By Kim Jong-chan
A former Japanese chief government spokesman said Monday that Japan’s continued failure to acknowledge allegations that Asian women, mostly Koreans, were sexually exploited by Japanese servicemen at front-line brothels, makes the country vulnerable to sacrificing her international goodwill.
In his contribution to a series of articles, titled “Witnesses of the Times,” carried by the Japanese Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, Yohei Kono recalled that he issued a statement in 1993, in which he apologized for the Japanese wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, after reviewing documents kept at libraries in the United States, South Korea and Japan.
The 1993 statement represented a Cabinet resolve, which came in accordance with a decision made under the responsibilities of then Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, Kono said.
Koichi Kato, predecessor of Kono, said in July 1992 that Japan could not find any documentary or material evidence that substantiates the mobilization of sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army, after conducting a review of the “comfort women” issue.
Surviving victims of the sexual slavery, in 2007, demanded an apology from the Japanese government. Shinzo Abe, then Prime Minister, later in March 2007, sought to exonerate the Japanese government from any wrongdoing by denying it had nothing to do with the issue. This contradicted the previous Japanese government’s admission of running brothels, as contained in the 1993 Kono statement.
jckim@koreatimes.co.kr