Tag: comfort women

This should be no surprise that protesters would come out against trying to improve relations with Japan:

Soon after President Yoon Suk Yeol gave a key address, calling Japan a partner for South Korea’s regional security and economy, some hundreds held a rally on Independence Movement Day on Wednesday, urging him to keep his promise of resolving historic disputes with the neighboring country including the one over sexual slavery during its 1910-45 rule of Korean Peninsula.

In the late morning chill, around 200 civic activists gathered near the Japanese Embassy in central Seoul, holding paper cutouts of yellow butterflies — a symbol of victims representing a wish to escape from violence and fly — chanting “apologize,” and demanding compensation from Japan.

The protest was a part of the 1,585th weekly rally protesting Japan’s wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II that has been held for the last 30 years.

Lee Yong-soo, a 93-year-old victim of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, took over the microphone, said she still has a faith in President Yoon, and demanded his administration to send the matter to the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

“The then-presidential-candidate Yoon Suk Yeol was the third person to visit me, and he said he would resolve the comfort women issue even if he wasn’t elected. His words touched me,” she said. “I don’t think that he lied (at that time), and I will believe in him.”

Watching Lee’s tearful speech, 63-year-old Kim Deok-yeon said he has participated in the demonstration since last year to raise awareness, especially among the younger generation.

“These people were forced to become sex slaves of Japan’s wartime brothels, but Japan seems reluctant (to take responsibility). As a Korean citizen, I couldn’t stand my anger toward Japan for committing such atrocities,” he said, referring to the victims as “survivors of a dark part of history.”

Kim stressed the importance of educating Korean students about undistorted facts in and out of the country, lamenting Japan’s recognition of Dokdo as part of its territory.

“History doesn’t lie — it has everything recorded down. Now is a time to properly educate the younger generation about our country’s past so that the same history will not repeat itself in the future,” he said, hoping young people would create a change.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but if this 63 year old man really cared about sex slaves then what is he doing about modern day sexual slavery of Korean women in China right now?

According to one report the sexual trafficking of Korean women is a $105 million industry in China. Imperial Japan was obviously wrong about trafficking Korean women 80 years ago which they claim was resolved with the payments made in the 1965 Normalization Treaty. The Japanese government had apologized even started a victim compensation fund before the prior President Moon shut it down for political reasons. Restarting this victim compensation fund appears to be the route that President Yoon is trying to go again, but we will see what happens.

I would definitely like to view this documentary if it gets released on a streaming channel at some point:

“I wanted to make a film that logically refutes [the distorted historical record.]”These are the words of Lee Suk-jae, who directed the documentary film “Koko Sunyi” about victims of Japanese wartime military sexual slavery. In a recent interview, he pointed out that Japan’s distortion of history is ongoing, which is why he felt the need to make the film. 

Many movies, dramas, TV programs and books related to the so-called comfort women issue have been published so far, but among them, “Koko Sunyi” logically refutes the absurdity of some of the claims of Japan’s far right based on historical data.Much of the information shared in “Koko Sunyi” is based on the Japanese Prisoners of War Interrogation Reports No. 48 and 49 published by the US Office of War Information (OWI), which contains details about the “comfort women” at the time. 

Lee’s film is centered around the life of Grandmother Sun-yi, who was taken to a sexual slavery camp, also known as a “comfort station,” in Myanmar during the war. Lee, who works as an investigative reporter for KBS, found that, among the 20 “comfort women” in Myanmar recorded in the OWI report, a woman with the surname Koko and first name Sun-yi was actually a woman named Park Sun-yi who lived in Hamyang, South Gyeongsang Province.

Hankyoreh

You can read more at the link.

Well hopefully she is not to seriously injured from this incident, but she was conducting an illegal protest prior to Nancy Pelosi arriving at the National Assembly:

Lee Yong-soo, a victim of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery in her 90s, was reportedly pulled out of her wheelchair by security guards while she was waiting to meet with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the National Assembly grounds on Thursday.  
   
