Monuments unveiled, protests held

SEOUL/TAIPEI: 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 Jaein said in commemoration of the day.

Moon said the issue involved ‘‘the entire world’’ and human rights of women as a whole, and pledged the South Korean Government would respect the women as the main parties of the issue, and pursue commemorative projects to restore their honour and dignity including discovery, preservation and propagation of records.

Japan says the matter of compensation for the South Korean women was settled under a 1965 treaty and a 2015 deal, struck by a previous South Korean administration, under which Japan apologised to the victims and provided a fund to support them.

But South Korean President Moon Jaein’s administration has spotlighted the emotionallycharged issue and has called for Japan to do more, despite backing down in January from formally renegotiating the deal.

Tokyo has protested over 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.

August 14 was chosen because on August 14, 1991, South Korean comfort woman victim Kim Haksun became the first to give a public testimony about her experience, according to the country’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. A thinktank funded by the South Korean Government devoted to researching the issue opened this month.

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.

Yesterday morning, more than 50 activists joined a sitin protest in front of Japan’s de facto embassy in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, asking for a formal apology and demanding monetary compensation for Taiwanese forced to work in its wartime brothels.

‘‘Japanese government should apologise,’’ the crowd shouted, wearing black shirts with their faces covered by white masks.

Japan colonised the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945 and occupied parts of China before and after the war.

❛ My hope is that this issue will not lead to a

diplomatic dispute South Korean President Moon

Jaein