Korean Women's Volunteer Labor Corps Memorial (Gwangju)

The Korean Women's Volunteer Labor Corps Memorial in Gwangju, South Korea, commemorates one of the most painful chapters of Japan's colonial mobilization of Korean women during World War II. The Gwangju and South Jeolla (Jeollanam-do) region was one of the primary recruiting grounds for the 朝鮮女子勤労挺身隊 (Chōsen Joshi Kinrō Teishintai), a forced labor program that conscripted young Korean females to work in Japanese war industries.

Women's volunteer labour corps were organised in 1943–44 as part of Japan's total war mobilization. Although the program was nominally voluntary, in practice Japanese teachers and local officials pressured families and recruited girls directly from schools. The Women's Volunteer Labor Ordinance (女子挺身勤労令), promulgated in August 1944, made such service compulsory for unmarried women aged 12 to 40 in Japan proper; according to Japanese-language sources it was not formally applied in Korea, where recruitment proceeded through schools and official mediation. Estimates of the total number of Korean women and girls mobilized vary widely and remain disputed, with girls in their early teens sent to factories far from home. Destinations confirmed by surviving records are the Mitsubishi aircraft works (Dōtoku plant) in Nagoya, the Fujikoshi works in Toyama (about 1,090 girls) and the Tokyo Asaito spinning mill in Numazu. Survivors testify to long hours, dangerous conditions, minimal food, and no pay — promised education and wages never materialized.

Gwangju's significance in this history is multifold. The South Jeolla region contributed a disproportionately large number of mobilized girls, many recruited through local schools with the cooperation of Japanese colonial education officials. After the war, survivors returned to deep social stigma, partly because the term "Volunteer Corps" (挺身隊/정신대) was conflated with "comfort women" (慰安婦) in public discourse, causing many victims to conceal their experiences for decades.

The memorial landscape in Gwangju centers on the Statue of Peace (平和の少女像 / 평화의 소녀상), erected on August 14, 2015, near Gwangju Metropolitan City Hall in Seo-gu. This bronze statue, one of many such statues across South Korea and abroad, symbolizes all Korean women victimized by Japanese wartime mobilization. The Gwangju-based Citizens' Group with the Women's Volunteer Labor Corps Grandmothers (근로정신대 할머니와 함께하는 시민모임), established in March 2009, has been instrumental in advocacy, filing three lawsuits against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries since 2012 and campaigning for municipal and provincial ordinances to support surviving victims.

The site serves as both a place of remembrance and a living center of activism, linking Gwangju's wartime suffering under Japanese colonial rule to the broader global movement for historical justice and reparations for wartime forced labor.