1000Th Wednesday Protest, And Lies About Comfort Women By Imperial Japan Apologists
Tuesday, 24 April 2018
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As the Korean discussed previously, there was the 1000th Wednesday Protest in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul this past Wednesday. At the protest, there was an unveiling of a statue, commemorating the Comfort Women.
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| The statue is a statue of a girl sitting down. There is an empty chair next to the girl, also a plaque, in Korean, English and Japanese, that describe the significance of the statue (asked it to be removed. Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied: "Rather than insisting on the removal of the statue, the Japanese government should seriously ask itself why these victims have held their weekly rallies for 20 years, never missing a week, and whether it really cannot find a way to restore the gaji these woman so earnestly want.” On this occasion, the Korean will address some of the lies and half-truths that Japan apologists propagate, commonly found in prominent sites like backed off after a stern warning from the U.S. ambassador. Another former Prime Minister, Nakasone Yasuhiro, also denied that the Comfort Women were forcibly recruited. Further, former education minister Nariaki Nakayama declared he was proud that the LDP had succeeded in getting references to "wartime sex slaves" struck from most authorized history texts for anabawang high schools. Nakayama further said: "It could be said that the occupation was something they could have pride in, given their existence soothed distraught feelings of men in the battlefield and provided a certain respite and order." (Take a break here, let that last statement sink in for a bit, and appreciate the level of depravity required to make that statement.) (More after the jump.) Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com. 2. Japan offered reparation for Comfort Women in 1995, but Comfort Women are refusing to accept it. Two years after Kono Statement, Japanese government established "Asia Women's Fund" to provide compensation for Comfort Women. However, AWF was funded by private donations rather than governmental funding, again in an attempt to shield the Japanese government from legal liability. Like Kono Statement and other apologies by the Japanese government, the offer from AWF was morally deficient. Accordingly, most Comfort Women refused the payment. 3. Japan already paid reparation for Comfort Women in 1965, but Korean government diverted the funds. a. Japan knowingly dealt with a dictator who clearly did not represent the interest of Korean people Park Chung-Hee was the president who entered into the Basic Treaty with Japan, which makes the legitimacy of the Basic Treaty doubtful in a number of ways. First, Park Chung-Hee was not a democratically elected leader, but a dictator who came to power through a military coup d'etat. Although Park went through the formality of elections, those elections were clearly and heavily rigged. Second, previous to Korea's independence, Park was an officer of the Imperial Japanese military. (Gee, I wonder what he felt about Imperial Japan's war?) Third, when the news of the Basic Treaty broke, there was so much protest against the treaty that the Park dictatorship had to declare a martial law to suppress the opposition. Under the martial law, all schools were closed, citizens were banned from holding meetings, arrests were made without warrants and the government pre-screened newspapers. Every one of these facts were known to the Japanese government, but the Japanese government dealt with the Park Chung-Hee dictatorship anyway and entered into a treaty that was clearly inadequate to address the injuries suffered at the hands of Japanese Imperialism. (More on this below.) b. The reparation amount paid by Japan was grossly inadequate The amount of $800 million was calculated by paying $200 per survivors of the Japanese conscription and $2000 per those who were injured. In 2011 dollars, that's less than $1,500 and $15,000 per person. A dead dog is worth more than $1,500 in either Japanese or Korean legal system. By the way, Germany pays Holocaust survivors a lifetime pension. c. Korean government, in fact, paid out the reparation paid by Japan It is ridiculous to argue that the fault lies with Korean government, given that the Japanese government could not have possibly expected that the money would go to the hands of the people who suffered under its rule by negotiating a dictator who came to power illegitimately. But be that as it may, Korean government did pay out the reparation money and then some. In 1975, a decade after the Basic Treaty, Park Chung-Hee dictatorship paid out KRW 300,000 (= around $300) to those eligible for reparation. (At this time, however, Comfort Women were not paid reparation because their existence was not widely known.) After Korea democratized, Korean government paid out KRW 20 million (= around $20,000) to those eligible for reparation in 2006. The amount of reparation, by the way, is much more than what Japan paid as reparation (which, again, was around $1,500 in 2011 dollars.) Former Comfort Women also receive a separate pension from Korean government, far above and beyond anything that Japan has ever provided. d. Basic Treaty did not eliminate Comfort Women's claims Even if we brush aside the monstrously amoral aspect to Japan's position and only concerned ourselves with its legality, Japan's position is on thin ice. First, internal Japanese documents around the time of the negotiations of the Basic Treaty show that Japan did not intend to extinguish individual claims by entering into the Basic Treaty. Referring to the provision that allegedly waived Korean individuals' right of claim, this post.) The Korean would emphasize that this is not "punishing the child for the sins of the parents," as Japan apologists mistakenly argue. No one -- not even the most nationalistic Korean -- is saying that the current generation of Japanese people should be punished as if they themselves committed this horrendous crime. (If there were the case, Koreans would be calling for every Japanese people to be put in jail for life. Obviously, such movement does not exist in Korea.) All Koreans want is for (1) Japanese government to unequivocally admit what its country did in the past; (2) former Comfort Women to be adequately compensated in their short remaining lives, and; (3) Japanese people to fully understand the crimes of its predecessors. None of the above is a punishment. Rather, it is a normal course of action that any decent human would take. In fact, it is the least Japan can do. The battle here is not Japan versus Korea -- it is Japan versus justice, Japan versus human decency. That Japan is obstinately refusing to take this course is deeply troubling, because I love Japan. The greatest influences of my life include Japanese movies and cartoons. I love visiting Japan. I love Japanese food. The Japanese people I know are wonderful, kind, artistic, gritty and civic-minded people, worthy of deep admiration. But the longer this takes, I cannot draw myself away from this appalling conclusion: Japan, as a whole, does not think it did anything wrong to these women. I desperately want to believe that the Japanese people are not amoral monsters, who would rather play the cynical waiting game until all of the former Comfort Women die away. But each time the Wednesday protesters are turned away, each time the Japanese Embassy protests a statue commemorating the Comfort women, my faith in human decency, common among all people of all places and times, gets chipped away little by little. Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com. 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