Former comfort women want another apology from Japan
The Associated Press has an article up about former Korean comfort women gathering in Tokyo to demand that Prime Minister Hatoyama follow through with statements he once made in support of further apologies and compensation:
The women gathered in Tokyo to pressure Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who as opposition leader in 2002 told lawmakers the Japanese government should “offer compensation to the victims and restore their honor.”
Lee Yong-soo said Hatoyama has been supportive of the so-called “comfort women” since she first met him as opposition leader over a decade ago in Seoul.
“Now Mr. Hatoyama is prime minister. It’s time for him to settle the issue,” said the 80-year-old Lee, who said she was forced to become a sex slave in Taiwan after being abducted from Korea by Japanese soldiers in 1944.1
Historians say up to 200,000 women, mainly from the Korean peninsula and China, were forced to provide sex for Japanese soldiers in military brothels during the war.2 Many more women were raped as Japanese troops rampaged through the region. Only hundreds of the women are believed to still be alive.
Under the 1965 treaty normalizing relations between Japan and South Korea, Japan paid 180 billion yen in indemnity and aid to the South Korean government with the understanding that South Korea would then shoulder responsibility for compensating individual victims of the colonial period.
After the comfort women issue started getting a lot of attention in the 1990’s, the Japanese government issued a unambiguous apology to victims and set up the Asian Women’s Fund to distribute directly compensate former comfort women. Most of the fund’s financial backing came from government money, but many former comfort women in Korea rejected the compensation because it the AWF was not a government agency and the Japanese government’s apologies were not in the form of diet resolutions. The AWF dissolved in 2007 after concluding that it had done all it could to locate and pay those willing to accept compensation.
According to the Japan Times, DPJ lawmakers are now working to introduce an official comfort women apology bill to the Diet.
Notes:
1: This will inevitably appear in the comments section of the post, so I might as well mention it now – Lee Yong-soo has given many different accounts of how she became a comfort women. In some, she was forcibly abducted by soldiers. In others, she ran away from home.
2: Estimates range from 20,000 to over 400,000. Some historians, such as Ikuhiko Hata, estimate that close to 40% of comfort women were Japanese – more than any other individual nationality.
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This is why I found Hatoyama and the party to be good news in terms of Japan’s future and its relations with its asian neighbors.
I hope this bill does go through, and it has never had a better chance than now for an apology and compensation to comfort women.
By the way, that estimate of 40 percent of comfort women were Japanese women themselves I find shocking.
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“By the way, that estimate of 40 percent of comfort women were Japanese women themselves I find shocking.”
Why? As many troops as Japan had overseas during the war, even more were sitting here on the home front. They needed “comforting” as well, and it is well documented that back then poor families would sell a daughter to help the household out. I would be willing to wager that if there was some way of counting up all the prostitutes who “serviced” Japanese military personnel, on all fronts, whether in whorehouses targeting at the military, “normal” whorehouses or “privateers” on street corners, you would find that the overwhelming majority were, brace for it, Japanese women.
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In Molding Japanese Minds
, there is a chapter about the prostitution system in pre-war Japan that states the practice of poor rural Japanese women “selling themselves” into prostitution was not at all uncommon. Women were legally allowed to quit at any time, but their guarantors (usually family members) would be required to pay back any money owed to brothel owners.
The author argues that the Home Ministry had a screening process for licensed prostitutes that made sure most women who became prostitutes were doing it because of poverty. Allowing farmers to sell their daughters in time of crop failure saved the government the trouble of having to provide social services to the rural poor.
People lie in every society. It is not surprising that these wartime prostitutes lie about their past that they are not fully proud of, get attention and sympathy, and try to receive compensation from the “evil” Japanese. However, what makes South Korea very special is nobody in South Korea can publicly criticize (even question) their false accusations against the Japanese military.
One of the economics professors at Seoul National University, who specialized in economic history, once commented that “comfort women” were paid prostitutes, but he was soon forced to apologize to these women with dogeza (土下座) for his comment. I have to say journalists, researchers (especially historians), and politicians in South Korea do not have any professional/academic integrity.
By the way, the following blog discussed the “comfort women” issue in plain English. The blogger is a former NHK reporter. If interested, check the articles in 2007.
http://ianfu.blogspot.com/
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It is not surprising that these wartime prostitutes lie about their past that they are not fully proud of, get attention and sympathy, and try to receive compensation from the “evil” Japanese.
How many of them have you interviewed to be so sure of what you allege?
I have to say journalists, researchers (especially historians), and politicians in South Korea do not have any professional/academic integrity.
Its good that you avoid hyperbole and generalizations. Doing so lends strength to your…um….”argument”.
