Participants unfold a big banner during a rally near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Aug. 12, 2015, for the elderly Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japan’s World War II soldiers. (Yonhap)
The comfort women issue appears to be bringing out the crazy in people now, just like the Dokdo issue:
An elderly man set himself on fire near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul Wednesday and is in critical condition, a police officer said.
The incident took place around 12:40 p.m. when Choi Heon-yeol suddenly set himself on fire in front of the embassy before being put out by people nearby.
More than 2,500 people were holding a weekly rally there for the elderly Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japan’s World War II soldiers.
The 81-year-old has since been transported to a hospital specializing in burns in southwestern Seoul, where he lies unconscious.
“More than half of his body is burned, 40 percent of which are third-degree,” doctor Yang Hyeong-tae of Hallym University Hangang Sacred Heart Hospital said. [Yonhap]
This is just common sense that the Japanese Self Defense Force wouldn’t just land in South Korea without governmental permission, but due to the massive misinformation in Korea, this fact has to actually be socialized publicly in the media:
Japan reaffirmed Wednesday it would not send its troops to the Korean Peninsula without a request or prior consent from South Korea even though the country is expanding the role of its self-defense forces, the Defense Ministry in Seoul said.
Earlier, Japan stressed that Tokyo would never send troops to the Peninsula even for a contingency without permission from the Seoul government.
“Japan’s defense minister is explaining to its assembly on its position that (Japanese self-defense forces) will not enter the territory of South Korea if there’s no consent from the country,” a defense ministry official quoted a group of Japanese officials as saying during a working-level defense policy meeting.
“The Japanese side has reasserted this is the Japanese government’s basic stance.”
Earlier in the day, the neighbors held the 21st round of the working-level defense policy meetings in Seoul, resuming the director-level defense dialogue channel after over two years.
Since the last round held in Tokyo in March 2013, the annual meeting was suspended last year due to worsening diplomatic ties over unresolved history-related feuds.
The South Korean side was headed by Yoon Soon-ku, the ministry’s director general on international policy, while the Japanese delegation was led by his counterpart, Atsuo Suzuki.
The Japanese side has also suggested the signing of two military agreements — the General Security of Military Information Agreement and the Cross-Servicing Agreement — during the session, but the Korean side was cautious, the defense official said on condition of anonymity.
“Forging these agreements requires the understanding and support from the public,” he said, referring to public anxieties over military intelligence with the former colonial ruler. “It should be reviewed carefully.” [Yonhap]
It looks like President Park’s sister is quite the headache for her, but I would be in more agreement with her if she criticized her sister for not doing more for the modern day Korean comfort women in China:
Just as President Park Geun-hye struggles to improve the country’s relations with Japan, an unlikely figure has catapulted herself to the center of controversy by criticizing Seoul for dragging out the sex slavery rows: her younger sister, Geun-ryeong.
In an interview with Japan’s video-sharing website Niconico, the 61-year-old Park Geun-ryeong said she was sorry that in most news reports South Korea blames Japan for the ongoing toil of the so-called comfort women “without itself taking greater care” of them.
Citing previous statements including the regret expressed by Emperor Hirohito to then-President Chun Doo-hwan in 1984, she said it is “inappropriate” to demand an apology every time a new premier takes office.
Park also defended the Japanese prime minister’s globally criticized visit to the controversial Yasukuni war shrine in December 2013, calling Seoul’s opposition an “interference” in another country’s internal affairs.
“I believe if anyone thinks that the prime minister would worship at the Yasukuni with an ambition for another war in mind, he or she is an abnormal person,” Park said. “How would blood-related descendants not pay respect to their ancestors?”
Her remarks are likely to have little impact on the bilateral diplomatic relations or the ongoing talks aimed at resolving the sex slavery dispute, but they instantly sparked public uproar given her position in the presidential family. [Korea Herald]
It seems every time some reporter wants to make some point about Japanese historical revisionism they drag out this guy:
A monument to comfort women was erected outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011
Seventy years after the end of World War Two, the voices of revisionism in Japan are growing stronger and moving into the mainstream, particularly on the issue of comfort women, who were women forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the war.
