User:Rebeccaloew/sandbox

Article Evaluation

I read an article about Prostitution in South Korea. One line in particular - "Many Korean men actively seek out Russian women because they satisfy not only their desire for dominance over exotic females but also the latent psychological need to overcome their complex." seemed to be drawing a strange conclusion. When I attempted to find the source for this claim, I was not led to any sort of link. This is a red flag to me, as the statement does not seem neutral and has nothing that I can access easily to back it up. Overall, the article seems rather sparse and could use additional sources to bulk it up. I did check several other links, including "SKorea's Secret: Runaway Teen Prostitution" and the information within it matched what was displayed on the Wikipedia article. The article itself remained as neutral as possible while discussing a very sad topic. The talk page can get heated at certain moments but seems overall civil.

Article Selection

I've selected the article on Kim Hak-sun, the very first Korean to come forward as a comfort woman. The article's content is relevant to the topic and has a neutral tone. Most of the article has a citation, with the exception of the "Book" section. The citations are reliable and the talk page is very civil with the article's authors collaborating to discuss any potential issues with the article.

Additional sources that could be used to expand on this article include the book, The Korean Comfort Women Who Were Coercively Dragged Away for the Military, as well as this article ( https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/an-important-statue-for-comfort-women-in-san-francisco ).

Article Selection 5/2/19

I've decided to research Samsung's semiconductor facilities and their correlation to employees (mainly female) developing various forms of cancer, as well as experiencing miscarriages. Current articles I've been referencing include "A Heroic Struggle to Understand the Risk of Cancers Among Workers in the Electronics Industry: The Case of Samsung", "Leukemia and non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in Semiconductor Industry Workers in Korea", and "Toxics in the 'Clean Rooms': Are Samsung Workers at Risk?".

Kim Hak-sun
Kim Hak-sun was a Korean human rights activist who campaigned against sex slavery and wartime sexual violence. Hak-sun was among many young women, referred to euphemistically as “comfort women”, who was forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army between the early 1930s up until the end of the Pacific War. She is known as the first woman to come forward publicly as a former comfort woman in August, 1991. At a press conference, she described her suffering as a comfort woman.[1] She said that seeing the Japanese imperial flag "still makes me shudder. Until now, I did not have the courage to speak, even though there are so many thing I want to say." [2] In December, 1991, she filed a class-action lawsuit against the Japanese government.[3][4] At that time, she was the first of what would become dozens of women from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Netherlands who came forward to tell their stories of being forced to be sex slaves of the Japanese military. She was the lead plaintiff and initially the only one to use her real name in connection with the case.[4] She was inspired to finally take her story public after 40 years of silence, by the growth of the women's rights movement in South Korea.[5] Kim died in 1997, with the court case still ongoing.

Early Years
Kim Hak-sun was born in 1924 in Jilin, China. She and her mother returned to Pyongyang after the death of her father, who passed away when she was only three months old. While living in Pyongyang, Hak-sun attended a missionary school where she held fond memories of "lessons, sports, and playing with my friends." At the age of 14, her mother remarried. Hak-sun had a difficult time becoming accustomed to her stepfather and eventually rebelled, causing her mother to send her to live with a foster family who trained kisaeng. She attended the academy for two years where she learned many forms of entertainment, including the art of dance, song, and pansori, among other things. She graduated at the age of 17 and was thus unable to obtain a license to work as a kisaeng, which required a minimum age of 19. Her foster father was subsequently unable to find work for her in Korea, and so sought out opportunities in China.

Life as a Comfort Woman
Hak-sun's travels with her foster father eventually brought her to Beijing. Upon their arrival, they were approached by a Japanese soldier who took her foster father aside, suspecting him to be a spy. Hak-sun was subsequently abducted by other Japanese soldiers and was taken to a comfort station where she was forced to work as a comfort woman along with four other Korean women. During her stay, she was given the Japanese name, Aiko. After four months had passed, Hak-sun managed to escape the comfort station she was being held at with the help of a Korean man who later became her husband.

Life After the Escape
At the age of 19, Hak-sun gave birth to her first child. Two years later, she gave birth to her second child. She lived with her family in Shanghai, where she and her husband managed a pawn shop.