Publisher: Hachette Book Group March 4, 2025
Helena Rho’s Stone Angels, a novel about the sexual exploitation of Korean women and girls during the Asia-Pacific War and the search for one of those victims by one of their relatives, is a well-researched novel of the pain and injustice perpetuated on the war’s ianfu, or “comfort women,” by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces. Rho, whose memoir, American Seoul debuted in May of 2022, has brought to the world of fiction the heartbreaking story of one ianfu’s journey from her promising, innocent beginnings to a life of horror at the hands of not only the men who raped and abused her during the war but the sustained tragedy of the subsequent decades of Japanese denial of what befell so many female victims of the times—and not only that of Korean women but women from countries as far away as Australia, New Guinea, the Netherlands, China, Burma and other nations involved in the war at that time. But Stone Angels is also a story of a woman’s reluctance when it comes to permitting herself to love again, to be happy again, after two tumultuous relationships, one with a long-term friend, and one with her ex-husband, Thom. It is Angelina Sunyuh Lee’s connection with Keisuke Ono, a young, Japanese American journalist whom Angelina Sunyuh Lee meets in South Korea as she searches for her aunt and namesake, the ianfu, Sunyuh, who was taken as a child, and whose absence forever destroys the promise of one family’s future, who allows Angelina to reconsider love once more.
Rho’s narrators, for there are three—Angelina (our protagonist), Gonju (her mother), and Sunyuh (Angelina’s aunt, namesake, and the ianfu of the novel)—allow us, the reader, to understand the story not only from disparate points of view but from the different time periods in which the story is told, and how those perspectives and periods inherently impact not only the lives of the other narrators but the lives of those family members affected by what takes place as a result of Sunyuh’s kidnapping and the rumors of what happened to her after she was abducted. It’s a tragic story all the more because we know Sunyuh’s story is not an isolated one, however much the novel is fiction—Sunyuh’s story is a story that somewhere between fifty-thousand and two-hundred thousand women suffered during the second world war. Many of the ianfu were murdered by their captors, but a great many also committed suicide, for they could not live with the pain and shame of living through the horrors of sexual slavery, even if they survived the brothels and lived long enough afterwards to be considered halmeonis, or “grandmothers,” irrespective of whether or not they had children. Rho, subtly and not-so-subtly, opens our eyes to the atrocities of the time, but she does so while keeping a sense of hope alive for her characters, and with an insider’s understanding of the Korean culture within which the story takes place. Rho knows deeply the importance and expectations of younger generations vis-a-vis the elders in Korean families and in the greater Korean community, as well as how much weight the concept of bringing shame to one’s family is avoided at all costs, including, in Sunyuh’s case, removing herself from the family she loves for the rest of her life after her time as an ianfu. It’s a heartbreaking moment when we find out that this is what she has done, but it’s critical to understanding the difficult choices women had to make at that time and even today in order to save face and protect the reputations of their families.
As we venture into each woman’s perspective and history (which Rho captures brilliantly through each woman’s perspective), first with Sunyuh’s kidnapping and disappearance and then, later, as the Lee family become foreigners in a foreign land, we witness the progress of hope and expectation and courage that evolves, gradually, from the ashes of the women who’ve come before Angelina, including, especially, her mother, who commits suicide after not being able to meet, or sustain, the life she’d envisioned for herself. Her suicide, sadly, is one of many, including that of Joonsuk-oppa’s mother (Joonsuk-oppa is Sunyuh’s boyfriend), as well as the countless suicides of so many of the ianfu who were unable to cope with their circumstances, both during the war and after it.
There is a passage early in the novel, one in where we venture into a dream passage that perfectly encapsulates the trajectory of Angelina’s life, but also that of her family’s, and, in particular, her aunt Sunyuh’s. Rho writes, “She turns the glass doorknob, cut like a diamond. The white wood door swings open and she sees a woman’s arm hanging adrift in a white clawfoot bathtub. She looks down at her bare feet and watches with horror as blood floods the black and white tiles and rises to her ankles. The next instant, she is standing in front of the bathroom of her mother’s old house, a forgotten paean to tasteless 1980s modernist imitations—Formica countertops, naked light bulbs over huge swaths of mirror, fake crystal cold and hot water tap handles. She hears shouting and looks up . . . [she] can’t breathe. In the gaudy mirror, she catches a glimpse of her mother’s face in repose, as if she’s sleeping . . .”
