Tag: comfort women

The Chinese government has long sought to break up the US-ROK and US-Japan military alliances that maintains the current security framework in Northeast Asia.  The THAAD issue is a perfect example of how they have created tension in the US-ROK alliance with disinformation.  The comfort women issue is another issue that Beijing has weaponized to create tension between the US, Korea, and Japan:

The “comfort women” issue appears, on the surface, to be a bilateral problem between South Korea and Japan. In reality, it is deeper. The key player is increasingly not South Korea, but China, and the ultimate target is not Japan, but the United States, as the comfort women are co-opted by Beijing in its anti-American information war.

China has been waging this war since Beijing realized after the First Gulf War that it would likely be unable to the United States on the battlefield. As the document Unrestricted Warfare, published by two high-ranking Chinese military officials, makes clear, the Chinese have chosen to fight the US, and particularly the US-Japan alliance, using desinformatsiya rather than hardware and troops.  (…)

Overseas Chinese groups have also pressed hard on the comfort women and Nanjing issues in the US and Canada: In San Francisco, Superior Court judges Julie Tang and Lillian Sing retired from the bench in order to co-found the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, which was ultimately successful in bringing a comfort woman statue to San Francisco. Chinese-American San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was himself a vocal proponent of the comfort woman statue.  [Asia Times]

You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if Beijing isn’t fanning the flames of the anti-base sentiment in Okinawa as well to create further tension between the US and Japan.

Here is yet another example of a comfort woman statue being built outside of Korea:

A “comfort woman” statue is expected to be erected in France to honor the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery.

According to Ahn Shin-kwon, director of the House of Sharing, a shelter for surviving victims in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, the Gwangmyeong City Government and Koreans living in France are in favor of the idea.

“We are trying to figure out if there is a way to set up a statue in public place,” Ahn told The Korea Times Monday.

“We will surely face hurdles along the way just like we did during our San Francisco project. But we will keep pushing hard to make it happen.”

If erected, the statue will be the first comfort woman statue in France.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

A video uncovered from the US National archives shows that Japanese forces massacred a number of Korean women believed to have been sex slaves following a battle in China:

Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul National University Human Rights Center unveiled video footage, Tuesday, showing scores of bodies of Korean sex slaves being dumped after being killed by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

The Japanese government has denied any responsibility for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women into sexual slavery. But the latest footage contradicts that claim, according to researchers studying the issue.

The 19-second footage depicts a Chinese soldier looking at scores of naked bodies he carried to a hill. In another scene, he takes a sock off one of the bodies before walking away. Another scene shows smoke billowing from what appears to be a mound of human bodies at a different location.

The research team said the footage was recorded Sept. 15, 1944, in Tengchong, a western Chinese village bordering Myanmar, by an Allied Command soldier, surnamed Baldwin. The team recovered the footage from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

In June that year, the Allied Command began attacking Tengchong and a nearby city which were under control of almost 3,000 Japanese soldiers. As defeat became more certain, the Japanese soldiers took their own lives and killed people stationed with them, including the sex slaves. At least 70 sex slaves were believed to have been there with the troops, among whom only 23 survived.

Together with the footage, the team also revealed a document filed by the Allied Command reporting the killing of Korean sex slaves. “Night of the 13th (Sept. 13, 1944), the Japs shot 30 Korean girls in the city,” the document said.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link and below is the actual video.

Japanese government official emailed this to make sure I hadn’t missed it. Same guy, self-described liberal, had recently told me that most comfort women were prostitutes. pic.twitter.com/hv2QxQNC19

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) February 11, 2018

This is ruling about prostitution outside US military bases is nothing new and widely known for decades throughout Korea:

A court issued a first-ever ruling acknowledging that the Republic of Korea actively justified or encouraged prostitution with the operation of US “military camp towns” for the sake of the military alliance and foreign currency acquisition.“In regarding the right to sexual self-determination of the women in the camp town and the very character of the plaintiffs as represented through their sexuality as means of achieving state goals, the state violated its obligation to respect human rights,” the court concluded, ordering the payment of compensation to all 117 plaintiffs.

