Korea’s inherited pain

What Korea's past can teach us about inherited trauma

Hi everyone, I have a revised piece for you today, those of you who have been subscribed from the beginning will recognise this piece, I produced a longer format of this at the start of my blog on Medium. I took it down because Aeon briefly showed some interest in publishing it, but ultimately rejected it. Since then, I havent found a long format place to publish it. I’ve been told it is trying to do too many things, some cultural, some historical, some personal and some scientific; you win some, you lose some in freelance writing it seems! But I want it to be out there, and I didnt want to depersonalise it, but I have revivsed it and I’m publishing it here.

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[Please be aware: the following article contains testimony of violence and sexual assault.]

“I was so young I had not even begun to menstruate yet. The first time I was forced to service a soldier, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I couldn’t stop crying, and I ran out. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t speak the language. I had no money and no idea how to take the train, and the area was surrounded with soldiers. Escape was impossible… The manager slapped my cheek until my nose bled, withheld my food, and shut me up in a narrow room. However, complete escape was impossible, and while crying, I became a tool for the sexual appetites of the soldiers.”
—Testimony of 송신도 Song Sin-do, Korean survivor of the Japanese military comfort system, who was trafficked to China.

Picture of 송신도 Song Sin-do, showing her scars and the tattoo of the Japanese name “Kaneko” that was assigned to her at the comfort station. https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/824372.html

In 1938, Song Sin-do was sixteen years old when she left her home in Nonsan-gun, South Chungcheong Province, after being forced into marriage. Like many young women at the time, she was deceived—lured by a fellow Korean woman who promised paid work “on the battlefield. Because the work is not like marriage and you can live alone”. What followed was seven years of captivity, sexual slavery, repeated pregnancy, disease, isolation, and abandonment. She was forced to service dozens of Japanese soldiers a day in military “comfort stations” across China. She was forced to go by a Japanese name that was assigned to her. Her first pregnancy she gave birth alone in her room to a baby that was already dead. She was forced to give up her second baby to Chinese parents.

As becoming pregnant at the brothel was a constant threat that could have her kicked out on the street, she chose to terminate her other pregnancies by an old folk remedy of not moving or eating for three days followed by drinking a solution made from the root of a certain type of plant. Her trauma has gone unacknowledged by the state that used her, and ignored by the one she returned to in ruins. Song Sin-do was one of thousands of Korean women and girls coerced into Japan’s wartime system of sexual slavery—euphemistically referred to as “comfort women.” These were not isolated cases of abuse. They were part of a militarised, state-run system of control that spanned territories and generations. Most survivors lived in silence for decades, their stories suppressed by stigma, shame, and diplomatic discomfort.

Stories like Song Sin-do’s stop me in my tracks. I tell you these details not to shock, but to illustrate the depth of this trauma. I am always drawn to hearing other people’s stories and how such incredible pain affects them and their families. I’ve come to learn that stories like these do not just belong to history—they affect our present with ever more clarity and stand as a testament to how historical, cultural, and social events shape the world we live in now. I’m also just struck by what some people live with. There are times—usually when my own trauma history and health issues feel overwhelming—when I catch myself thinking I’ve had particularly bad luck. Then I read about someone like Song Sin-do. And I’m reminded: suffering is almost endless, and everyone’s experience is their own—but trauma does follow patterns. I see the same dynamics show up again and again in people who’ve experienced trauma, across many different situations.

As someone who has spent a lot of time researching the interaction between genes and environment, and how that affects subsequent generations, I’ve come to understand how deeply these effects ripple outward—through our biology, our families, our culture, and the systems we live in. I came to Seoul for a holiday, but it gave me something more: new knowledge and perspectives on how people live with pain, and the legacy it leaves behind.

Travelling to Seoul has been a lifelong dream of mine. As a child, I trained in Taekwondo and always admired those who had the chance to study in Korea. I didn’t realise until recently that my local club was one of the few places where I consistently felt safe and respected. The values taught there—respect, discipline, humility—left a lasting impact. Taekwondo, as I experienced it, wasn’t about aggression, but about structure and mutual regard. Even sparring felt more like a respectful game of skill than a fight—we weren’t trying to hurt each other. While every culture contains contradictions, those early experiences gave me a deep appreciation for some of the values often associated with Korean traditions.

Some background on Korean history

From 1910 to 1945, Korea endured brutal Japanese occupation. Korean language and cultural practices were repressed; identities were subsumed under forced assimilation. Over 700,000 Koreans were conscripted into forced labour, including children as young as 12. They were sent to Japan and other territories to work in mines, shipyards, and factories under dangerous conditions. Many died from malnutrition, abuse, or untreated injuries.

