Speak Up and Make a Change
Women's Stories of Courage, Resilience, and Justice
By Sylvia Yu Friedman, award-winning Penguin Random House Author, TV Host, Keynote Speaker and Advisor to Ultra High Net Worth families.
This essay is an excerpt from Fearless: A Guide to Freedom and Fulfilling Your Fullest Potential, published with permission from Penguin Random House SEA.
A significant part of my two-track career in philanthropy and journalism that I gravitated to was related to addressing cultural misogyny and the abuse of women—a deeply personal issue for me because I experienced gender discrimination from my father. As I gained confidence in what I believed in, I found a healing power in speaking out for others who were marginalized. Indeed, there is nothing more satisfying than to take a stand for what’s right and advocate for the oppressed.
In 2001, I was introduced to Kim Soon-duk in Washington, D.C. She was the first survivor of forced prostitution by Japan’s military I had met. She changed my life’s direction and inspired my decades-long journey to campaign and write about wartime sex slavery and the cycle of modern-day sex trafficking that continues with impunity today.
Yet, it wasn’t until 2007, when I went through a painful divorce, another turning point in my life, that I finally had the motivation to finish that book—Silenced No More: Voices of Comfort Women—and help amplify the voices of Kim and other victims of sexual servitude.
After my divorce, I struggled for years with a sense of shame and shattered confidence over my failed marriage. I turned the anguish into fuel to write. This experience of personal suffering gave me the willpower and empathy to be a voice for voiceless women. When I focused my writing on those less fortunate than myself, I felt this righteous anger rise up, and I was able to put my issues and problems into perspective.
It also opened my eyes to my ability to make a difference for these women who had suffered far more than I ever did and showed me I could use my life to effect social change. This was the beauty that came from the ashes of my first marriage.
I spent fourteen years writing a book about these women and girls to expose the truth of what happened to them. It was the largest case of government-sponsored human trafficking and sexual slavery in modern history, and it happened within living memory. I wanted to lay a foundation of historical truth for the next generation.
Unsurprisingly, people in various countries tried to hinder my research. The competitive activists and researchers writing their own books were the hardest to deal with. In LA, one Korean American academic researcher blocked me from spending time with one of the survivors.
It was during this period that I toughened up and it dawned on me that I should not be too trusting. Out of necessity, I developed the skin of a rhino. Through these hindrances, I developed courage and perseverance that helped me continue researching and writing my book. I dug my heels in and took a stand. I wanted to live for something meaningful, something worth dying for.
For months, during the writing of Silenced No More, I threw myself into a gruelling schedule from nine in the morning until eleven in the evening. From my bed, I would walk to my wooden desk around six steps away, often in my pyjamas. So engrossed was I in my writing that I would forget to eat or comb my hair. My extraordinary mother would bring down a tray of food for lunch and dinner. With my easily distracted personality, the only way I could finish this book—especially given its dark material—was to be obsessed with it.
Passion is derived from the Latin word meaning ‘to suffer’. If you desire and believe in something so much that you’re willing to suffer for it, that is passion. But while I was writing, I couldn’t feel that passion, only anguish about whether I could actually help these women by documenting their experiences.
I reminded myself repeatedly that I was writing in a safe place while the women I was writing about were constantly violated and tortured in the worst ways imaginable. Their torment put my anguish in perspective and that helped me keep going.
Constantly, I battled self-doubt and fought the whispers in my mind that I couldn’t do it.
I had to steel myself and train my mind to focus on the positive, to imagine the book with the cover. When I finally finished, I was truly incredulous. I had fulfilled an impossible dream.
Elated though I was at one level, the birthing of this book had taken its toll on me. For a year after its release I lacked the energy to speak on the topic. I had to take breaks from campaigning and raising awareness. It is draining and traumatic for one’s mind to constantly learn how innocent girls and women were tortured and murdered.
Particularly taxing for my emotions was when we toured universities, high schools, companies, and churches to show the film Healing River.1 Countless people have been so touched by the love and bravery of this Japanese reconciliation group that they feel their generational pain and racial hatred for the Japanese have been healed on some level.
