Schoolchildren make documentary on former `comfort women`

Excerpts from a documentary film by elementary schoolchildren about women who once served as ``comfort women`` or sex slaves for Japanese soldiers made their debut on the Internet Wednesday, one day ahead of events marking the March 1 anniversary of the 1919 independence movement against Japanese colonial rule.

The film, assembled over seven months by 37 sixth-grade children at Seoul Namsung Elementary School, is featured on the Joy School home page (www.njoyschool.net). The documentary garnered the grand prize, known as the Paekdu Award, from the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development as part of a history awareness campaign organized by the Joy School. The Web site received about 196 entries in the contest.

Starting last August, the Seoul Namsung students, along with their teacher Choi Jong-Soon, participated in the regular Wednesday gathering of the Korean Council for Women Drafted by Japan for Military Sexual Slavery and visited the facility where out-of-town participants stay when they come to Seoul. The group holds weekly demonstrations in front of the Japanese embassy near Anguk-dong.

The children produced the two-hour ``experience learning`` documentary after one of them heard about the comfort women from her grandmother and told the story to a number of friends. The 11-minute excerpt that appears on the Internet focuses on the ``Wednesday gathering,`` the current lives of some of the women who came to the overnight facility, the vivid testimony of some of those subjected to atrocities by the Japanese imperialists, and the reactions of friends who were moved to tears by their confessions.

Noting that Japan`s use of comfort women is not accurately recorded in Japanese history books and that Korea`s own historical records don`t tell the whole story, 13-year-old Choi Seung-Ho, one of the children who produced the film, said, ``I hope that the grandmothers were further encouraged after seeing the documentary and their lives conveyed in a dignified manner.``

Kim Kyoung-Dal dal@donga.com