I am an editorial writer at The Korea Times, focusing on foreign policy, North Korea and domestic politics. My key areas of interest include North Korea, foreign interference in elections, election integrity, cyberattacks and human rights. Prior to joining the Editorial Board, I served as both Politics Desk editor and Culture Desk editor. During my career, I have reported on the Presidential Office under the Lee Myung-bak administration, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Assembly.
Japan urged not to miss last opportunity to repent
This is the second in a series of articles highlighting Japan’s wartime crimes and their impact on Seoul-Tokyo relations.—ED.
By Kang Hyun-kyung
Eighteen survivors of enforced wartime sex slavery who were in their 80s or early 90s, passed away last year, leaving behind just 61 “comfort women.”
Japan is poised to miss its last opportunity to repent while the weary survivors are alive. Its denial of any involvement in the wartime crime is likely to backfire, given rape by Japanese troops during World War II has drawn global attention since the early 1990s.
Numerous documents, including U.N. reports, research papers and books have dealt with the atrocity. Some recounted the unspeakable ordeals these women went through against their own will at the “comfort stations” in great detail.
According to Seoul-based non-profit group the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, a total of 235 survivors have registered as victims of the wartime sex slavery since the early 1990s.
The actual number of women who were forced into sexual enslavement, however, is far greater than this.
According to a U.N. report released in 1996, as many as 200,000 girls and women from Korea, the Philippines, China, the Netherlands and Myanmar were forcibly drafted by the Japanese military during World War II.
Nearly 80 percent of them were Koreans who lived under Japan’s brutal colonial rule, it said. These women were forced into brothels for three to five years during the war.
Speaking to the U.N. on Japan’s wartime sexual slavery in 1996, Karen Parker, a former U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women, said nearly half of the girls and women died as a direct result of the treatment they received.
Quoting an anonymous victim, Parker said there were an average of 10 rapes per day in a five-day workweek, meaning each comfort woman was raped 50 times per week or 2,500 times per year.
For three years of service _ the average _ she said a comfort girl was raped 7,500 times, Parker said in the report she presented for the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
“Mr. Chairman, how much compensation do you think ought to be paid to a woman who was raped 7,500 times? What would the members of the Commission want for their daughters if their daughters had been raped even once?” she said.
“China, Korea, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Burma (now Myanmar) — these are your daughters. How can the international community, even though dominated by men, fail to demand that Japan provide meaningful compensation for each of these women?”
Korean survivors have rallied urging Japan to offer a sincere, heart-felt apology and compensate them for their inhumane sufferings every Wednesday in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.
But their voices have not been heard. Japan claims that compensation was paid in 1965 following an agreement by Seoul and Tokyo and that it has already offered an apology.
Right-wing politicians in Japan further insist that there no official documentation exists suggesting proof that those women were forced to provide sexual services for the Japanese military.