Korean Peninsula Affairs Center Presents: The Film Silence Broken

Korean Peninsula Affairs Center Presents: The Film Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women by Dai Sil Kim Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women (35 mm. 88 min., 57 min. Beta SP, 1999) is a powerful documentary about Korean women forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese Imperial Military during World War II. The film dramatically combines the testimony of former comfort women, who demand justice for the “crimes against humanity” of which they were the victims, with contravening interviews of Japanese soldiers, recruiters, and contemporary scholars. Silence Broken was broadcast nationally in the U.S. by PBS in May 2000 and in Korea by KBS as an Independence Day Special. It has been reviewed favorably as “a wrenching and formally inventive film” (Village Voice), “a hauntingly brilliant film” (Asian Week, Los Angeles), “searing testimony of Korean comfort women” (The Wall Street Journal), and “compelling testimony on a shameful chapter in military history” (Video Librarian). Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, formerly a professor of religion at Mount Holyoke College with a Ph.D. in religion from Boston University, is a renowned independent filmmaker/writer. Kim-Gibson is well known for championing the compelling but often neglected issues of human rights. All of her films have garnered many awards, including the Kodak Filmmaker Award, and have been screened at numerous festivals worldwide, in addition to being broadcast nationally on PBS and the Sundance Channel in the United States. Kim-Gibson has received grants from the Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations. The author of many articles, Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women was her first book. It was described as "unforgettable" by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her second book is Looking for Don: A Meditation. She also has completed editing and compiling a memoir by her late husband, Donald D. Gibson, titled Iowa Sky, a Memoir, which is scheduled to be published in January 2013.