One of the most eloquent voices of revisionism is Toshio Tamogami.
Mr Tamogami is well-educated, knowledgeable and, when I meet him, exquisitely polite. The former chief of staff of Japan’s air force believes in a version of Japanese history that is deeply at odds with much of the rest of the world.
But it is increasingly popular among young Japanese, tired of being told they must keep apologising to China and Korea.
Last year Mr Tamogami ran for governor of Tokyo. He came fourth, with 600,000 votes. Most strikingly, among young voters aged 20 to 30 he got nearly a quarter of the votes cast.
“As a defeated nation we only teach the history forced on us by the victors,” he says. “To be an independent nation again we must move away from the history imposed on us. We should take back our true history that we can be proud of.”
In this “true” history of the 20th Century that Mr Tamogami talks of, Japan was not the aggressor, but the liberator. Japanese soldiers fought valiantly to expel the hated white imperialists who had subjugated Asian peoples for 200 years.
It is a proud history, where Japan, alone in Asia, was capable of taking on and defeating the European oppressors. It is also a version of history that has no room for the Japanese committing atrocities against fellow Asians.
Mr Tamogami believes that Japan did not invade the Korean Peninsula, but rather “invested in Korea and also in Taiwan and Manchuria”.
I ask him about the invasion of China in 1937 and the massacre of civilians in the capital Nanjing. Surely that was naked aggression?
“I can declare that there was no Nanjing Massacre,” he says, claiming there were “no eyewitnesses” of Japanese soldiers slaughtering Chinese civilians.
It is when I ask him about the issue of Korean comfort women that Mr Tamogami’s denials are most indignant.
He declares it “another fabrication”, saying: “If this is true, how many soldiers had to be mobilised to forcibly drag those women away? And those Korean men were just watching their women taken away by force? Were Korean men all cowards?” [BBC via Reddit Korea]
You can read the rest at the link.
First of all in regards to the question of whether Japanese men are cowards, scholars who have looked at the comfort women issue would tell you that most of the women put into the comfort women system were sold by Korean brokers. So Korean men weren’t cowards they were salesmen. Actually 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. Women that were kidnapped were likely by Korean brokers. This does not absolve the Imperial Japanese from responsibility since they ran the comfort woman system, but it provides context of what was going on at the time. Likewise this same system was in place to service the US military where women were being sold, often by their families, to become camptown prostitutes.
Secondly I am well aware of Japanese historical revisionism since I have been to the Yushukan Museum which promotes the Asian liberation narrative of people like Tamogami. However, instead of bringing this guy up as a source to confirm pre-conceived narrative, I would like to see a journalist conduct a national poll and see how many Japanese actually believe this narrative? I am willing to bet that a strong majority of the Japanese public believes that what happened during World War II was not liberation and Imperial Japan was in the wrong. At the same time many of them probably believe that the World War II history issue is being exaggerated for political reasons which is what allows voices like Tamogami to have the following that he does have.
College students and police officers celebrate the 70th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule with a performance at a plaza in front of Cheongnyangni Station in Seoul on Aug. 1, 2015. (Yonhap)
A group of university students protests in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on July 29, 2015, demanding that Japan make a sincere apology for its wartime crimes during its 1910-45 colonial rule over Korea. The pickets say “Japan, a war criminal state, should apologize before history.” (Yonhap)
I wonder if these same protesters will go protest in front of the Chinese embassy as well and demand an apology for war crimes committed against Korea by the government responsible for it still in power to this day?
It will be interesting to see what terms the Japanese government agrees to, but I would love to see South Korea makes the same demands of the Chinese government to apologize for their aggression during the Korean War and continued division of the peninsula:
Beijing has reportedly demanded the government and ruling party of Japan include the words “colonialism,” “aggression” and apology” in the so-called “Abe statement,” set to be released next month.
The Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun reported on Tuesday that Chinese foreign ministry officials are trying to persuade Japanese officials regarding Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s planned statement marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.
The newspaper said that Chinese officials are also demanding Tokyo inherit the apologetic Murayama statement that included the words “colonial rule,” “aggression,” “apology” and “remorse.” [KBS World Radio]
