What sex slavery? Foreign Minister avoids issue at U.N. meeting

By Yi Whan-woo

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se did not mention Japan’s sexual enslavement of Korean women before and during World War II at a U.N. conference on human rights issues in Geneva, Switzerland, Wednesday.

Speaking to the 31st session of the U.N. Human Right Council (UNHRC), Yun addressed South Korea’s efforts to support victims of sexual violence worldwide, but fell short of addressing Tokyo’s wartime sex slavery. He then focused on North Korea’s dire human rights record.

Yun’s stance is seen as a bid not to provoke Japan, in line with a controversial agreement signed last December between Seoul and Tokyo over former Korean sex slaves.

Yun and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida agreed not to bring up issues on Tokyo’s wartime sex crimes at U.N. meetings in order to settle related issues in a “final and irrevocable” manner. This UNHRC session is the first since the deal was signed.

“As a member of the council and as a champion of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, we will continue to contribute to such efforts on the bilateral, regional and global fronts, in order to heal the wounds of the victims and to prevent such tragedies from recurring,” Yun said in his keynote speech.

Critics said Yun’s failure to mention the sex slave issue was the government’s passive resistance on the issue, despite the agreement.

Ahn Shin-kwon, who leads the House of Sharing, a shelter for surviving victims of Japan’s sex slavery, asked the government not to give up addressing Tokyo’s state-perpetrated sex crimes on the international stage.

He said Japan recently compiled a U.N. report that did not acknowledge its involvement in the forced mobilization of women for prostitution at brothels operated by the Japanese military.

“Japan is exploiting the December agreement and the government should be awake to stop being swayed by Tokyo,” he said

Referring to North Korea as a “human rights black hole,” Yun urged the international community to bolster efforts against Pyongyang’s crimes against humanity.

He cited the U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s report on North Korean human rights, which accused the tyrannical regime of running political prison camps where up to 220,000 people are thought to have been detained, tortured and executed.

“I believe that now is the time for the international community and the U.N.’s human rights mechanisms to redouble their efforts to improve the human rights situation in North Korea,” Yun said.