"Taken Away at Twelve - 1 & 2 sections" genre: Chamber Music
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	Three sectional piece for Cello and Piano
	Credits: Performed by Mark Foster, cello & Clara Yang, piano, Apr 3rd, 2001
	Story Behind the Song After reading a true story of a Korean comfort woman during World War II, I was deeply inspired to express this unbelievable tragedy that should never happen again. I basically intended to write a piece that has harsh, brutal, and miserable sounds, as if the sound symbolizes a comfort woman's incredible suffering. The composition contains the same motive and theme throughout but the harmonic color and timbre are very diverse, reflecting various tragic situation. The first section of the piece is called "Taken...". Korea was still annexed by Japan, while the latter was engaging in many wars in the Pacific. In order to support its war effort, Japan deceived and kidnapped hundreds of innocent, young Korean girls, and sent them into forced labor in different countries. The second section is "...to a comfort station". The young girl of the story was sent to a comfort station in Taiwan and forced to become a sexual slave. Her job was to comfort 20 - 30 men in a day. The composition uses extreme dissonant secundal chords and clusters for an appropriate screaming, painful effect. The third section is "Return". After Japan was defeated, the young woman returned to her home wishing to forget the tragedy that had happened to her. She sang nostalgic songs on the boat to Korea. Her agony would never be forgotten but remain forever in her life. I combined a Korean folk tune with my original but varied theme for a quiet, sad ending using quartal and quintal sonorities. (Composed in February, 2001)

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