Protests mar ‘Comfort Women Day’
SEOUL: People in South Korea and Taiwan unveiled monuments and staged protests yesterday to mark Japan’s wartime use of “comfort women”, a euphemism for girls and women forced to work in Japan’s wartime brothels.
In South Korea, a new monument was unveiled as part of its first “Memorial Day for Japanese Forces’ Comfort Women Victims”, which threatens to exacerbate a sensitive diplomatic issue with Japan, South Korea’s neighbour and a key ally of the United States in efforts to contain North Korea.
“My hope is that this issue will not lead to a diplomatic dispute between South Korea and Japan. I also do not think that this will be solved by a bilateral diplomatic solution,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in said in commemoration of the day.
Mr Moon said the issue involves “the entire world” and human rights of women as a whole, and pledged the South Korean government will respect the women as the main parties of the issue, and pursue commemorative projects to restore their honor and dignity including discovery, preservation and propagation of records.
Japan has said the matter of compensation for the South Korean women was settled under a 1965 treaty, and that the issue was resolved by a 2015 deal, struck by a previous, conservative South Korean administration — under which Japan apologised to the victims and provided 1 billion yen (300 million baht) to a fund to support them.
But President Moon’s administration has spotlighted the emotionally charged issue and has called for Japan to do more, despite backing down in January from formally renegotiating the deal.
In March, Mr Moon described Japan’s wartime use of comfort women as “crimes against humanity”. In response, the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called Mr Moon’s remarks “extremely regrettable”.
Tokyo has protested over other existing monuments in South Korea dedicated to comfort women, including one in front of
the Japanese embassy in Seoul, as well as the move late last year to establish a day to remember comfort women.
Aug 14 was chosen because on Aug 14, 1991, South Korean comfort woman victim Kim Hak-sun became the first to give a public testimony about her experience, according to the country’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
The comfort women issue has been a regular cause for contention between Japan and neighbours including China and North and South Korea since the war.
Over 50 activists joined a sit-in protest yesterday in front of Japan’s de facto embassy in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, asking for a formal apology and demanding monetary compensation for Taiwanese who were forced to work in its wartime brothels.
“Japanese government should apologise,” the crowd shouted, clad in black shirts and white masks.
Japan colonised the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945 and occupied parts of China before and during World War II.