Scandalous apology (2)
.jpg?w=728)
By Michael Bergmann
Has the Japanese government now broken the so called comfort women agreement which it had warned Korea to abide by? This is not even the question. I argued before why a conditional apology as part of some political bargain is just another affront to the victims. So the awkward problem that the Korean government faces after Japan specified its apology did not include any admission of force, as to who is now bound by this deal, is morally as irrelevant as the “deal” itself.
The more we hope for the future, the more we have to insist regarding the past: There will be no reconciliation without truth and respect for the victims. Since Tokyo’s latest report to a UN committee, one month after the Dec. 28 deal, this apology itself constitutes an international women’s rights scandal. I am sorry, Mr. Abe, that I have to explain why:
Until quite recently in many seemingly civilized countries, female victims who had the courage to fight for honor and justice at a rape trial had hardly any chance to win. In the end, the man was acquitted for lack of evidence ― and the woman was left in additional humiliation with the suggestion: Now you don’t like anymore what you didn’t stop or accepted or even wanted then! With its subsequent specification, the Japanese “apology” tells the 90-year-old women quite similarly: You were those girls in the military brothels, what a shame, but there are no documents that prove the coercion! Which “documents” does Abe want to see?
That Imperial Japan’s military presence in occupied Asian countries was so dominant and intimidating that direct force was not always needed for the “enforcement of exploitation,” as the legal jargon puts it, does in no way relativize the violence. Law professor Yang Hyun-ah’s terminological distinction between “enforcement” and “force” (Feb. 4 edition of The Hankyoreh) means in this case: The agents of the empire did not always have to pull their guns to “mobilize” women. And the soldiers, barbarized by war, did not need government orders to abuse them. The mobilization, both enforced and forced, was witnessed by countless observers. The abuse itself is recorded in the memories, nightmares and wounded lives of the victims. Is it still not enough?
This finally raises the question: Why can’t Japan’s leaders of today apologize in a decent way that could satisfy the victims and help restore their own dignity? To avoid any generalization about a national character, I offer the following explanation:
When in the early 1970s German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt down in front of the victims’ monument and relinquished territorial claims a million times larger than Dokdo to assure the neighbors of his country’s peaceful intentions, the German conservative establishment called him a fatherless traitor of the fatherland. “Fatherlessness” was meant as an insult for a man without inherited social capital. But indeed, Brandt was not obliged to any particular social background, but was loyal only to his conscience and the true interests of his nation as well as European reconciliation.
So when Japan chooses a leader not overshadowed by powerful grandfathers or other spirits from the past, a man or woman free enough to bow in shame, the day will come for Korea and Japan to lead Asia to a democratic civilization where smiles mean friendliness.
The writer is a German citizen who has lived in Korea for 10 years as a teacher. Reach him at bergmann2473@yahoo.de.