1. Overview

Comfort Women is an American Off-Broadway production created by Korean director Dimo Hyun Jun Kim while he was a student at City College of New York. The musical portrays the stories of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War. Kim was inspired to create the work after learning that many people in the United States were unfamiliar with this history. Seeking to raise awareness, he decided to tell the story through the medium of musical theatre, believing that songs could preserve the women’s memories in a way that a documentary could not.

2. Background and Development

Kim wrote the script in 2012 after hearing statements from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe that denied Japan’s responsibility for wartime sexual slavery. Shocked by the ignorance surrounding the issue, Kim set out to dramatize the women’s experiences. He faced difficulties finding collaborators because of the subject’s political sensitivity but eventually brought together American and Korean composers and writers to complete the musical. The team aimed to present multiple perspectives and to humanize all characters, including Japanese soldiers, while focusing on the resilience of the victims.

3. Story and Themes

Set in 1941, the musical follows Goeun, a young Korean woman deceived by the promise of a job in Tokyo but instead sent to Indonesia, where she becomes a captive of the Japanese military. The narrative depicts her suffering alongside other enslaved women and their collective struggle for survival and dignity. The story is based on documented testimonies of some of the approximately 200,000 women and girls taken from Korea and other Asian countries between 1930 and 1945. Through scenes of endurance, solidarity, and remembrance, the musical seeks to honor those who continued to speak out decades after the war ended.

4. Reception and Reactions

Comfort Women: A New Musical received both praise and controversy upon its debut. According to Show-Score, the 2018 New York run maintained a 79 percent audience rating based on more than 140 member reviews, with most viewers describing it as “powerful,” “educational,” and “emotionally charged.” The platform summarized audience sentiment as largely positive, noting the rarity of an all-Asian cast addressing such a politically charged subject on the American stage.

Critical reception, however, was divided. In TheaterMania, Kenji Fujishima wrote that although Japan’s wartime actions “should absolutely be condemned,” the musical at times risked reducing Japanese characters to one-dimensional villains, suggesting that a more complex portrayal could have deepened the drama’s impact. Theatre is Easy reviewer Shoshana Roberts described the work as worthwhile viewing for anyone interested in history, gender, or wartime narratives, calling it “a chance to learn about a piece of history that is too often left untold.” Theater Pizzazz critic Myra Chanin commended the creators’ intentions but questioned whether musical theatre was an adequate medium for depicting the pain of the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims, remarking that the story might achieve greater resonance in documentary form.

Broader coverage followed as the production expanded. NBC News featured the musical in 2019, highlighting how it drew attention to the horrors of wartime sexual slavery while also generating difficult conversations among Korean and Japanese communities in the United States. BroadwayWorld praised it as a courageous and moving work that used song and performance to illuminate a suppressed chapter of history, calling attention to its distinction as one of the few Off-Broadway productions led by an East Asian director with an entirely Asian cast. In the same year, LAist reported the issues of wartime activities of Japan (Wikipedia: List of war apology statements issued by Japan).

While reviews diverged on artistic execution, most agreed that Comfort Women was an ambitious and historically significant attempt to confront trauma through theatre. Its combination of educational intent and emotional sincerity earned recognition beyond the stage, including Best Musical Awards at the BroadwayWorld LA Awards.