Geum-joo vs. Japan (I)

By Semoon Chang

I know this is an old story, but hear me out please because the debate continues to this date with no end in sight.

This lawsuit was filed in 2000 in the U.S. District Court by 15 Asian women who were used as sexual slaves by Japanese military during World War II. The case was dismissed in 2001. The appeal by the plaintiffs was rejected even after the July 2004 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that ordered the appellate court to reconsider the case. Let me first introduce some facts as described in the October 4, 2001, ruling by Henry H. Kennedy, Jr., U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C.

Approximately 200,000 women were forced through abductions, deception, and coercion into sexual slavery by the Japanese Army between 1931 and 1945. These women were taken to so-called “comfort stations” where the women “were repeatedly raped — often by as many as 30 or 40 men a day — tortured, beaten, mutilated, and sometimes murdered. The women were denied proper medical attention, shelter, and nutrition.” Only about 25 percent to 35 percent of these women are believed to have survived the torture, and “suffered health effects, including damage to reproductive organs and sexually transmitted diseases.” Soldiers who wanted to rape these women were charged a fee. A soldier’s length of stay and time of visit were determined based upon his rank.

For many years, the Japanese government denied allegations concerning the “comfort women” system until 1992 when the Japanese government officially acknowledged some involvement in the operation of “comfort stations.” Since that time, “several officials have expressed their apologies for Japan’s involvement, but the Japanese government has not taken full responsibility for its actions, and has not paid reparations to the comfort women,” according to Judge Kennedy.

This lawsuit was dismissed for several reasons. One is that the jurisdiction is premised on the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, whereas Japan as a foreign state is “presumptively” immune from suit under the Act. The other is that even if Japan did not enjoy sovereign immunity, this case is ruled to be dismissed because of the “political question doctrine” that makes the lawsuit “nonjusticiable,” meaning that the case cannot be determined by a court of law. Another reason is that “Korea and China both negotiated separate agreements addressing war claims,” although the issue of “comfort women” was not mentioned in these agreements. Stating that the U.S. District Court is “unable to provide plaintiffs the redress they seek and surely deserve,” legal reasons led Judge Kennedy to grant Japan’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. As stated earlier in this article, the case was dismissed on Oct. 4, 2001.

On Oct. 6, 2001, Lauren Gelfand of AFP explained that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act allowed prosecution to go forward only if there were clear commercial consequences for the United States. There were no such consequences and Japan, as a foreign state, was immune from prosecution in the United States. Although the treatment of numerous “Asian women who were forcibly raped, beaten and tortured was unquestionably barbaric,” the case boiled down to an abuse of Japan’s military power, something “peculiarly sovereign in nature.”

Although use of Asian women as sexual slaves by the Japanese military is ruled not as a commercial activity and thus not subject to the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a quotation by Gelfand from Judge Kennedy’s ruling is no less telling in that “Japan’s use of its wartime military to impose a ‘premeditated master plan’ of sexual slavery upon the women of occupied Asian countries might be characterized properly as a war crime or a crime against humanity.”

As stated early in this article, the sexual slavery controversy continues to this date. An in-depth interview of Takashi Uemura, former reporter of the Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, by Hankyoreh was published in the February 2015 issue of the Korea Focus, and summarized by journalist Shim Jae-hoon in the March 11, 2015 issue of the newsletter known as IEKAS (The Information Exchange for Korean-American Scholars).

Takashi Uemura was one of the first to write an article about Kim Hak-sun (1924-1997), a former comfort woman from Korea who was the first to step forward with her story, which was published in the Asahi Shimbun on Aug. 11, 1991. The Japanese conservatives have branded Uemura a traitor for writing a “fabricated report,” while the Japanese liberals, who believe that the issue of comfort women has to be resolved, encouraged Uemura not to give in.

Uemura was appointed as a professor at Kobe Shoin Women’s University to begin teaching in April 2014. The Feb. 6, 2015, issue of the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun published an article titled “Former Asahi Shimbun Reporter Who Fabricated Reports on Comfort Women to Start Teaching at Women‘s College.” His employment contract was revoked on March 7, 2014. This was only the beginning of a malicious attack on Uemura by the Japanese right-wingers.

I will conclude this article in this column two weeks from now and make my suggestion of what Korea should do on this issue.

Semoon Chang is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies.