In cultural narratives centered on comfort women films, marginalization, neglect, and suppression frequently occur, resulting in features of absence and concealment. After the Anti-Japanese War, survivors of the comfort women system were cast into tra...
In cultural narratives centered on comfort women films, marginalization, neglect, and suppression frequently occur, resulting in features of absence and concealment. After the Anti-Japanese War, survivors of the comfort women system were cast into tragic fates, unable to reintegrate into society, becoming marginalized figures in their own realities. Comfort women films are characterized by trauma narratives. The postwar trauma they depict is not only visible on the physical level but also permeates deeply into the psychological layers of survivors. Physical trauma threatens life and destroys the body, while psychological trauma entails the collapse of values, the rupture of identity, and leads to mental disorders and anxiety. These complex factors interweave to create multilayered expressions of trauma narratives in comfort women cinema, making the study of these films a significant academic task. This study focuses on the Korean film <I Can Speak> and the Chinese film <Jeongjeong>. Both works are rich in analytical value across various dimensions such as genre, narrative structure, character portrayal, plot development, and thematic expression. First, the generational context of these stories reflects the lived realities of comfort women survivors in the postmemory generation. Second, both films share a thematic emphasis on women’s destinies. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze the two films from the perspective of care ethics. Care ethics centers on relationships between individuals and between individuals and society. This research adopts care ethics and film narratology as its theoretical foundation to offer a novel interpretive framework. It analyzes the demands of care ethics and the strategies of cinematic expression, and explores ethical reflection and judgment within cinematic narratives. To begin, a conceptual clarification of the study subject is necessary. The “comfort women films” in this study refer specifically to narrative fiction films, not documentaries. While both forms address comfort women issues, fiction films reconstruct the past through dramatized narrative and visual language, whereas documentaries seek to recreate historical truth through records of real people and events. Therefore, this research focuses solely on fictional representations of comfort women, excluding documentary films from its scope. Although many documentaries on the subject exist in both Korea and China, fictional films are relatively scarce. In this regard, this study offers theoretical and practical contributions to the future production of comfort women cinema. Second, the scope of the research is also clearly defined. A comfort women film is not merely one that mentions comfort women, but one that places their experiences at the center of the narrative. A film centered on a specific topic should maintain that topic as the core element of its theme, characters, and plot. Thus, a comfort women film must have a comfort woman as a central character, and her story must drive the main narrative. If the presence of comfort women is marginal or subordinate to other storylines, the film cannot be categorized as a comfort women film. Third, this study sets its temporal scope within the context of the postmemory generation. Films from this period use wartime as background, but their central focus is the lives of survivors after the war and the psychological scars they bear. The “postwar” period varies slightly in definition between Korea and China referring to the time after — liberation from Japanese occupation in Korea, and the time following victory in the Anti-Japanese War in China. Comfort women films of the postmemory generation differ narratively from earlier wartime films. Past films often depicted war brutality directly, emphasizing visual shock and condemning Japanese militarism, with an intent to portray the suffering of comfort women. However, such portrayals may inadvertently cause secondary victimization and psychological discomfort, especially for female audiences. From a care ethics perspective, this approach is problematic. Women should not be portrayed as mere objects of the gaze but must be acknowledged as narrative subjects, with attention paid to their inner emotional worlds. Films of the postmemory generation adopt indirect storytelling and gentle strategies of care. They focus on the survival stories of individual comfort women and shed light on their postwar hardships. These films further analyze their psychological transformations and reflect deeply on themes such as humanity, justice, memory, and forgetting incorporating — elements of cinematic therapy (cinematherapy). Moreover, these films reflect the mindset and behaviors of their own time. Comfort women films evolve in line with social discourse: narrative perspectives shift, themes develop, storytelling methods diversify, characters are reimagined, and audio-visual language continues to advance. This dissertation comprises six chapters, structured according to a logic that progresses from surface phenomena to internal essence. Chapter 1 (Introduction) defines key concepts, clarifies terminology, reviews previous research, and explains the selection of <I Can Speak> and <Jeongjeong>. The methodology includes literature review, case analysis, and comparative research. Chapter 2 (Theoretical Framework) outlines the core ideas of major theorists and constructs an analytical model by combining care ethics with film narratology, laying the foundation for later analysis. Chapter 3 (Character Construction) discusses character-building strategies, focusing on external factors such as feudal ethics, class power, and survival conditions. It explores the transformation of female images from victims to saviors, witnesses, and recorders. Chapter 4 (Narrative Strategies) analyzes textual narrative elements such as themes, perspectives, structures, and genre blending, comparing narrative features and differences between Korean and Chinese comfort women films. Chapter 5 (Visual and Auditory Narratives) investigates cinematic techniques through mise-en-scène, cinematography, color, lighting, and sound design. It studies how these elements shape characters, advance the plot, and express themes. Chapter 6 (Conclusion) summarizes the research, highlights its significance and limitations, and proposes future directions and practical implications for comfort women film studies and production.