The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, founded in 1990, has been staging protest rallies in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul on Wednesday of every week, demanding the Japanese government admit its role in the drafting of sex slaves before and during the war.
Tokyo acknowledges recruiting the comfort women, mostly from Korea but also from Taiwan, the Philippines and China, but insists that it was done by private agencies and not the government.
"Can't they hear these old and sick women sitting here on the ground, rain or shine, crying for justice?" Kim Bok-dong, an 84-year-old victim, said in front of the Japanese embassy where police formed a cordon.
"In order to teach true history to the young people and prevent this kind of thing from happening again, the Korean government has to get an official apology from the Japanese government. For that, I've been coming here" for the past 20 years, she said.
Former sex slaves and their supporters demand Japan's sincere apology during their Wednesday rally in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul on Nov. 17. (Yonhap) |
Kim and six other former comfort women rallied in front of the embassy, supported by some 150 people including Rep. Lee In-young of the main opposition Democratic Party, who was a founding member of the comfort women's council, and activists from women's organizations, nuns and students. Each held a yellow, butterfly-shaped picket in commemoration of the victims.
The latest rally was the 944th since the victims and their supporters began to gather in front of the embassy every week from January 1992.
The women demand compensation, full disclosure of Japan's wartime sex slavery, construction of a memorial and the inclusion of the Japanese wrongdoings at schools, none of which has been accepted.
The council will hold an international symposium on the comfort women issue on Thursday with scholars and activists from China, Japan, the United States and Germany. This year also marks the centennial of Japan's forced annexation of Korea in 1910, which was followed by colonial rule that ended in 1945 with Japan's defeat in World War II.
"Over the past 20 years, the Japanese government has sought to keep its serious crimes in dark, consistently denying and avoiding our calls and just demands," the council said in a statement.
A total of 234 former sex slaves have registered with the organization. The majority have since died, including six this year. Only 82 of them are still living.
Historians say more than 200,000 women fell victim to the Imperial Japanese Army, which coaxed or forced young girls to work at frontline brothels.
In July 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution condemning Japan and demanded that Japan "formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner" for the sexual slavery. The move was followed in the European Parliament later that year.
"When we started this, we thought it would be resolved in five years, 10 years at the longest. It was a really naive idea," Yun Mi-hyang, the council's representative, said in a recent interview.
"We couldn't change Japan, but we never gave up in the face of the giant wall of (Japanese) nationalism and spearheaded this movement on our own," Yun said.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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