Korean actress Lee Seung-yeon, 36, said Thursday that she has taken some nude photographs about the¡®comfort women¡¯. Plans are for it to be made available on the Internet -- for a fee. The ¡®comfort women¡¯ and Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan have strongly denounced the photographs, saying, ¡°the fact that they are trying to earn money through our painful history is unimaginable."
Lee Seung-yeon, Lototo Inc. and Netian Entertainment Inc. held a press conference Thursday and said ¡°we are taking photos and making a film on the subject of the ¡®comfort women¡¯ starring Lee Seung-yeon, and it will be made available from early March by way of a paid service through the wireless service provider, Syswall.¡±
They said they were motivated by the recent "Dokdo Islet dispute¡¯ between Korea and Japan, and chose the subject because they were distressed to see the ¡®comfort women¡¯ issue being forgotten all the time.
They also said that the ¡°'comfort women¡¯ were the model upon which the sexuality of women was commercialized and were the starting point for a wrong history. They said that much of the profit from the collection would go to help the women who were ¡®comfort women.' About the level of exposure, they said that ¡°it is not important how much of the breasts or legs is exposed. We are worrying about how much we'll reveal.¡±
The production company said that the filming was done on Palau Island in the Pacific, where the ¡®comfort girls¡¯ were really taken to, and plans to conduct second and third filmings in Japan, Nepal and other countries.
Lee Yong-su (77), who was taken as a ¡®comfort woman¡¯ and returned, said in a phone interview with the reporter, ¡°I was terribly shocked. I have been living my life alone trying to soothe my heart... how can they do this?¡± She could not stop crying. Kang Man-seok, a researcher at Korean Broadcasting Institute, pointed out that ¡°there is the risk that painful history might become commercialized.¡± (Choe Seung-hyeon, vaidale@chosun.com )
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