxiu, who became the first in her village in the southwestern province of Sichuan to take up factory work 760 miles away in Shenzhen. Wu’s father soon followed. Then Wu dropped out of school at 14 to join them, using a fake ID to secure a position cutting loose threads from clothes before they were sent for packaging.
In the 1980s, Wu Xia’s mother, Li Jinxiu, was one of millions who flocked to Shenzhen from rural China to find work in factories. (Video: Yuhong Pang/The Washington Post)
Life inside the gated industrial compound was basic, busy and strictly controlled. In a memoir she published in 2022, Wu wrote that the factory was a “prison-like” place, with no fun, no freedom and no privacy.
“People saw factory girls as no more than a cog in the machine,” Wu said. “[They] forgot that we are human.”
Wu Xia visited an abandoned building that was once the factory where she worked in Shenzhen, China. (Video: Yuhong Pang/The Washington Post)
Though her 20s, Wu used writing to vent her frustrations. Those early works of fiction often featured a young woman like herself — only one who was happy, rich and strong.
In reality, life didn’t work out that way for Wu. At 27, she eloped with a construction worker after an unexpected pregnancy. They would divorce eight years (and a second daughter) later, but not before her husband gambled away most of Wu’s savings.
By her early 30s, Wu had penned over 300 poems and her reputation as an aspiring writer attracted the attention of a well-known author who was making a documentary about factory workers with literary aspirations.
She was among a broader group of working-class writers that emerged in the 2010s. Some made it big, like Chen Nianxi, a coal miner also featured in the documentary, who became a best-selling author. But few managed to build a stable career.
Wu was the only woman featured in the documentary. She read a poem about a factory worker in a sweat-soaked uniform making a slip dress and imagining the free-spirited woman who would one day wear it.
The film was critically acclaimed, and as a result Wu was invited to the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2015. She showed up on the red carpet in a $10 slip dress in pink, her favorite color.
State media — which often celebrate the rich personal lives of factory workers to promote the official narrative that everyone can better themselves through hard work — quickly incorporated Wu’s story into their propaganda.
“Wu Xia’s poetry brought us up close to the resilience and warmth of ordinary workers in their pursuit of dreams,” state broadcaster CCTV reported, showing Wu sewing a dress in a factory.
The scene was manufactured: Wu hadn’t worked at that factory for years.
Wu Xia combs her youngest daughter’s hair at home. (Yuhong Pang for The Washington Post)
A tough life beyond the factory
Despite being celebrated as a worker-poet, Wu remained realistic about the prospects of earning a living through her craft.
By the time the documentary was released, she had already left factory work and was hawking accessories and jianbing — savory Chinese crepes — at night markets.
Wu dreamed of becoming a librarian or a magazine editor — even though she didn’t have the college degree those jobs require. She began to search for whatever writing work she could find.
A local celebrity commissioned her to write his biography, which she did. He never paid.
Her best-selling work, a memoir titled “My Slip Dress,” sold only a few thousand copies. The royalties barely covered two months’ rent.
Wu Xia writes and posts her migrant-worker poems on social media regularly with the help of her daughter. (Video: Yuhong Pang/The Washington Post)
Her narrowing options made passing the hukou exam even more important. Wu was making her second attempt, knowing that people often take the exam many more times before succeeding.
In late December, she got her results. She failed. She will try again, but time is not on her side: In three years she will be 45, and too old to apply for a Shenzhen hukou.
While writing still provides an outlet for her frustrations, publishers appear less excited to read works about her financial struggles, her toxic relationships and her efforts to secure a hukou.
“I don’t have big ambitions,” Wu said. “I don’t expect writing to change my life anymore, but it makes me feel anchored at least for now.”
Christian Shepherd is China correspondent for The Washington Post. He previously covered the country for the Financial Times and Reuters from Beijing.follow on X@cdcshepherd
In China, a factory worker-poet dreams of a better life — with papers
www.washingtonpost.com
Some 300 million migrant workers in China live as second-class citizens without proper documents. This worker-poet is trying to get new “hukou” and live the Chinese Dream.
'Comfort woman,' activist Gil Won-ok dies at 97
Posted : 2025-02-16 21:48Updated : 2025-02-16 22:14
www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2025/02/262_392359.html
Gil Won-ok, a former sex slave for Japanese troops, smiles after recieving flowers during a weekly Wednesday rally for the resolution of the Japanese military sex slavery issue, held in front of the former Japanese Embassy in central Seoul, Dec. 17, 2020. Yonhap
Gil Won-ok, a former sex slave for Japanese troops who campaigned to raise awareness of the World War II atrocity, died Sunday, the gender equality ministry said. She was 97.
Gil was 13 years old when she was taken from her home in Pyongyang, now the capital of North Korea, to work as a "comfort woman," a euphemism for sex slaves.
"Gil Won-ok campaigned actively to raise awareness of the suffering of the Japanese military's comfort women at home and abroad," acting Gender Equality Minister Shin Young-sook said in a statement. "We hope that, following a life of hardship, she will find peace."
Gil's death reduces to seven the number of surviving comfort women in South Korea. Of the 240 women registered with the government, 233 have died.
Two of the survivors are between the ages of 90 and 95, while the others are 96 or older.
Historians estimate that up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, were mobilized to work in front-line brothels for Japanese soldiers during the war. Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945. (Yonhap)
'Comfort woman,' activist Gil Won-ok dies at 97
www.koreatimes.co.kr
Gil Won-ok, a former sex slave for Japanese troops who campaigned to raise awareness of the World War II atrocity, died Sunday, the gender equality ministry said. She was 97.