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| A worker at a shelter run by the Korea Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issue of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan was found dead earlier this month. Korea Times file |
By Kim Se-jeong
Recently, much of the news on wartime sex slavery issues, related to atrocities committed against young women from Korea and other countries by the Japanese military in the 1930s and 40s, is coming from the prosecutors' office.
Stories on survivors' testimonies at the United Nations and new statues have been replaced with stories about the prosecution investigation into an organization at the heart of the advocacy work, the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issue of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Korean Council).
Founded in 1990, the Korean Council has been at the forefront of advocacy work for the sex slavery survivors, involved with the famous Wednesday vigil in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and others. Yet, now the council finds itself in trouble.
The trouble began in early May when Lee Yong-soo, one of the sex slavery survivors, publicly accused former director Yoon Mee-hyang of inappropriate use of funds. Lee also discredited Yoo by calling her politically ambitious and selfish ― Yoon left the Korean Council in April after winning a National Assembly seat as a proportional representative in the April 15 general election.
By the time Lee had her second press conference bashing Yoon, prosecutors had searched the Korean Council's office and a shelter and summoned an employee responsible for accounting for the organization. The group was also facing additional allegations that Yoon had purchased an unnecessary shelter building and paid her father to take care of it.
Then came the suicide of a Korean Council employee responsible for the operation of its shelter for the survivors.
The director of the shelter, known only by her surname Sohn, was found dead, pushing investigators to expand the scope of its probe.
Then came another layer of unexpected information.
A granddaughter of Gil Won-ok, another survivor who had stayed at the shelter until recently, made a new accusation against Sohn, and Yoon, of money laundering.
"The shelter's director laundered money by taking an enormous amount of money from Grandma's account and sending it to another account. I am sure people around her knew what she was doing," the granddaughter wrote on the internet in reply to a news article on the director's death.
The prosecution summoned Gil's son who stood partly by his daughter's accusation.
In a previous interview with a local news outlet, the son who Gil adopted demanded the shelter explain a big chunk of money withdrawn from her account three times ― in amounts of 4 million, 5 million and 20 million.
In response, the Korean Council claimed Gil's money had never been withdrawn without her consent and said the adopted son had come to visit his mother once a month and taken 1 million won from her. Also, the council criticized the son of being more interested in his mother's money and getting the paperwork done recently to take 30 million won extra.
Yoon is expected to have answers to many questions, but the prosecution now has limits to questioning her because she now has the right to ignore its summons ― as a sitting member of the National Assembly. During a recent press conference, Yoon claimed she was innocent.
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