Keepers of the Narrative is a series of portraits that explores the process and context of sustaining the "Comfort Women" narrative. The portraits are of the keepers/activists/resistors: ordinary Korean men, women and youth who are part of the movement to force Japan to acknowledge their role in state-sponsored sexual slavery during WWII, to accept the true narrative of “Comfort Women.” They work for various civic groups, organizations, are school and university students, part of the government and most attend weekly protests in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. The university students have camped out in front of the embassy since January 2018. Their “resistance work” keeps the narrative alive. They are ordinary heroes and their portraits are printed on traditional stone paper in the vein of historical drawings of Korean kings, queens and heroes.
The two portraits of former comfort women, Kim dong-bok and Gil Won-ok, provide the witness narrative.
