Documentary as a Medium to Advance a Public Apology to Comfort Women in a Transitional Justice Context

Abstract: This thesis explores how the documentary film The Apology (as a medium) and its filmmaker (as a carrier group) functions as connection points between cultural trauma and transitional justice reparations driving social change. Earlier approaches to bringing justice to comfort women have been based on legal frameworks which this thesis considers restrictive and instead examines justice and reparations from a victim-centred perspective. To dig for details about how the protagonists' and the filmmaker understand justice, this thesis conducted a narrative analysis of the documentary film The Apology and an interview with the film director. Connecting theories from cultural trauma and transitional justice, the findings show a lack of higher levels of participation of the comfort women in designing and implementing justice and reparation programmes. The documentary produced new master narratives that facilitated the comfort women’s identity shift from passive receivers to active seekers of justice and reparations. This thesis concludes that carrier groups are humane agents with the ability to create powerful influencing narratives to support collective identity shaping, awareness raising, and push for social change and government actions. Finally, an effective public apology must be victim-centred and truthful. Otherwise, it risks remaining as a nice-looking political gesture to deceive the public.