Comfort woman statue unveiled in Sydney

Gil Won-ok, 89, a former wartime sex slave by the Japanese military during World War II, sits next to the statue of a comfort woman which was unveiled Saturday in Sydney, Australia. / Captured from Yoon Mee-hyang’s Facebook page

By Chung Hyun-chae

A statue featuring a wartime sex slave, mobilized for Japanese soldiers during World War II, was unveiled Saturday in Sydney, Australia, despite protests from Japanese right-wing groups.

This is the first monument erected in Australia and the fourth built outside of Korea, following statues in the U.S. and Canada.

The first statue was erected in 2011 in front of the Japanese Embassy in downtown Seoul as a symbol of the victims of wartime slavery.

The unveiling ceremony took place at the Korean Community Hall in Croydon Park, in the western suburb of Sydney, with about 300 attending.

Participants included human rights activist Reverend Bill Crews, who provided a place at his church for the statue. Also among them were Linda Burney, the first Indigenous woman elected to Australia’s lower house of the federal parliament, and Carol Ruff, daughter of Jan Ruff-O’Herne, a Dutch-Australian who was forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.

Former comfort woman Gil Won-ok, 89, Seongnam Mayor Lee Jae-myung and Yoon Mee-hyang, a representative of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, also attended the ceremony.

“I truly appreciate your effort to erect the statue to remember our painful history,” Gil said in her address.

Gil was forced to serve as a sex slave when she was 13 years old.

“This is a statue for all women suffering,” Reverend Crews was quoted as saying by ABC News. “Lots of women tonight will go home and be bashed by their husbands. I think it represents that as well. It’s the start of women saying never again.”

The statue was put in the gardens of the Exodus Foundation, the Uniting Church-run charity, located in Ashfield.

While the statue was scheduled to be installed in the Korean Community Hall for one year, Korean residents there and Reverend Crews decided to move it directly to the foundation’s garden for more people to take notice of the wartime slavery issue.

The 1.5-meter statue, which has the same design as the others, was made in Korea under the auspices of Seongnam City and the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, and then was sent to Australia.

Meanwhile, some members of right-wing Japanese groups reportedly caused a stir by taking pictures of the participants at the ceremony without permission.