Korean - Fun Reads

Flower Granny is a picture book based on the testimony of grandmother Sim Dal-yeon who, at the age of 13, was forcibly taken by the Japanese army in 1940 to work as a military sex slave. Japan plundered Korea of its goods and human resources for their military use during the Second World War (also known as the Pacific War). Men were drafted and taken to the battlefield and a number of young women were taken away as “comfort women” to satisfy the sexual desire of the Japanese army. With their human dignity ignored, these young women became sexual sacrifices to the Japanese soldiers all over the Pacific war zone. Yet when the war ended, not only did they not receive any compensation, but they were also left without any care for decades to follow. Though it has almost been 70 years since the end of the Second World War, the Japanese government has yet to officially apologize about this issue, and some of the survivors, who are now all over 80, stage a demonstration every Wednesday in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul to demand an apology. In a language and drawings that children can understand, this picture book talks about a historical issue that is difficult to encapsulate. _List 2011