‘Comfort women’ protest against deal

Chinese media slam Japan deal on wartime sex slaves

SEOUL, Dec 30, (AFP): Former “comfort women” and hundreds of supporters protested Wednesday against South Korea’s agreement with Japan on wartime sex slavery, as Seoul faces an uphill battle to sell it to the public.

Some 250 protesters gathered next to a statue outside Japan’s embassy which symbolises Korean women forced into Japanese army brothels during World War II.

They waved banners and chanted slogans, dismissing the deal as “humiliating.”

Japan Monday offered an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.3 million) payment to the 46 surviving South Korean women under an agreement which both nations described as “final and irreversible”.

The plight of the so-called “comfort women” is a hugely emotional issue that has for decades marred ties with Japan, which ruled the Korean peninsula harshly from 1910 to 1945.

The landmark agreement has sparked an angry reaction from some of the victims and activists, who took issue with Tokyo’s refusal to accept formal legal responsibility for the sex slavery.

Japan said the one-billion-yen payment was aimed at “restoring the women’s dignity” but was not official compensation.

“The fight is still on,” survivor Lee Yong-Soo said at the rally, attended by one other victim and about 250 protesters.

Gatherings have been held weekly there at the statue for years, demanding Japan’s formal apology and compensation.

Responsibility

“We will continue to fight to make Japan take formal legal responsibility and apologise so that victims who have already perished will have justice,” 88-year-old Lee added.

The mood was sombre as nine former sex slaves who died this year were commemorated. It later turned angry, with protesters shouting slogans denouncing Japan and its Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Demonstrators held portraits of the former victims and waved banners condemning the deal, particularly Seoul’s pledge to try to remove the statue from outside the embassy.

“Cancel the humiliating agreement!” some chanted, waving banners that read: “Say no to relocation of the statue!”

In the face of criticism, President Park Geun-Hye has launched an allout campaign to win public support for the deal. Senior officials Tuesday visited shelters for the victims and pleaded for their support — a key step in securing broader approval.

The handful of comfort women who have spoken about the agreement have mostly rejected it, but the views of the others are not known.

However, a recent poll showed 66 percent of South Koreans overall oppose the relocation of the statue.

Park has called for “understanding by the public and the victims” about the deal, which was warmly welcomed by the United States. It had long urged its two key Asian allies to make up.

Up to 200,000 women in Asia, many of them Koreans but also from China, the Philippines and what is now Indonesia, and others, are estimated to have been forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Japan has long maintained that its disputes with South Korea were fully settled in a 1965 agreement which saw Tokyo establish diplomatic ties and make a payment of $800 million.

But Seoul has said that treaty did not cover compensation for victims of wartime crimes and did not absolve Tokyo of responsibility.

The compromise agreement also drew a mixed reaction in Japan, with some far-right activists and newspapers criticising Abe for offering the apology.

China took a different tack, with state media slamming Japan’s longawaited mea culpa as insincere and insufficient.

Dispute

Japan’s landmark apology for its use of Korean sex slaves during World War II is too little too late, Chinese state media said Wednesday, slamming the long-awaited mea culpa as insincere and insufficient.

The deal officially closes Seoul and Tokyo’s long and bitter dispute over the Japanese Imperial Army’s forced recruitment of “comfort women” to work in military brothels in its former colony.

The issue has long vexed the countries’ ally the US, which fears that lingering wartime resentments are driving South Korea closer to China just as it has ramped up its military spending and become increasingly assertive abroad.

While the deal pleased many in Washington, it met with a frosty reception in Beijing, which wields popular anger over Japan’s wartime atrocities in China — including the use of Chinese “comfort women” — as a cudgel against Tokyo.

There has also been a mixed response in South Korea, with the media and some of the women themselves taking issue with the terms, particularly Tokyo’s refusal to accept formal legal responsibility.

Following the rapprochement, questions remain about why Japan “singled out” South Korea for an apology, the official news agency Xinhua wrote in a commentary late Tuesday.

Given Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “undeniable history of prevarication and obfuscation and habit for historical revisionism, people have good reason to remain doubtful”, it said.

Abe has publicly

questioned claims that the Japanese military systematically compelled women to become sex workers.

In 2012, he put his name to an advertisement in a US newspaper which described the women as wellpaid prostitutes.

“Is the agreement a mere expediency or a genuine and sincere expression of regret?” Xinhua wrote.

On the day the deal was sealed, Abe’s wife announced she had again visited Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni shrine, with Xinhua condemning her move as “at best a misguided, heartless gesture — at worst a flagrant display of hypocrisy and contempt”.

The shrine honours millions of Japan’s war dead, including several executed war criminals.

In an editorial Wednesday, the government-published China Daily said the settlement between Seoul and Tokyo, which includes an $8.3 million payment to a victims fund, was “largely politically driven, rather than being a true reflection of (Japan’s) responsibility”.

It was “not enough to signify Japan is ready to truly own up to its past”, it added.

During the war the Japanese military used and in some cases set up brothels, called “comfort stations”, across the Asia-Pacific, including China, with estimates saying it may have pressed as many as 200,000 women into servitude.

Beijing-based activist Tong Zeng told AFP that the agreement between Seoul and Tokyo was “a really big shock” for China.

“Japan to this day has not given an apology or compensation to comfort women in countries like China and the Philippines,” he said.

As the war’s “biggest victim”, he added, China “needs to continue to strive to compel Japan to apologise as soon as possible.”

“Otherwise, it won’t be good for history or regional peace.”