Hon. Judge Lee Beom-gyun of Seoul High Court’s 22nd civil affairs division ruled on Feb. 8 in the case filed by 117 former military camp town prostitutes to demand damages from the state, which was ordered to pay compensation of 7 million won (US$6,370) to 74 of the plaintiffs and 3 million won (US$2,730) to the remaining 43.“According to official Ministry of Health and Welfare documents, [the state] actively encouraged the women in the military camp towns engage in prostitution to allow foreign troops to ‘relax’ and ‘enjoy sexual services’ with them,” the court said.“In the process, [the state] operated and managed the military camp towns with the intention or purpose of contributing to maintenance of a military alliance essential for national security by ‘promoting and boosting morale’ among foreign troops while mobilizing prostitutes for economic goals such as acquisition of foreign currency,” it ruled.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link, but there is some nuance to the ruling in favor of the prostitutes to worked outside of US military base. The court did not find the government liable for forcing them into prostitution, just managing it by forcing them into medical treatment:

But the court did not accept the plaintiffs’ claim that the state had also violated the law by establishing the base village in the first time “to allow prostitution to take place easily.”“It is impossible to conclude that the victims were in a situation where they did not begin engaging in prostitution within the area of their own free will or could not leave,” the court said.  [Hankyoreh]

This is important because if the government was found to have forced these women into prostitution than that would allow the Japanese right to say that the ROK government should stop complaining about World War II era comfort women when they had their own comfort women system going.  This is technically correct because the ROK government was not grabbing women out of their homes and putting them into clubs.

Many of the prostitutes came from poor families who sold their daughters to the club owners to make ends meet or put a son through college for example.  Other became prostitutes in the hope of marrying a GI to escape poverty.  However, they ended up in the club system they were effectively managed by the Korean government to not spread disease.  They were forcibly given STD treatments and those that were found to be diseased were then forcibly interned.  This is where the human rights violations come into play for these women by the state.

Something to keep in mind is that the US military bases were not the only locations with prostitutes.  Can prostitutes stationed outside ROK Army bases or even in urban red light districts now sue for damages as well?  What about the women brought in from the Philippines beginning in the 1990’s that were forced into prostitution?  Can they sue for damages as well?

Here is the latest on the comfort women issue between Korea and Japan:

Seoul does not plan to scrap or renegotiate the 2015 bilateral deal on the so-called comfort women, announced Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha Tuesday, though she underscored that the agreement is not a true resolution to the issue of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery.

The Korean government also plans to raise a fund equivalent to the 1 billion yen ($8.87 million) transferred by Tokyo to a foundation formed under the 2015 agreement for the victims of the Japanese Imperial Army’s forced recruitment of young women into sexual slavery before and during World War II, who are euphemistically referred to as comfort women.

“It is an undeniable fact that that the 2015 deal was an official agreement reached between the two countries, and we will not demand a renegotiation from the Japanese government,” Kang told reporters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Seoul.

The decision was reached after a Foreign Ministry task force spent months reviewing the negotiating process and contents of the 2015 deal, gathering survivors’ viewpoints and taking into consideration Korea-Japan relations, Kang added.

The two countries’ foreign ministries struck a deal on Dec. 28, 2015 to resolve the comfort women issue, which included an apology by the Japanese government and a 1 billion yen fund for the victims. The agreement provoked an immediate backlash from some survivors and civic organizations, who claimed Japan should take clearer legal responsibility by paying reparations.

The Korean Foreign Ministry launched a nine-member task force at the end of July comprised of foreign affairs officials and experts in Korea-Japan relations, international law and human rights. The task force was charged with assessing how the deal was reached and to pay more attention to the viewpoints of the victims, who had expressed disappointment at being left out of the negotiation process by the Park Geun-hye administration.

