In February 2020, when Nataly Jung-Hwa Han, chair of Berlin’s Korea Society, was granted a one-year permit to install a bronze statue of a “comfort woman” — a euphemism for second world war-era sex slaves to the Japanese army — it seemed like a good fit for the city.
The German capital blends its multi-kulti present seamlessly with its nightmare past. A remnant of the Berlin Wall, where Germans once shot Germans trying to escape from Germany to Germany, is now the East Side Gallery, a mile-long stretch of brightly painted murals. City sidewalks glint with an estimated 9,000 Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones”, small brass plaques placed in front of former residences of Holocaust victims. A statue of a “comfort woman”, so Han assumed, provided an opportunity to enhance diversity, condemn atrocity and bring a bit of gender balance to a male-dominated commemorative landscape.
Han was given approval to install the statue for one year, from August 2020 to July 2021, on the corner of Bremer Street and Birken Street, in the leafy neighbourhood of Moabit. The local mayor, Stephan von Dassel, even agreed to hold a speech at the unveiling, Han told me. Von Dassel, a member of the progressive Green party, rides a bicycle and regularly tweets his social conscience. Han was therefore surprised when he cancelled his attendance at the last minute. Another local official also declined, citing illness.