More harrowingly along with Song Sin-do an estimated 50,000 to 200,000 girls and young women—many aged between 13 and 16—were trafficked into state-orchestrated and militarised sexual slavery. Women were trafficked from Australia, China, Netherlands, Philippines, Japan, Burma, Indonesia, and Taiwan (and possibly also East Timor and New Guinea), although most were Korean. Known euphemistically as “comfort women,” they were confined to barracks, repeatedly raped, and denied all autonomy. The term itself masks the systematic violence inflicted. Most survivors never received formal reparations, and their trauma remained both silenced and politically fraught—passed down through families and communities unable or unwilling to speak of it.

This was followed almost immediately by the Korean War (1950–1953), which split the peninsula and remains unresolved to this day. No peace treaty was signed—only a ceasefire. The ongoing militarisation of the South, national division, and suspended grief are not simply geopolitical facts; they are conditions that shape the emotional atmosphere of an entire population.

What came next was one of the most rapid economic transformations in history. From the 1960s to the 1990s, South Korea transitioned from widespread poverty to becoming a global economic force. But this came at immense social cost: rapid urbanisation, authoritarian governance under leaders like Park Chung-hee, and the internalisation of national recovery as moral obligation. Progress was achieved—but often through suppression, discipline, and sacrifice.

These upheavals didn’t just affect individuals. They reshaped families, altered emotional norms, and changed how people adapted to their environments. When trauma isn’t acknowledged—whether at the personal, familial, or societal level—it doesn’t simply go away. It embeds itself in systems: in physiology, in relationships, in patterns of thought and behaviour. Over time, these embedded patterns can make distress more likely to be passed on, even when the original cause is long gone.

Systems shaping systems

There is widespread confusion about how trauma is passed down through generations. Some people reject the idea entirely, seeing it as either pseudoscience or mystical fatalism. Others embrace it uncritically, assuming ancestral pain lives in us like a ghost. Both views lack the necessary nuance to understand the true complexity of this transmission.

Transgenerational trauma is not magic, but it is deterministic—not in the sense of fate, but in the sense that systems shape systems. It doesn’t mean a child is destined to suffer because their grandparent did. It means behaviour, stress physiology, emotion regulation, and worldview are shaped by an interconnected web of influences—many of which begin long before birth. This determinism is dynamic, plastic, and interactive. It does not dictate outcome, but it constrains trajectories.

These effects show up in patterns: in attachment styles, parenting norms, emotional reactivity, endocrine function, and in some cases, gene expression. That last one—epigenetics—is frequently misrepresented. So let’s attempt a more accurate version.

Your DNA is like a musical score—each cell has the same composition. But gene expression is the conductor deciding which instruments play, how loud, and when. Experience—especially adversity—can shape that interpretation. Certain genes may become upregulated (think of this as a volume dial being turned up), others suppressed (turning the volume down). These regulatory changes don’t alter the genetic code itself, but they change how the body responds to stress or safety. And some of these shifts can persist across generations.

Much research shows this in model species and in humans—the data is more complex—but the underlying principle holds: chronic exposure to threat can alter stress physiology, immune function, and gene expression. These changes don’t necessarily help us—they’re not reliably adaptive (at least anymore)—but they reflect how the body and brain respond to environmental conditions, sometimes in ways that persist into the next generation.

Crucially, these effects are not fixed. Gene expression is plastic—responsive to environmental input throughout life. Neural and hormonal systems remain modifiable, especially in the context of support, safety, and social connection. Trauma can leave biological traces, but those traces are not destiny, change is possible.

Widespread cultural transgenerational trauma

Few places illustrate the layers of cultural, structural, and intergenerational trauma as vividly as Korea—a nation still navigating the residue of colonisation, war, and a culture of silence.

Consider the comfort women. Though many survivors have died, a small group still lives in the House of Sharing—a communal residence and museum outside Seoul. Their stories are both testimony and battleground. For decades, Japan has offered expressions of regret but not legal accountability. In the absence of meaningful apology, the trauma continues—not only for survivors, but for their children and their country.

One study of six biological children of former Korean “comfort women” found that five were diagnosed with psychiatric disorders—including PTSD, depression, and panic disorder—and showed trauma-related symptoms such as shame, hyperarousal, and low self-esteem, particularly when their mothers had PTSD, suggesting possible intergenerational transmission through both psychological and potentially biological mechanisms, though the authors acknowledged the small sample size as a key limitation here. Still, much other research suggests that historical minimisation and non-apology can function as secondary trauma, reinforcing silence, shame, and unresolved grief.

