Customer Reviews

Silence Broken : Korean Comfort Women

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Long-suppressed by the Japanese government and often overlooked by historians, the Korean comfort women's story emerges at last. Activist, film maker and writer Dai Sil Kim-Gibson has tackled the monumental task of exposing these Korean comfort women's stories to the public. With empathetic probing and years of patient interviews, Kim-Gibson succeeds in opening up these women whose lives have been pockmarked by the brutality of their surroundings. Their oral history is moving testament to the human's stubborn will to survive. Elucidating and inspiring, this book is a must-read.

Some say that we wretched Koreans--the poeple of Hahn (everlasting woe)--have run out of tears. But to my wonderment, I found myself fighting tears as I turned the pages of Dai Sil Kim-Gibson's Silence Broken. Destiny has willed this poet-philosopher-filmmaker to tell the stories of the ultimate Hahn for posterity.

Ms. Kim-Gibson thoughtfully personalizes the stories of comfort-women.

Kim-Gibson is able to gather the testimonies of many former Korean comfort women - not an easy task. Generally, the content of the book seemed to be excellent, but the writing was, at times, laughable. Kim-Gibson includes comments about her own feelings during her interviews of former comfort women, such as "Relieved, I handed her a piece of Kleenex in silence." Such irrelevant comments take away from the credibility of the book. They make it read almost like a cheap novel. If the writing had been cleaner, without having to listen to Kim-Gibson's experience (since this is, after all, supposed to be a book about the comfort women's experiences), it might have been a great contribution to the literature on comfort women.