In 2015, at a school in Nanjing, China, I asked the students to close their eyes and asked them this question: ‘Who wants to forgive the Japanese and release their hatred after seeing the compassionate reconciliation team in the film?’ Almost all of them raised their hands to say yes. It was an exhilarating feeling.
After speaking at dozens and dozens of venues, I began to doubt whether I should repeat the same message again and again. Then, one day, I came across a message in one of the bestselling author Elisabeth Elliot’s books. She talks of how she, too, felt repetitive in her talks about her late husband’s martyrdom in Ecuador by Waorani tribesman in 1956.
Jim Elliot was a young man in his prime, at twenty-eight, and a father of a baby girl when he and four other missionaries were speared to death and their bodies thrown into a river by the very people they wanted to reach—members of the Auca or Huaorani tribe. In a journal, Elliot wrote a quote that he is most famous for, ‘He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.’
Elisabeth Elliot felt increasingly tired of having a singular message. However, she appreciated that her audiences were always moved by her testimony of Jim’s faith and willingness to risk his life. While to her, it was repeated but with each new telling, audiences were always hearing it anew. She overcame her doubts by embracing that sharing her life’s message was her calling.
My reading of Elliot’s words came at a serendipitous time. They were enough to reassure and encourage me to continue my quest to defend the voiceless. I see now that the challenges of campaigning helped me develop a resilience that would sustain me in my work in the long term. It is where I found the capacity to transcend painful trials, to be shaped positively by them and, ultimately, to flourish.
Discovering the Power Within
Years ago, during my first media interview about Silenced No More: Voices of Comfort Women, I felt like a deer caught in the headlights: stunned, awkward, and unaccustomed to speaking my mind on the record.
As a journalist, I was always on the other side, asking questions and keeping my opinions to myself. It was disorienting to no longer be in control as the interviewer. I had to find the boldness to speak my mind with compassion.
What motivated me was knowing it wasn’t about me but about the victims. I closed my eyes to see in my mind the faces of the people I had met: impoverished migrant women struggling to make ends meet and living in slums; gaunt and hopeless street kids in Beijing begging for their next meal; traumatized young women forced into brothels in Southeast Asia and China; anguished North Korean trafficked women; elderly women survivors of sexual slavery in Japanese military brothels whose personalities had changed forever from a lifetime of isolation, rejection, and shame and the despair many felt for never bearing their own children because of the injuries they suffered at the hands of their tormentors.
In short, I had to triumph over my doubts and insecurities. I was my own worst enemy. It reminded me of how, when climbing a mountain, it isn’t just the vertiginous trail that challenges me, it is myself that I must conquer.
I remember going on a three-hour hike with a friend. It was on soggy terrain that had been soaked from the rain overnight and for the first thirty minutes, my feet kept slipping. I could feel the aches in my legs and my heart stopping at times, searching for safe footing on the steep dirt path.
As I looked up at the seemingly endless steps ahead—the humidity was stifling—I gulped and deeply regretted beginning the journey. Madness, I thought to myself as I felt tempted to give up and turn around. But what kept me going was shutting out all thoughts of quitting and the long journey ahead and deliberately focusing on putting one foot ahead of the other. One simple step at a time. That’s the only way to take on a seemingly impossible goal.
Gradually, I have become accustomed to giving media interviews on TV, radio, and for publications. In June 2023, I had one of the most memorable one via Zoom from my home in Hong Kong. It was about the largest case of government-sponsored human trafficking and sexual slavery in modern history. I had an engaging conversation with radio host S.J. Lee of Arirang radio to mark the 1,600th Wednesday Demonstration by the elderly survivors of Japanese military sex slavery and their supporters in front of the former Japanese Embassy in Seoul.
Back in 2004 and 2005, I gave a speech calling on Japan to sincerely apologize to these survivors at this weekly protest, which is one of the longest-running demonstrations in the world against sexual violence in armed conflict.
Suddenly, in the middle of this interview with S.J. Lee, tears began to flow from my eyes—tears I was powerless to stop. I had no tissue box nearby and could not blow my nose. I was mortified. Flashing before me were the faces of the elderly women who had passed away before receiving closure for what they endured.
