Comfort Woman
- Decorated Dagger
In the novel “Comfort Woman” by Nora Okja Keller written in 1998, the eunjangdo, a jangdo made of silver, is mentioned in a unique situation. The novel tells the story of a young woman who discovers that her Korean mother used to be a ‘comfort woman’, which is a term used for women who were (forcefully) used by Japanese military personnel for sexual favors before and during World War II. The mother, named Akiko, recalls how she used to be jealous of another comfort woman who was in the possession of an eunjangdo. This other woman was from the upper Korean social class called the yangban. With this eunjangdo the woman had the right to kill herself instead of getting raped, and thus escape the horrendous situation and circumstances these comfort women lived in. This stood in sharp contrast with women from less privileged families who had no means of getting out.