Your Wednesday Briefing: A deep look at Korean comfort women

By Amelia Nierenberg

Writer, Briefings

Good morning. We’re covering South Korea’s comfort women who were victims of American troops and Australia’s crackdown on vapes.

South Korea’s brutal sex trade

The euphemism “comfort women” typically describes South Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during World War II. But long after Japan’s colonial rule ended, the sexual exploitation continued with Korean and American soldiers.

After South Korea’s Supreme Court last year ordered the government to compensate 100 of the comfort women, the victims now aim to take their case to the U.S. Their legal strategy is unclear, as is what recourse they may find.

Park Geun-ae, who was sold to a pimp in 1975, when she was 16, said she endured severe beatings and other abuse from G.I.s. “The Americans need to know what some of their soldiers did to us,” she said.

In its ruling, South Korea’s Supreme Court said that the government was guilty of “justifying and encouraging” prostitution to help South Korea maintain its military alliance with the U.S. and earn American dollars. The court also blamed the government for the “systematic and violent” way it detained the women and forced them to receive treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

Numbers: In 1961, the local government of Gyeonggi Province, the populous area surrounding Seoul, estimated that the number of comfort women in its jurisdiction was 10,000 and growing and that they catered to 50,000 American troops. Many of these women worked in gijichon, or “camp towns,” built around American military bases.

Australia moves to stamp out vapes

Australia’s government proposed a ban on e-cigarettes in one of its most sweeping tobacco regulatory moves in years.

Nicotine vapes are supposed to be available only with a prescription in Australia. But they are sold in many convenience stores, and the government said it was particularly concerned about the growing popularity of vaping among young people.

“We were promised this was a pathway out of smoking, not a pathway into smoking,” the health minister said yesterday. But, he continued, “that is what it has become.”

The proposal, announced yesterday, would ban all single-use, disposable vapes, stop the imports of nonprescription vapes and restrict some flavors, colors and ingredients. It would also work to limit the nicotine in the products.

A New Zealand comparison: Australia’s health minister said the country had no plans to ban smoking or to phase it out by birth year, as New Zealand did recently when it placed a lifetime prohibition on cigarette sales to everyone born after 2008.

A U.S. comparison: Health regulators began a crackdown in recent years — they had not accounted for young people becoming addicted to nicotine through the fruity flavors of vapes.

China’s splurge fest

Luxury spending in China is bouncing back even faster than the country’s overall economy now that pandemic lockdowns have ended. Many Western brands have reaped the benefits.

Before the pandemic, as much as two-thirds of the country’s luxury spending took place outside of mainland China: Wealthy Chinese shopped abroad to avoid their country’s import tariffs and taxes. But traveling outside China remains far more difficult than it was before the pandemic.

The numbers:

• LVMH, the owner of brands like Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Company and Dior, last month posted a 17 percent increase in first-quarter revenue from a year earlier, driven in large part by the rebound in China.
• Retail sales of jewelry, gold and silver soared 37.4 percent in March from a year earlier.
• Hermès said sales in Asia (excluding Japan) were up 23 percent, “driven by a very good Chinese New Year.”

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• The U.S. said at least 100,000 Russians had been killed or wounded in Ukraine in the past five months.
• Russia is imposing tighter restrictions in occupied parts of Ukraine, including on travel between towns, Ukrainian officials said.

• As attacks on journalists rise in Russia and beyond, our publisher warned of risks to democracy while speaking at an event to mark World Press Freedom Day.

• Khader Adnan, a prominent Palestinian prisoner, died after a hunger strike in an Israeli prison. Palestinian leaders and armed groups threatened retaliation.
• South Sudan said that the two rival generals in Sudan agreed to a seven-day truce, starting tomorrow, but there was no confirmation from the warring sides.

• The U.S. could run out of money to pay its bills by June 1, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, if lawmakers do not reach a deal on debt.
• FIFA’s president said the Woman’s World Cup would not be televised in Europe unless broadcasters met its demands for higher fees.

• Lil Nas X wore body paint and a silver thong to the Met Gala. Rihanna showed up last, and Doja Cat donned a feline facial prosthetic. Here are photos of the big event.

• Hollywood writers went on strike for the first time in 15 years, halting many productions.
• The Tony Award nominations are out. Broadway is banking on a busy summer as New York City theater continues its rebound from the pandemic.

Some South Korean chefs, trained in the French culinary tradition, have blended the two traditions to create a distinct genre of pastry. Their work is defining a growing category of pastry art that is confined neither to South Korea nor to France.

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ARTS AND IDEAS

Can A.I. read minds?

Neuroscientists from the University of Texas, Austin, have developed A.I. models that can translate people’s private thoughts — without using implants.

In the scientists’ study, three participants listened to 16 hours of narrative stories while hooked up to an fMRI machine, which measures the blood flows to different parts of the brain. The scientists then used a large language model to match patterns in the brain activity to the words and phrases that the participants had heard.

The model was able to turn a person’s imagined speech into actual speech. In one instance, almost every word was out of place in the decoded script, but the meaning of the passage was preserved:

Original transcript: “I got up from the air mattress and pressed my face against the glass of the bedroom window expecting to see eyes staring back at me but instead only finding darkness.”

Decoded from brain activity: “I just continued to walk up to the window and open the glass I stood on my toes and peered out I didn’t see anything and looked up again I saw nothing.”

Essentially, the decoders were paraphrasing and capturing the gist, if not the precise language.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

A common Chinese American adaptation of a scallion egg wrap uses store-bought tortillas.

The folk musician Gordon Lightfoot has died at 84. Listen to his unlikely hit, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

“A Small Light” tells the story of Miep Gies, who helped Anne Frank and others hide during World War II.

How a gastroenterologist cares for her gut.

Play the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Try to fly (four letters).

Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Amelia

P.S. Ahead of King Charles’s coronation on Saturday, we’d love to hear from you: Is there a moment in British royal history that resonates with you? Tell us about it here.

“The Daily” is on U.S. bank turmoil.

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