This photo released on Nov. 17, 2015, shows the exterior of what will be South Korea’s first museum that chronicles Japan’s mobilization of forced labor. Built in the southeastern port city of Busan, the six-storied museum, set to open on World Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, exhibits documents and other material related to Koreans who were coerced to work for Japan who colonized Korea from 1910-45. Busan was where most of these Koreans were gathered before being shipped abroad. (Yonhap)
If true, this demand to remove the comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul causes me to wonder how sincere Prime Minister Abe is about settling the matter with the ROK. It would be political suicide for anyone in the ROK government to move the statue without first the Korean public feeling the issue has been settled, not before:
President Park Geun-hye (right, back row) talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (left, back row) as they stand for a photo session at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, the Philippines, Thursday. (Yonhap)
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has demanded the removal of a statue of a teenage Korean girl, a symbol of Korean victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, as a condition for settling the issue involving the victims, according to a news report Thursday.
Citing a Tokyo official, the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun reported that Abe made the demand during his first-ever bilateral summit with South Korean President Park Geun-hye at Cheong Wa Dae on Nov. 2.
Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said the report was “different from the truth.”
“We would like to refrain from divulging the content of the summit,” ministry spokesperson Cho June-hyuck told reporters. “We express regrets over the fact that there have been reports from Japan that are not true or distorted.”
According to the report, Abe called for the removal of the statue in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and reiterated that the issue of the Korean victims — euphemistically called comfort women — has already been settled through the 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral ties.
The report also said that Tokyo is considering establishing a follow-up to the botched Asian Women’s Fund that Japan set up in 1995 for Asian victims, many of whom were Korean. It has also considered sending a letter from the prime minister to each of the victims, the report said. [Korea Herald]
If it makes anyone feel better according to this poll nearly 78% of Japanese hate China as well:
Nearly 60 percent of Japanese people said they hate Korea in a survey conducted last year and released Sunday by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The national image of Korea is the worst in Japan among 14 other countries where citizens were interviewed as part of a survey conducted by Samjong KPMG and commissioned by the ministry.
It showed that only 14.3 percent of Japanese respondents hold positive views about Korea, the lowest among 14 countries.
It surveyed 5,600 people in 14 countries about Korea’s image between October and November 2014.
The 14 countries were Malaysia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Russia, the United States, Romania, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan.
The accounting and financial advisory firm attributed Korea’s negative image in Japan to the ongoing historical and territorial disputes.
“The results suggest that persistent rows over historical issues and the relevant anti-Korea campaigns by rightwing activists affected popular sentiment in Japan,” a company official said. [The Korea Times]
An excavator dismantles facilities on the roof of the former Japanese Embassy, built in 1976, in Seoul on Nov. 2, 2015, as the embassy has implemented a project to rebuild its building, scheduled for completion by 2020. The embassy has been running operations at a nearby building since July 2015. (Yonhap)
I have to agree that even though the Park-Abe summit did not lead to any breakthroughs, just the fact they met was significant considering all the bickering the past few years. Hopefully this will lead to better future cooperation as long as Prime Minister Abe can keep his political team in check in regards to making controversial comments that inflame tensions with Seoul:
South Korean President Park Geun-hye (R) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shake hands prior to their summit talks at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Nov. 2, 2015. (Yonhap)
Experts on South Korea-Japan ties welcomed the results of Monday’s summit between President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, saying the meeting paved the way for better bilateral relations even without producing concrete outcomes.
Park and Abe held their first bilateral talks in Seoul on the sidelines of a trilateral summit with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. The format was intended to keep the first South Korea-Japan summit in three and a half years as low-key and practical as possible amid disputes over shared history.
A major stumbling block in the two countries’ relations has been the issue of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II. South Korea demands Japan offer a sincere apology and compensation to the victims before they all die, while Tokyo insists all issues related to its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula were settled under the normalization treaty of 1965. [Yonhap]
