By Jaeyeon Woo
- Jaeyeon Woo / The Wall Street Journal
- The protest scene
It was never meant to last 20 years.
In January 1992, a group of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II staged a protest outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul. They timed the protest to a visit by Japan’s then-Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. They became known as the “comfort women” and their weekly demonstration became known as the “Wednesday Protest.”
Today, with a crowd of about 3,000 joining in, the comfort women staged their 1,000th protest in front of the embassy.
Five former comfort women attended, sitting in chairs and covered in blankets. They wore a yellow vest with the sign that says “Honor & Human Rights to Halmeoni (Grandmothers).” The oldest of them, Kim Soon-ok, 90, used sign language to answer reporters’ questions.
Kim Bok-dong, 88, went up to the stage and called for more action by the South Korean government as well as the Japanese government.
“I want President Lee to urge Japan to apologize for the past sins and make compensation,” she said to cheers from the crowd. “The Japanese Ambassador should make a formal apology as quickly as possible before we all die.”
During the past 20 years, many comfort women died. Today, only 63 are alive. The South Korean government since 1992 has registered 234 comfort women. During the war, an estimated 200,000 Korean women were forced to work in Japanese military brothels.
For more than two hours, the women and their supporters sang, clapped and listened to speeches. The five women also dabbed at their eyes from time to time. A few Japanese civic groups attended the event.
The highlight came midway through when a bronze sculpture was unveiled as a tribute to the comfort women. The statue is of a young girl in a hanbok, or traditional Korean dress, sitting on a chair. It was placed permanently on a sidewalk across the street from the embassy.
- Jaeyeon Woo / The Wall Street Journal
- Kim Bok-dong, one of the five comfort women who attend the event, speaks to the crowd.
Cho Byung-jae, spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Tuesday that the Japanese government complained about the monument.
On Wednesday, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said in Tokyo, “It is very regrettable that they went ahead with constructing the comfort woman statue.” He said they will make a formal request to Seoul remove it.
As for the complaints that the South Korean government is not doing enough to help these victims, Mr. Cho said, “It is indefensible that the government hasn’t still resolved the problem while the protest reaches its 1000th.”
Later Wendesday, the Foreign ministry said it rejected Japanese government’s complaint to remove the statue.
- Associated Press
- The former comfort women are posing with the statue.
“The statue reflects the desperation by the victims who have been asking Japan to resolve the issue and seeking to recover their honor through 1,000 peaceful protests,” the ministry said in a statement.
In August, South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for the government to not actively seek to resolve the reparation issue of the comfort women. Mr. Cho said the foreign ministry contacted Tokyo to request a formal diplomatic discussion about the issue but didn’t get a response.
As the event wound down, the comfort women said they will return next Wednesday – when there are likely to be fewer cameras – for the 1,001st protest.
Claiming that you have already apologized for something you deny(including the previous Japanese PM) seems to be some sort of Japanese Zen logic.
Koreans,do not bring the matter that was all solved in 1965.
We already knew well how these “testimonies” were big lies.
Who trusts testimony etc. of the South Korean who gives false evidence 600 or more times in a trial compared with Japan?
Anyway,
Korea must bring all Korean comfort women ,over 50,000? still working in Japan back to Korea.
Korea must bring all Korean-Japanese who has long been parasitic on Japan and committing a crime back to Korea.
On July 20, 2007, The U.S. House passed a resolution “urging Japan to apologize for coercing thousands of women to work as sex slaves for its World War II military.”(Washington Post, July 31, 2007). In the same report, it says, “Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., labeled as “nauseating” what he said were efforts by some in Japan “to distort and deny history and play a game of blame the victim.” “Inhumane deeds should be fully acknowledged,” said Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The world awaits a full reckoning of history from the Japanese government.” “After decades of denial, the Japanese government acknowledged its role in wartime prostitution after a historian discovered documents showing government involvement. In 1993, the government issued a carefully worded official apology, but it was never approved by parliament.” Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
Visit “www.forthenextgeneration.com” site for evidence and testimonies regarding this issue, and other issues which Japanese colonization caused in Korea and Asia.
Comments below by Katie, Paula, and Sato, are in line with the denial, ignorance, and white-washed image of Japan’s war crime. They should come clean like the Germans. Denial is the name of Japan’s history textbooks. My grandparents are the witnesses of Japan’s war crimes during WWII. “There is not a single evidence thus far”? “Not even one person who sitnessed”? Are you deaf and/or blind? What are those thousands of people saying? So the victims’ testimonies do not count? There are Japanese citizens with conscience who support these movements. The rest are in denial, learning from fabricated history textbooks. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and are in denial as well. “Did not mean any harm. Just wanted to invade America and make it a better country.”