President Moon Jae-in has emphasized that the agreement is not accepted by the general public in Korea and called it “flawed.”

While Seoul does not plan to renegotiate or scrap the deal, Kang encouraged Japan to “accept the truth as it is, according to universally-accepted standards,” to help restore the honor and dignity of the victims and heal the wounds in their hearts.

“What the victims all wish for is a genuine apology [of Japan’s] own accord,” Kang added.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but I think the Japanese public has probably hit apology fatigue with all the demands for more apologies after their government has already made a number of apologies. Prime Minister Abe could apologize again and commit seppuku on top of Namsan and there would still be people complaining for more apologies.

That is why I have long believed that if Japanese Prime Minister Abe was really clever he should apologize for war time sexual slavery again, but this time in a large public speech to draw maximum media attention. During this speech then announce that Japan to atone for its past sins would become a champion of women’s rights beginning with the plight of modern day sexual slavery of North Korean women in China that both the South Korean and Chinese governments choose to ignore.

North Korean women trafficked in the sex industry in China are the modern day comfort women that the Chinese and South Koreans do nothing to stop.  Japan becoming an advocate for these women would expose the current hypocrisy of their critics on this issue.

President Moon Jae-in (C, rear) meets two victims of sexual enslavement by the Japanese military during World War II to have lunch with them at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae on Jan. 4, 2018, in this photo released by his office. Moon reiterated his stance that a 2015 deal between Seoul and Tokyo on ending their longstanding dispute over former wartime sex slaves is defective but said the incumbent government may still work with the agreement to resolve the issue. (Yonhap)

Participants, along with a girl statue symbolizing a “comfort woman,” sit on 300 chairs placed at Gwanghwamun Square in downtown Seoul in a performance themed “A Promise Inscribed on an Empty Chair” after finishing this year’s final weekly rally in front of the Japanese Embassy on Dec. 27, 2017, calling for Japan’s apology for its army’s sexual enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Korean women during World War II. Such victims are euphemistically called “comfort women.” Portraits of late comfort women and chrysanthemums are placed on the chairs. (Yonhap)

When it comes to the comfort women issue the Moon administration has made it clear that there will be no compromise with Japan:

South Korea’s previous government of ousted President Park Geun-hye kept part of a 2015 deal with Japan on resolving the issue of wartime sexual slavery secret from the public in order to avoid criticism of concessions made to Tokyo, a task force said Wednesday.

After months of looking into how the unpopular deal was reached, the foreign ministry task force also said that the Park administration failed to make adequate efforts to listen to victims before reaching the agreement.

It called for the government to come up with a longer-term approach to resolve such a historical matter as the so-called comfort women issue, saying that “give-and-take” negotiations or political compromise could not be the ultimate solution.

“A victims-centered approach, which has become the norm when it comes to the human rights of women in time of war, has not been sufficiently reflected and the deal was reached through give-and-take negotiations like an ordinary diplomatic agenda” the task force said in its 31-page report on the outcome of its review.

“The agreement was finalized mostly based on government views without adequately taking into account the opinions of victims in the process of negotiation,” it added.

The findings are expected to make the already unpopular deal even more so, and could spark stronger calls for renegotiation, a move sure to strain relations between the two neighboring countries.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but according to the article despite the supposed anger of the comfort women with the agreement, 36 out of 47 of them took the compensation money from Japan.

With that all said when is the Korean government going to demand that China apologize and pay compensation for all the Koreans they killed and their near success of destroying the Republic of Korea during the Korean War?  That is more recent history then the World War II era comfort women issue.

A group of civic activists in front of the foreign ministry in Seoul on Dec. 27, 2017, calls for the scrapping of an agreement made between the South Korean and Japanese governments in 2015 over issues surrounding the Japanese military’s sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II. Earlier in the day, a foreign ministry task force announced the outcomes of its five-month review, concluding that the accord lacked efforts to listen to victims, euphemistically called “comfort women,” before reaching the deal. (Yonhap)