In this passage we have her mother Gonju’s suicide at the pain of having lost her sister to the insidious reality of the “comfort girls” taken by the Japanese soldiers, as well as the disappointment of her marriage to Minsu, a serial cheater; the reality of first-generation children and the antiquity/American history they are forced to live in, which is represented by the furniture and decor of years’ past, as well as the blood that “rises to her ankles.” In this visual we’re reminded of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when Macbeth stares at his hands out of a sense of guilt: “Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” Macbeth asks. If you know anything about Korean culture, you know how prominent the concept of avoiding shame is, as well as how important traditional displays of respect are, especially concerning the halmeonis and hal-abeojis, the grandmothers and grandfathers, who rule over Korean families. Through this lens of guilt and veneration, we understand the difficult and heartbreaking decisions Rho’s characters make, including Angelina appropriating the blond hair and blue eyes of the American girls around her, and why, in their respective ways (and in Rho’s particularly skilled hands) we care deeply about the trials and tribulations of Rho’s characters as much as we do.
Like The Orphan Master’s Son, Pachinko, If I had Your Face, and other novels that delve into and explore Korean culture, Stone Angels brings to vivid life the classic cuisines, the traditions and ceremonies so intrinsic and essential to Korean life, the heartbreak of Korea’s past and how that past continues to flourish today, both good and bad, but also hopeful. As William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” and Rho’s characters are perfect examples of how the histories of families adversely affected affect adversely those who have survived the unsurvivable. It’s a touching novel, and a maddening one all at once, because we want to reach our hands into the novel and save the damaged, the wronged, whose lives will never return to what they were before the war. We want to tell Rho’s characters that everything is going to be okay if only they keep on going, that sometimes we have no other choice than to venture further out into rougher seas if we’re to reach the safety of the shores beyond the storms and the dark clouds overhead. Sometimes her characters do venture out, and sometimes her characters don’t. As readers, we can fault no one what they do—not the ianfu, not Gonju, and especially not Angelina: the decisions they are forced to make are unbearable. We cannot blame, we cannot assign guilt, we cannot be critical, for others have already done so, and they have done so well.
On December 28, 2015, the late Shinzo Abe (he was assassinated in 2022), who was the prime minister of Japan at the time, apologized to the comfort women, and he acknowledged the suffering they endured seven decades earlier. But Ms. Rho, in correspondence with me, that while Abe apologized, he also "went so far as to publicly assert that his honor and that of his grandchildren has been tainted by the survivors [and . . . ] his response was to discredit the women by insisting there's no evidence the victims were forcibly taken and used as sex slaves." $8.3 million "in donations, not reparations", the author said, was put into a fund for the surviving victims, which was a good first step but certainly not sufficient, either as a token of regret or financial compensation enough for so many lives ruined. It doesn’t take much to understand that the admission came a little too late for the majority of girls and women who had to endure such injustice. Japan would also not be held accountable for the war crimes against its victims. Japan has never issued a formal apology, nor does it seem it ever will, for doing so would admit legal government responsibility.
If there is anything to criticize of the novel, it’s the relationship between Angelina and Keisuke, who was originally brought into the novel to help Angelina find her mother’s sister and Angelina’s namesake, her aunt Sunyuh. At times it feels like the relationship between Angelina and Keisuke is a bit forced, a tad melodramatic. That said, Keisuke does serve his purpose. Keisuke draws Angelina into a relationship based on mutual affection and attraction rather than a return to the disappointments of her previous relationships with Thom, her husband, and her long-term friend turned lover, Lars. But without giving away too much, Keisuke, in the end, makes sense, even with Angelina’s continued reluctance to start fresh with someone new. And it’s an appropriate denouement—the criticism is mine and likely mine alone, and should not be taken as gospel.
As a father of two half-Korean girls, I found great warmth and accuracy in Rho’s descriptions of the foods and traditions and the precise terms bestowed upon family members, the expectations and decorum of Korean culture and every day reality, most of which I learned and appreciated and had the privilege of experiencing over the past two decades. While reading Stone Angels, one naturally feels the autobiographical nature of the novel, and for this reader that closeness, or what feels like that closeness between the author and her characters adds additional validity to every word, every circumstance, every slight and hope and difficult moment of “the other’s” experience in America. Rho’s words regarding first generation children of immigrants rings truer and truer each day, especially in the current political climate, and it adds one more important layer to a history and injustice whose identification and apologies have been too long delayed.
Helena Rho is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominated writer and the author of American Seoul. A former assistant professor of pediatrics, she has practiced and taught at top ten children’s hospitals: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh. For more information, visit HelenaRho.com. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Slate, Crab Orchard Review, Entropy, Sycamore Review, Solstice, Fourth Genre, 805 Lit + Art, and in Post Road.
To preorder Stone Angels, visit her page at Hachette Book Group.
Click here to order Helena’s memoir, American Seoul.
Cully Perlman is a novelist, blogger, and Substantive Editor. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com
BOOK REVIEW: STONE ANGELS by Helena Rho explores the sexual exploitation of Korean women and girls during the Asia-Pacific War
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