A video released after the incident by media outlets including JTBC and YTN shows Lee on the ground by her wheelchair, while several security personnel attempt to lift her.    
   
One security guard can be heard repeating, “Lift up her leg,” while Lee, in apparent protest, says, “Let go of me, you’re going to kill someone here.” 

Lee was hospitalized afterward at the Catholic University of Korea Yeouido St. Mary’s Hospital in western Seoul.    
   
A committee that she heads, which has been calling for the Korean and Japanese governments to settle the “comfort women” issue at the International Court of Justice, told the press that the security guards tried to move her despite her protest and that Lee fell out of her wheelchair in the process.    
   
“They pulled on her by her legs,” the committee said. “It was a traumatic experience for her.”  
   
The National Assembly Secretariat in a statement on Friday said that it “wishes well” for Lee’s health, adding however that “any attempt to meet up with an international guest at the Assembly without prior appointment is a disregard for diplomatic protocols. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

What kind of sad life must you have if the first thing you want to do when living with COVID measures are implemented is go protest at a comfort woman statue:

Boisterous shouting matches plagued the site in central Seoul of a girl’s statue symbolizing victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery Wednesday as supporters and detractors of the victims resumed rallies for the first time since distancing rules were eased.

Before rallies were banned under COVID-19 rules last year, the site near Japan’s Embassy had become a battleground every Wednesday, as supporters of the sexual slavery victims held a weekly “Wednesday rally” demanding an apology from Japan and conservative detractors held an opposing the protests.

After more than a year of hiatus, rallies resumed between the two sides at the statue site Wednesday, as eased social distancing rules went into force this week in line with the government’s “living with COVID-19” scheme.

Early Wednesday morning, about 10 anti-Japanese activists turned up at the site, holding banners calling for the resolution of the sexual slavery issue and shouting through loudspeakers that they won’t leave until all “pro-Japanese” forces are gone from the site.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the fact that there was pro-Japanese protesters is actually pretty amazing. Anyway judging by the picture the police greatly outnumbered everyone at the protest.

Professor Ramseyer and his views on the comfort women are back in the news:

A Harvard professor has claimed that Japan did not force Korean and other women into sexual slavery during World War II, renewing his much-denounced claims that the victims were actually prostitutes.

J. Mark Ramseyer of the Harvard Law School made the claim in the preface to a recently published book on the victims, saying Japan’s military did not need to forcibly mobilize what he characterized as prostitutes and had little room to do so.

Authored by Tetsuo Arima, a social science professor at Waseda University, the book was published on July 30 ahead of South Korea’s Aug. 15 Liberation Day that marks the country’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule, long a source of historical animosity between the neighboring countries.

In the Japanese-language preface, Ramseyer also said that it was only after Seiji Yoshida, a Japanese novelist, published a book entitled “My War Crimes” in 1983 that damage claims by former sex slaves started to emerge.

The book included Yoshida’s claim that he took Korean women from the island of Jeju for sexual service.

Ramseyer then claimed that women, who worked at the military brothels to make money or due to pressure exerted by their fathers, started to claim that they were forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese military.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but like I have long said, the comfort women controversy is one of these issues where facts do not matter, how people feel about the topic is what matters.

The Korean public likes to think that all the comfort women were girls sleeping in bed and kidnapped by evil Japanese soldiers while the Japanese rightists like to think they were all willing prostitutes.  Both historical narratives are untrue if one really looks at the history.

What Professor Park writes about is the same historical narrative that Sarah Soh wrote about in her book “The Comfort Women“.  In the book Soh provides documented evidence that most of the Korean women put into the comfort women system were sold by Korean brokers.  The actual kidnapping of Korean women by Japanese soldiers would be a very rare occurrence when the broker system made so many of these women readily available.  This does not absolve the Imperial Japanese from responsibility since they ran the comfort woman system that provided the demand for the Korean brokers to meet.  To make even worse is that many of these girls were teenagers when sold into prostitution.  I see no way that a young teenager should be considered a willing prostitute.  Especially when many girls were sold by their families into prostitution for money due to the extreme poverty.  This was actually a practice that was going on well into the US military era in South Korea.

