Park, Geum Hee. “Wartime Sexual Violence, Traumatic Memory and Narrative in Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman and Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life.” Studies in English Language & Literature 47.4 (2021): 43-70. On the basis of the tragedies of Nora Okja Keller’s heroine Soon Hyo Kim and Chang-rae Lee’s hero Franklin Hata, this article aims to examine the psychological impact of wartime sexual violence by Japanese imperialists on witnesses as well as sex slaves from the perspective of post-Freudians, who have complemented Freudian theories with modern approaches. To this end, this paper compares the cases of Soon Hyo as a twelve-year-old sex-worker and Hata as a Korean Japanese medic who witnessed his lover Kkutaeh’s gang-rape and brutal slaughter, with those of the traumatized patients treated by Bessel van der Kolk, who has applied and modified key Freudian concepts in clinical practice. In fact, both Keller’s Comfort Woman and Lee’s A Gesture Life substantially depict a wide range of the symptoms of PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder) that Soon Hyo and Hata display. The symptoms are compared to those of van der Kolk’s patient, Julian, a victim of sexual violence in childhood, and Vietnam War veterans, and they include flashbacks, nightmarish day dreams, nightmares, possessions, hallucinations, etc. The symptoms are because the overwhelming, violent events about wartime sexual violence in Japanese military brothels returning as memories to the victims’ brain are repeatedly enacted and reenacted, whenever being triggered by precipitating factors. In the sense that the protagonists’ lives resonate to wartime sexual violent victims, Comfort Woman and A Gesture Life can be exemplary literary texts of the talking cure, which has been recommended since the Freud era as a therapy of trauma. (Chosun University)

# trauma # wartime sexual violence # Comfort Woman # A Gesture Life # post-Freudianism # talking cure

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