This is compounded by Korea’s Confucian heritage, which places high value on social order, filial duty, and emotional restraint. Pain that disrupts harmony is often contained rather than voiced. Many survivors never told their stories—not even to their families. But trauma still transmits. Through avoidance. Through tension. Through hypervigilance. Through emotional gaps a child learns not to question.

At the same time, this same collectivist foundation has enabled structures of remembrance. Public protests, civic memorials, and generational advocacy have created space for disclosure and solidarity. The weekly Wednesday protests for the comfort women are a form of intergenerational insistence—reminding public of the truth consistently.

But collectivism cuts both ways. In the push for national recovery, Korea’s rapid industrialisation was framed as moral victory. Suffering became proof of resilience. Grief was absorbed, not voiced. The pressure to perform strength became a social demand. Still evident today in the long working hours many Koreans endure, now increasingly linked to a wide range of health problems.

And in the body politic, we see signs of rebellion. Korea now has the lowest fertility rate in the world—less than 0.8 births per woman. This is not just about economics. It reflects disillusionment with traditional roles, particularly among women. Many reject the ideal of self-sacrifice, opting out of marriage and motherhood entirely. Movements like Escape the Corset and the 4B movement (no sex, no dating, no marriage, no children) represent a refusal to comply with inherited scripts.

Han and the politics of inherited emotion

Particularly in Western discussions, Korea is often described as a country shaped by 한 han—a collective, unresolved sorrow said to result from repeated historical injustice. But han is a contested term. While it can name genuine emotional experience, its elevation to a national trait is deeply fraught.

Some Korean scholars argue that han has been used to romanticize suffering, transforming rage into aestheticised sorrow. Others point out that Japanese colonial narratives portrayed Koreans as inherently mournful, pointing to traditional use of white or minimalist art forms as signs of innate sadness. In this framing, han became a colonial justification: a way of saying, “Koreans were always sorrowful, even before we arrived.” It is not a coincidence that this narrative suited the occupier.

Even post-liberation, han has been used by some Korean institutions to valorise endurance over protest. Rather than processing trauma through justice or structural change, it was framed as something to be borne silently, nobly.

Today, some see han as a tool for empowerment—language for collective grief. Others see it as a trap that essentialises pain and suppresses transformation. Either way, it shows how trauma is never just about biology or memory. It is also about narrative control—who names the pain, and for what purpose.

Inherited pain doesn’t need to be inevitable

Korea’s story shows us that trauma is not just personal—it is structural, biological, historical, and profoundly social. From the silenced suffering of comfort women to the national psyche shaped by colonisation, war, and economic sacrifice, we see that pain doesn’t simply vanish with time. It settles into bodies, into parenting practices, into systems of belief and behaviour. And without acknowledgement, it festers.

We’ve explored how trauma becomes transgenerational not through fate or magic, but through feedback loops—through stress physiology, epigenetics, social norms, and narratives passed on like heirlooms. Systems shape systems. And when those systems are built on suppression, silence, and self-erasure, they reproduce pain.

But this determinism doesn’t need to be our destiny. Trauma’s legacy can be interrupted.

Even in Korea, where emotional restraint and collectivist duty have historically limited open grieving, we now see powerful acts of resistance: survivors who speak, young people who refuse inherited roles, movements that name what was once unspeakable. These are the cracks where transformation enters.

We also see how shared cultural rituals and artifacts—like the weekly Wednesday protests, the House of Sharing, literature, film, and even collective language like han—can serve as containers for grief. When trauma is processed communally, something shifts. Pain becomes story. Story becomes meaning. And meaning becomes the ground on which new choices can be made.

Photo by April Jennifer Muller: Comfort woman statue outside The Korean Society of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. A copy of the one outside of the Japanese embassy in South Korea.

Survivors of trauma often feel a lot of pressure to “break the cycle,” but to heal inherited pain, we must move away from narratives that place the burden solely on the individual. We can trace the lines through biology, culture, social systems, and behaviour, and begin—together—the slow, collective work of reshaping our systems while we reshape our own neural connections. Only then can we stop passing down the pain.

Song Shin-do fought to receive a formal apology from the Japanese government but eventually lost her 10-year court battle, and afterwards she said “My case may have been broken in court. But my heart is not broken yet.” Song Shin-do died in 2017, aged 95, but her legacy, and tenacity in fighting for official recognition of the abhorrent trauma inflicted upon so many—lives on in all who are touched by her story.