It is pretty clear that the comfort women issue is not black and white, but ultimately the Imperial Japanese government was responsible for the actions of the Korean brokers that supplied the majority of the Korean girls that were underage.  There is no need to create a false narrative of what happened to the comfort women when the truth is bad enough.

The comfort women controversy is one of these issues where facts do not matter, how people feel about the topic is what matters:

Korean students at Harvard University have strongly criticized a professor over his controversial claim that Japan’s wartime sexual slavery was actually voluntary prostitution, demanding its immediate withdrawal and his official apology to victims.

Harvard Korean Society made the demand in a statement on its website after Harvard Law School Japanese legal studies professor J. Mark Ramseyer caused controversy with his recently published paper titled “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War.”

“It is a wrong conclusion based on grounds very biased and lacking trustworthiness,” the statement said. “Harvard Korean Society demands Prof. Ramseyer’s official apology and immediate withdrawal of the paper.”

“The issue of comfort women is an international inhumane act, and his academic view which justifies and negates the act is an immoral and shameless view,” it added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I have not read Professor Ramseyer’s paper yet because it is behind a pay wall. Maybe it is out of line, but I would not be surprised if it has similar conclusions to what Sejong University Professor Park Yu-ha wrote a few years ago about the comfort women issue:

“Park believes that Japan did not recruit comfort women in Korea, which was part of Japan from Tokyo’s perspective, in quite the same way that it did on the front lines and in occupied areas, such as in the Philippines. In those areas, records show that Japanese soldiers were directly involved in the forcible and violent taking away of comfort women. ‘Many of the Korean comfort women were apparently recruited while being cheated by agents of prostitution, some of whom were Koreans, or being sold by their parents,’ Park said. ‘While some have testified they were forcibly taken away by military personnel, I suppose that such cases, if there were any, were exceptional.’

She was of course arrested for writing such a book. The Korean public likes to think that all the comfort women were girls sleeping in bed and kidnapped by evil Japanese soldiers while the Japanese rightists like to think they were all willing prostitutes.  Both historical narratives are untrue if one really looks at the history.

What Professor Park writes about is the same historical narrative that Sarah Soh wrote about in her book “The Comfort Women“.  In the book Soh provides documented evidence that most of the Korean women put into the comfort women system were sold by Korean brokers.  The actual kidnapping of Korean women by Japanese soldiers would be a very rare occurrence when the broker system made so many of these women readily available.  This does not absolve the Imperial Japanese from responsibility since they ran the comfort woman system that provided the demand for the Korean brokers to meet.  To make even worse is that many of these girls were teenagers when sold into prostitution.  I see no way that a young teenager should be considered a willing prostitute.  Especially when many girls were sold by their families into prostitution for money due to the extreme poverty.  This was actually a practice that was going on well into the US military era in South Korea.

It is pretty clear that the comfort women issue is not black and white, but ultimately the Imperial Japanese government was responsible for the actions of the Korean brokers that supplied the majority of the Korean girls that were underage.  There is no need to create a false narrative of what happened to the comfort women when the truth is bad enough.

It appears the Korean left will deal with the comfort women scandal by attempting to erase any memory of it instead of holding those accountable for allowing the fraud to happen:

A shelter for surviving victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery is set to be closed after the last resident recently left the facility, the operator said Saturday.

Gil Won-ok, 92, left the shelter June 11 to stay at a church operated by her 61-year-old stepson, priest Hwang Sun-hee, according to the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance (Korea Council), the nongovernmental organization working for South Korea’s “comfort women,” that is currently mired in an alleged embezzlement scandal

The Korea Council said it has yet to decide when to close the shelter in Mapo District, western Seoul, and return it to the Myungsung Church, which owns the property.

The planned shutdown comes as the head of the shelter was found dead at her apartment in Paju, north of Seoul, early last month. 

Korea Times via a reader tip

You can read more at the link.