Jackie Kim, an unaffiliated freelance writer, has here compiled the oral histories of 10 first-generation Korean women who migrated to Japan. These women ranged from 72 to 89 years of age at the time of the interviews and were among the 2 million Koreans who came to Japan during its colonial period.
These Koreans were regarded as a labor pool by the Japanese and steps were taken to integrate them throughout the empire as "newborn" Japanese, eligible for conscription and subjected to fines if they dared speak Korean. Since the majority of the first immigrants were single males, Korean women were imported next.
They came as young girls to be married mostly to unknown men. As Sonia Ryang says in her introduction, conjugal love was rare in such unions, women remained strangers to their married-in lineages, and often "experienced the subsequent sexual relationship with their husbands as a burden both psychologically and physically."