NHK and the Comfort Women: War Guilt and Media Self-Censorship
in Japan and Elsewhere  Story posted October 15, 2003  Henry
Laurence, associate professor of government and Asian studies
kicked off the fall faculty seminar series his talk, "NHK and
the Comfort Women: War Guilt and Media Self-Censorship in Japan
and Elsewhere."  While researching the funding of NHK, the
Japanese public broadcasting company, for his next book,
Laurence managed to get a front row seat to observe NHK's
handling of situation that put the broadcaster at odds with the
Japanese government.  The comfort women were about 200,000,
mostly Korean, women who were used as sex slaves during World
Ward II by the Imperial Japanese Army. The availability of the
comfort women were intended to prevent the soldiers from rape in
the field and thus prevent the spread of venereal disease.  From
the end of the war in 1945 until about 1990, almost nothing was
heard from or about these women. War crimes trials following the
war did not address the crimes