 A statue depicting a woman is set up in front of the Japanese Embassy during a weekly protest against Korean women victimized by Japan’s wartime practice of sexual slavery in downtown Seoul, Thursday. / Korea Times |
By Kang Hyun-kyung
The Seoul-Tokyo diplomatic spat over a statue symbolizing Japan’s wartime sex slavery set up in front of the Japanese Embassy showed signs of worsening Thursday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade rebuffed Japan’s call to remove the statue installed by a civic group dedicated to fighting for compensation for Japan’s forced conscription of so-called “comfort women.”
The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan pushed for the placement of the statue on the occasion of the 1,000th anniversary of Wednesday rallies calling for an apology and compensation for the wartime atrocity despite protests from Japan.
“The comfort women issue is a fundamental, humanitarian one closely related to women’s rights. Our government’s position on the issue is that it has yet to be resolved,” Foreign ministry spokesman Cho Byung-jae told reporters during a regular briefing.
The ministry reiterated its position that the government was not in a position to exert its influence over the statue as it was erected by the civic group.
The reaction came shortly after a Japanese official renewed a call to remove the statue of a girl wearing a traditional Korean costume.
During a news conference held at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, Shinsuke Sugiyama, director-general of Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau of Japan’s foreign ministry, called on the Korean government to ask the civic group to remove the statue.
Sugiyama was quoted as saying that Japanese Ambassador to South Korea Masashi Muto delivered an unmistakable message from Japan toward that end during a meeting with a senior foreign ministry official Wednesday.
According to the activist group, up to 200,000 Korean women were forced into providing sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II.
Of them, only 63 survive. The vast majority of the wartime slaves were allegedly killed by Japanese troops during the war. The civic group called for an official apology, compensation, and addressing the wartime crime in history books.
The comfort women issue will likely be raised during the Korea-Japan summit slated for Sunday between President Lee Myung-bak and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.
On Wednesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura expressed regret over the placing of the statue. Fujimura said he would request the Korean government via diplomatic channels to remove it.
Rejecting the call from Japan, Seoul urged Tokyo to hold talks to discuss compensation for the wartime sex slavery. Japan ignored the first call made three months ago.
The ministry proposed the comfort women talks after the Constitutional Court ruled the government’s failure to act over the wartime crime was unconstitutional.
According to the treaty signed between South Korea and Japan in 1965, the neighboring countries must resolve disputes through diplomatic channels first and if this doesn’t work, the two governments establish an intermediary committee to settle them.
The Constitutional Court urged the foreign ministry to take steps to resolve the problem.
Japan claims that compensation of the comfort women issue was resolved in 1965 when South Korea and Japan signed a treaty to establish diplomatic relations.
But South Korean officials said the wartime slaves were not covered in the compensation.
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