WWII Korean comfort women still seek justice from Japan
Updated
A diminutive 81-year-old Korean woman is on her third visit to Australia lobbying for increased pressure on Japan over it's responsibility for war time sex slaves. Gil Won Ok is part of Amnesty International's campaign to get the Australian parliament to pass a motion, calling on Japan to take full responsibility and to provide compensation for the remaining so-called comfort women. And Gil Won Ok has warned Japan that even after all the women die, the history of such grievous human rights abuses will continue to haunt the country.
Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra correspondent
Speaker: Gil Won Ok, Korean former comfort woman; Hannah Harborow, Amnesty Australia
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MOTTRAM: She shuffles along and is in permanent pain, she says, from the tip of her head to her toes - the legacy of the almost unimaginable traumas she was subjected to, beginning at age 13. But Gil Won Ok is clear eyed at 81, and firm in her resolve and her message, as she sits in the soft mauve and cream of her traditional Korean dress, in the hard political surroundings of Australia's federal parliament.
GIL (IN KOREAN, TRANSLATED): The Japanese government thinks that if the survivors die, if all of us die, then this issue will finish, but history doesn't finish like that.
MOTTRAM: Speaking through a translator, Gil Won Ok explains that she expects Australian MPs to follow the US, the Netherlands, the UK, and Canada, the 27 member European Union, along with South Korea and Taiwan, and more recently even three city councils in Japan, by passing a motion in parliament, calling on Japan to take full responsibility for what Amnesty says was an institutionalised practice, a deliberate policy of Japan's war time authorities to kidnap or bribe girls as young as 12 to be used as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers. Of the estimated 200,000 women involved, survivors kept their horror stories secret for decades. Prompted to go public in some cases by seeing an echo of their awful past in the events of the collapse of Yugoslavia or the brutality of Africa's worst wars.
Gil Won Ok says Australia's should use its close relationship with Japan to bring pressure to bear.
GIL (IN KOREAN, TRANSLATED): I come to Australia, even though my body is aching, and the reason why I come is because even though there has been motions and resolutions in other countries, the Japanese government has not done anything about that. But if a motion comes from the friendly Australian parliament, I do believe the Japanese government will respond.
MOTTRAM: In what is known as the Kono Statement, issued in 1983, Japan extended sincere apologies and remorse to the comfort women. But is hasn't accepted full responsibility for the episode as a matter of government policy and hasn't offered compensation. While Japan's government offered support for payments to comfort women via the now expired Asian Women's Fund, Amnesty Australia says the money was largely from private donors, not Japan's government.
Amnesty's Hannah Harborow says Japan's statements fall short of what the comfort women need.
HARBOROW: Even those that are more moderate and accept that, Yes, this happened - to actually say outright, It was part of our military system, we set up brothels in X, Y and Z countries, brought in women, bribed them, tricked them - to do that and have to not only pay compensation, but the loss of face for something like that is so big.
MOTTRAM: It appears unlikely that Australia's parliament will deliver to Gil Won Ok the motion she seeks, though she, despite all her terrors, remains optimistic. And the Australian government's position falls short for the surviving comfort women too. Australia's foreign affairs department says the comfort women programme was one of the darkest episodes in modern history, it extends deepest sympathies to the victims and it recognises that Japan has acknowledged this episode, citing the Kono Statement, and Japanese reconciliation activities, which it says should continue. It also notes that since World War Two, Japan has been an exemplary contributor to world peace and stability.