Japan liable for wartime sex slaves, crimes against humanity: ex-UN envoy

Japan is liable for Korean women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II and must redress for the most egregious international crimes of slavery and "crimes against humanity," a former U.N. envoy on human rights said Friday.

Gay McDougall, the former special rapporteur on the U.N. Human Rights Council, also urged South Korea to consider initiating a proceeding against Japan before the International Court of Justice to resolve long-standing grievances for the victims.

"Between 1932 and the end of the Second World War, the Japanese government and the Japanese Imperial Army forced over 200,000 women into sexual slavery in rape centers throughout Asia," McDougall told a forum in Seoul. "The majority of the victims were from Korea."

"The Japanese government remains liable for grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law, violations that amount in their totality to crimes against humanity," McDougall told a forum in Seoul.

McDougall visited Seoul this week and met South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan earlier in the day as Seoul is preparing to propose forming an arbitration panel with Tokyo, in what would be the latest diplomatic bid to resolve longstanding grievances regarding the aging Korean victims. Currently, only 63 Korean victims are alive.

"They will no longer be with us in a few years' time, as the victims are 87 years old on average," the foreign minister told McDougall during the meeting.

"When they all pass away, the Japanese government will be left with a debt that can never be redeemed," Kim said. "As such, my government is determined to do everything it can."

The subject of former wartime sex slaves, euphemistically called "comfort women," is one of the most emotional and unresolved issues between South Korea and Japan, which occupied the Korean Peninsula as its colony from 1910 through 1945.

Korea has pressed Japan to resolve the issue through apology and compensation for the aging Korean women on a humanitarian level, but Tokyo refuses to do so, saying the matter was already settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the two countries.

McDougall, however, countered the Japanese argument.

"The Japanese government's argument that Japan has already settled all claims from the Second World War through peace treaties and reparations agreements following the war are unpersuasive based on the facts as currently known," she said.

"Further, the failure of the Japanese government to admit the extent of the Japanese military's direct involvement in the establishment and maintenance of these rape centers until over 25 years after the (1965) Settlement Agreement should stand as a bar to any defense on this ground," McDougall said.

If Japan continues to ignore Korea's calls, she said, Seoul should exercise its rights to arbitration under the 1965 treaty.

In 2011, South Korea's Constitutional Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for the Seoul government to make no specific efforts to settle the matter with Tokyo.

Citing the court's ruling, McDougall said the South Korean government is "therefore under an obligation to take this step." The arbitration panel could be formed if Japan agrees to join.

"If the government of Japan is non-responsive to the notice for arbitration," she said, "the government of Korea should consider initiating a proceeding against Japan before the International Court of Justice."

Japan has acknowledged its wartime military used sex slaves but refuses to issue an apology or compensate the victims individually, citing the 1965 Korea-Japan Claims Settlement Agreement.

South Korean officials, however, have stressed that the issue cannot be regarded as fully resolved by the 1965 treaty because the wartime sex slavery was a "crime against humanity."

The issue is becoming increasingly urgent as the surviving comfort women are elderly and may soon pass away. (Yonhap)