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How many of women do you think you should interview to be so sure that the U.S. government and Korean government didn’t abduct women to make them work as sex slaves during Korean War and Vietnam War?
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Interesting but wholly irrelevant point (as usual). I suggest you post your question somewhere on USA-Probe.com so it might actually be relevant.
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How many of women do you think you should interview to be so sure that the Japanese. government at didn’t abduct women to make them work as sex slaves during World War Ⅱ？
Does that make it easier for you to understand the relevancy?
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Because Japan can do no wrong during World War 2, right? So the heinous war crimes committed by Imperial Japan like Unit 731 must have been staged. You’re f*cking delusional.
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“Because Japan can do no wrong during World War 2, right?”
Who said that?
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Which specific part of my comment do you disagree and why?
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I wonder why I’ve never heard of Korean government offering compensation to the Korean comfort women it exploited in the same way after the colonization.
And I wonder why Korean journalists largely turn blind eye on that.
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Because there is no political hay to be made from it?
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I’m sure this has been pointed out before as well, but the Government of Japan decided to indirectly compensate through the Asian Women’s Fund because it’s already been agreed upon in a treaty between Japan and South Korea in 1965 that all monetary compensations between governments has been concluded.
日韓請求権並びに経済協力協定（財産及び請求権に関する問題の解決並びに経済協力に関する日本国と大韓民国との間の協定）
http://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/documents/texts/JPKR/19650622.T9J.html
Agreement on the Settlement of Problem concerning Property and Claims and the Economic Cooperation between the Japan and Republic of Korea
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Agreement_Between_Japan_and_the_Republic_of_Korea_Concerning_the_Settlement_of_Problems_in_Regard_to_Property_and_Claims_and_Economic_Cooperation
대한민국과 일본국간의 재산 및 청구권에 관한 문제의 경제협력에 관한 협정
http://www.geocities.jp/nobuo_shoudoshima/kihonjouyaku1.html
Even though it was an official governmental agreement between the two countries that no more compensation was needed, I personally think it’s nothing but good will that the government of Japan would still try to find a way to continue to compensate without contradicting its already established position.
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So will the apology magically travel thru time and right all wrongs?
No?
Then what difference does it make.
Unbelievable how some people are stuck obsessing about the past.
No wonder the future is so dim, too many people are looking in the wrong direction.
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Because ignoring the past means that you’re doomed to repeat it. The first step towards a better future is admitting you fucked up somewhere in the past.
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Right. So far only sex slaves exploited by Japan have been compensated and the rest of sex slaves exploited by Korea, the U.S. Germany etc in a similar way have been ignored. That is why it is important to set up the similar criteria for compensation and apology for the similar exploitation of the women during the war.
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So how many times does Japan have to officially admit that it fucked up until it actually counts?
Right now, I think we’re approaching the 50 mark.
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> Because ignoring the past means that you’re doomed to repeat it.
Is that why South Korea exports hundreds of thousands of prostitutes to major developed countries like the U.S. and Japan?
“The number of South Korean prostitutes abroad is estimated to reach 100,000” KBS News, October 25, 2009.
http://news.kbs.co.kr/article/society/200910/20091025/1871998.html
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First of all, this issue is a done deal, as Japan and Korea signed a contract saying that it is done. They need to ask Korea and not Japan for money.
According to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women
they answered to the ads and the testimony made by Japanese were lies, as admitted by Japanese.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied_Japan
there were over 1000 rapes in Kanagawa prefecture alone and British forces participated in rapes. Japan had to set up brothels or (RRA) so local women do not get raped.
If prostitution, forced sex and human traficing is so evil (of course it is bad when forced), full resolution is required for credibility and the acts by the Allied forces would require an apology and compensation.
Korea has no leg to stand on when it has not done its part in resolving what they did during Vietnam war.
There are supposedly at least 30,000 Korean prostitute in Japan rignt now, which they openly advertise on fuuzoku magazines sold at your locan konbini or via web. If they are selling their bodies now ‘willingly’, what makes you think they were ‘forced’ then. There was such a demand that they did not need to use force.
Having a brothel is no different than having a fast food restaurant on US bases. They are just tennants and the gouvenment has no responsibility. If you got sick eating at the fast food restaurant on base, do you think you can sue the US gouvenment.
That would be a joke.
The USA really has nothing to do with WW2 comfort women, only to the extent that they set up brothels (RRA). If USA continues to make it an issue, the Allied forces action would require apologies and compenstation, especially when you preach democracy and human rights (failed in Iraq and Afganistan may be next).
Korea will scream their exaggerated victomhood such as Nogunri and Jeju-do massacre and demand USA to pay compensation. Is the USA willing to listen to nonsense and stomach that?
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