Initially, I was greatly embarrassed by my lack of control over my emotions, but after the interview ended, I received one of the most heartwarming messages from Jeesun, the producer of the show. I felt sure that I had bombed the interview due to my embarrassingly raw display of tears. But Jeesun helped me to see that being real and authentic is the key to unleashing the power of one’s voice. She wrote:
Thank you so, so much. I cried my eyes out when you started crying.
I loved your passion, and the whole team and the listeners did, too.
When is the production of the TV series coming out? We would like to have you on the show again to introduce the TV series to our listeners.
Thank you so much. It was such a touching moment, and you made me realize that this world is still so beautiful.
Best,
Jeesun
I said in the interview that a time of reckoning over this issue is coming in Korea. We have waited so very long because the older generation hasn’t wanted to face this tragic part of history. Unfortunately, this has played into the hands of the Japanese government and what many activists say is part of Tokyo’s cynical strategy of waiting for the survivors to die off.
But I promise this: Though these women will pass away, their stories will live on.
Their cause will be taken up by a new generation of Koreans, mainland Chinese and people from all over the world, a generation committed to the fight. The young are joining the weekly demonstrations and will not back down. The activism we needed may have skipped a generation, but it is building now and not before time.
It has been nearly 80 years since the end of World War II, yet a sincere apology from the Japanese government remains nowhere in sight. Instead, over the years, it has done its best to deny this wartime system of sex slavery ever happened. Instead, it insults the victims by calling them willing prostitutes.
The lack of closure for these women is the seeping wound of history that prevents many Chinese, Koreans, and others from being able to let go of their lingering distrust and resentment of the Japanese. Any kind of closure and apology from Tokyo has to be victim-centred and satisfy their demands.
I have recommended that the governments consider exploring a Truth and Reconciliation type of forum. A critical first step in this would be a sincere apology that satisfies the demands of the survivors and their families.
This issue is important personally and generationally. It is a matter of historical record and it’s about public memory. We need to resolve this issue from the past before we can move forward into a new future of peace.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has urged the government of Japan to do more for victims of wartime sexual slavery and to offer full redress and reparations. ‘It is a wound that has been festering for far too long,’ in the words of renowned civil rights attorney Gay McDougall, who authored a landmark UN report on Japanese wartime sex slavery.
I first spoke with McDougall in 1999 when I couldn’t find enough information in English about the plight of the sex slaves. She has been a pivotal figure in investigating this crime against humanity. I teared up when I learned she was still fighting for the survivors’ dignity and closure at the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She inspires me endlessly to keep advocating for change.
Sadly, time is running out. The surviving women are primarily in their late eighties and nineties now. They have been fighting for justice and an apology for decades, and now only a handful remain.
I earnestly hope these women will get justice before they pass on.
If we do not deal with the trafficking of women and girls in our past, we will be condemned to watch it recur in our present and future. There comes a time when an issue must be dealt with once and for all. This is that time.
Sylvia Yu Friedman is a Director at a global private equity firm that provides advisory services to prominent family offices in Asia and across the globe. She works at the intersection of finance, Hollywood and specializes in brokering deals within the professional sports industry. Her firm is involved in the growing finance hub between Dubai, Singapore/ SE Asia and South Asia.
Since 2005, Sylvia has spearheaded philanthropic initiatives for some of the world’s wealthiest families. Her pioneering investigations into the dark underworld of sex trafficking and modern-day slavery for two decades – often at risk to her own life – have shattered barriers and charted a course for a new generation of philanthropists and activists.
In Hollywood and Singapore, a producing team, including the showrunners of the hit show, NCIS, is developing a TV series based on Sylvia's life and memoir, "A Long Road to Justice."
Additionally, she is a Luminary Thinker for the RedBoxMe ideas platform, a collaboration with Cartier. Favikon has recognised her influence, ranking her as one of the Top 10 LinkedIn Creators in Hong Kong, and she holds the #6 spot.
An accomplished author, Sylvia has written six books, including her latest book, "Fearless: A Guide to Freedom and Fulfilling Your Fullest Potential.”
Link to the Healing River documentary on the Japanese Christian reconciliation team members from Tokyo and their loving identificational apologies to elderly Chinese survivors in China. These women were survivors of Japanese military forced prostitution during WWII: