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Post by Admin on Aug 23, 2014 21:15:55 GMT
Two women traveled thousands of miles from Korea last month for an important trip to the U.S. They came to demand an apology from Japan while asking for help from the U.S. government for their imperative mission. The two are comfort women, a term that describes young women who were coerced, abducted, or deceived into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. They were beaten, brutalized, raped, burned, and even mutilated. Ok-Seon Lee and Il-Chul Kang traveled to California in late July to bring more attention to a Congressional resolution urging Japan to formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility for these acts. House Resolution 121, also known as the "Comfort Women Resolution," passed seven years ago. Japan still has not offered a formal apology. California Congressman Mike Honda was one of the legislators who spearheaded the 2007 resolution. In February, he sent a letter to the Secretary of State to urge action on the issue of comfort women. "I firmly believe this is neither a historical issue nor an Asian issue; this is a human rights issue," he wrote. The Korean American Forum of California, which sponsored Lee and Kang's trip, is hoping the Obama administration will officially take up the issue "The Department of State now has the obligation to carry out what was passed in the House of Representatives," said Phyllis Kim, the forum's spokesperson. "Some women forcefully went through abortion. Some women gave birth to a baby, but she didn't have a chance to see if it was a girl or a boy. They just took the baby away and no one knows what happens to the baby. These horror stories." Although the Obama Administration has not taken any official action, the President did express his thoughts about this issue in his recent trip to South Korea. "... I think that any of us who look back on the history of what happened to the comfort women here in South Korea, for example, have to recognize that this was a terrible, egregious violation of human rights," President Obama said in April. "Those women were violated in ways that, even in the midst of war, was shocking. And they deserve to be heard; they deserve to be respected; and there should be an accurate and clear account of what happened." Pope Francis offered his support yesterday on a visit to South Korea and the city of Fullerton will consider adopting its own support of the resolution and a memorial tonight. The Korean American Forum of California has been urging cities to host such memorials, one which stands in Glendale that survived a court challenge earlier this month. "It is even more urgent and important to get the apology before these grandmas [aging comfort women] pass away, and that is exactly why it's important to have them here," Kim said, adding that even though it is very difficult for the comfort women to come forward to the public, Lee and Kang have the courage to do so. "They know they don't have much time, but it is to restore their honor and dignity." "When I was abducted," said Lee, "I went through the pain that is indescribable. I was cut with knives. I was beaten to death. I went through such a hard time. I am really happy that people in the United States are making these efforts to resolve this issue, to help us, and to remember and protect our human rights."
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Post by Admin on Aug 31, 2014 21:02:47 GMT
Before his final mass in South Korea on August 18, Pope Francis met with seven elderly ladies who had been Comfort Women. As teenagers during World War II they were trafficked by Imperial Japan to be sex slaves. Military records on the operation of a comfort station show that the girls had to service not only soldiers and sailors, but also Japanese government and corporate officials. The Pope bent down and clasped the frail hands of each woman. One offered him a butterfly pin, a symbol of their lost innocence, which the Pontiff immediately fastened to his vestments and wore throughout the service. Prior to the mass, he was handed a letter from the Dutch former Comfort Woman, Jan Ruff O’Herne, who at 92 could not travel from her home in Australia to meet him. She wanted him to know that before she was chosen by Japanese Army officers in her concentration camp on Java and raped in a Semarang military brothel, her dream was to become a nun. The women received more than the Pope’s blessing. They received affirmation that their history was believed and their suffering real. Francis has championed the elimination of human trafficking and preached on the evils of sexual slavery. By a simple gesture, he included their experience with all victims caught up in sexual violence. He understands that rape is a weapon of subjugation and humiliation. Unlike Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, the Pontiff does not rationalize the Comfort Women experience with “the 20th century was a century where many human rights were violated.” Equally important, Pope Francis has helped internationalize and humanize the issue. The Abe administration has framed the Comfort Women issue entirely as a history problem with South Korea. The truth is that women throughout the Indo-Pacific region were the victims of the Imperial Army and Navy. The stories the women tell from the Andaman Islands to New Guinea, by Dutch gentry to Taiwanese aboriginals are shockingly similar. In the end, it is not about the dead. As the Pope showed, it is the living that need peace. Maybe Abe should spend less time with the dead. At every international visit, the prime minister has made a point of visiting war memorials. On his recent trip to Papua New Guinea, Abe visited two memorials to Japan’s fallen at Wewak. He made no mention of how this horrific final campaign descended into barbarism and cannibalism. Nor was there mention of the thousands of POWs, mainly Indian and Australian, killed through starvation, overwork, disease or target-practice on the island. Central to Japan’s peace treaty with the Allied governments in 1951, was acceptance of the verdicts of the Tokyo Tribunal. Abe’s rallying the dead to abandon the Tribunal’s verdicts does not engender trust among Japan’s allies or foes. Thus, it is time for Prime Minister Abe to make an important gesture to reassure his critics. He can affirm that he has no plans to ignore or repudiate the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. Saying that he, for now, inherits the Murayama apology—he walked out of a parliamentary vote on this apology in 1995—is not enough. He needs to embrace these ideas. Pope Francis’ quiet inclusion of the Comfort Women in his mass was a humanitarian gesture. It was an acceptance that no woman at any place or time should be subjected to the mercy of her captors. The political debate over Comfort Women to exonerate Imperial Japan’s war conduct has been damaging to modern Japan’s international image. Prime Minister Abe is best advised to affirm the verdicts of history and offer an unequivocal humanitarian response to the surviving Comfort Women in Korea and in other places.
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Post by Admin on Sept 4, 2014 21:50:32 GMT
On Aug. 11, 1991, The Asahi Shimbun morning edition published by its Osaka Head Office carried a major scoop on its city news page. Under the headline "Tears still well up when I remember," the article featured the statements of Kim Hak Sun, a former comfort woman living in Seoul. The Asahi had already devoted considerable space to articles detailing remarks by Seiji Yoshida, a "perpetrator" who falsely claimed he had been involved in forciby taking away Korean women to serve as comfort women for the Japanese military during wartime. With its 1991 exclusive, the Asahi became the first media outlet in the world to share the human voice of a "victim" in this matter - a former comfort woman. With a comfort woman coming forward, the fabrications embedded in Asahi's coverage of this issue - that comfort women were forcibly rounded up and taken away - began to take on a touch of reality. Penned by Takashi Uemura, the opening paragraph of the article began: "A 'Korean military comfort woman' forced to provide sexual services for Japanese military personnel after being taken to the combat zone under the name of the female volunteer corps during the Sino-Japanese War and World War II has been found living in Seoul … " From the beginning, the article gave the impression that the woman had been forcibly taken away by the Japanese military and forced to be a comfort woman. However, parts of the story are inconsistent. In the article, Kim explains that "when I was 17 [under the Korean way of counting ages; she was actually 16], I was tricked and made to serve as a comfort woman." Although the beginning of the Asahi story implied Kim was taken away as a member of the female volunteer corps, she herself said that was not the case. In the first place, comfort women and the volunteer corps who were mobilized to work in factories and elsewhere were completely different. Uemura wrote the article after listening to a tape recording of Kim's statements made by the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, a support group for former comfort women. On Dec. 25, 1991, another article written by Uemura on the struggles Kim had experienced in her life was carried on Page 5 of the Asahi's Osaka morning edition. Remarkably, Uemura did not mention in his stories about Kim that Kim's mother had sold her to a family that ran a school for kisaeng - a kind of female entertainer - for ¥40. Kisaeng learn traditional arts to perform at banquets and other events, and some reportedly became comfort women. Furthermore, Kim has stated that her adoptive father took her to Beijing after telling her, "If you go to China, you can make money." Uemura's articles describe the person who tricked Kim as someone "doing work in the district." Another glaring oversight in the Asahi's coverage cannot be simply brushed off. In its special report, The Asahi Shimbun clarified that Uemura had married the daughter of Yang Sun Im, a senior official of Kankoku Taiheiyo Senso Giseisha Izoku Kai. The organisation, an association of families of people killed in the Pacific War, was involved in organising a lawsuit brought by Kim and others. This means Uemura was a close relative of someone involved in the lawsuit. Uemura was a reporter in the city news section at the Asahi's Osaka Head Office when he wrote the original article about Kim. The Asahi has explained that Uemura went to South Korea after being contacted by the then chief of the daily's Seoul Bureau. Why Uemura was picked to go to Seoul to write a story when other Asahi reporters were at the bureau there certainly raises plenty of intriguing questions. The Asahi's special report tried to dispel suggestions that Uemura used his family connections for his articles, and insisted "he did not obtain any special information through his relationship with his mother-in-law."
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Post by Admin on Sept 6, 2014 5:49:07 GMT
Opponents of a controversial statue in a city park filed an appeal this week to a judge's decision against removing the installation dedicated to women coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson ruled on Aug. 4 that the 1,100-pound memorial to the sex slaves, also known as comfort women, erected in Central Park in July 2013 did not cause harm to the plaintiffs or break any laws. The appeal was filed Wednesday by Michiko Gingery, a Glendale resident, GAHT-US Corp., an organization that works to block recognition of former comfort women, and Koichi Mera, a Los Angeles resident. The plaintiffs initially protested the statue before it was built and continue to push for its removal, claiming Glendale infringed upon the federal government's exclusive power to conduct foreign affairs and that the statue made them feel excluded from the park. City Attorney Mike Garcia said he was disappointed an appeal was filed. "The case is meritless and the district court's opinion is a well-reasoned analysis," Garcia said in an email. "We will vigorously defend the city's interests on appeal." William DeClercq, attorney for the plaintiffs, did not return phone calls for comment. In addition to the appeal, the opponents filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleging administrative negligence by the City Council and City Manager Scott Ochoa for not voting on the language engraved on the plaque next to the comfort-women memorial. Supporters of recognition for comfort women have said an estimated 80,000 to 200,000 women from Korea, China and other countries were mistreated during World War II and they demand a written resolution of apology from the Japanese parliament. An ex-prime minister has apologized to former comfort women and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs admitted some women working in brothels overseen by the government were deprived of their freedom. However, some Japanese nationals deny that their country was involved in the sex-slave trade. The growing number of comfort woman statues cropping up in American cities saw a new addition Saturday in Southfield, Michigan.
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Post by Admin on Sept 12, 2014 21:11:52 GMT
Growing up in hardship in this once-poor Cold War outpost, the young Kim Kyeong-sun decades ago met a job recruiter who promised her housing and a paycheck to support her family. In a former neon-lit shantytown right outside an army base entrance, the hostess eked out a living flirting and trysting with soldiers who rotated in and out of South Korea. Descending into a life of hard drugs and debt, she sought a way out through marriage with a customer. Nuptials with American servicemen were a common escape from indentured sex servitude, she recalled. This "keejichon" — the Korean term for a gray and grubby “army base town” — has closed shop. But the prostitutes who once lingered here continue to be treated as untouchables, derided as “Yankee whores” and “UN ladies.” “I have so many regrets. Life was so hard,” Kim said. It’s not entirely the fault of US soldiers, she argues, many of whom were young, fun-loving and surprisingly innocent men. Rather, Kim points the finger at another alleged culprit: the South Korean government, which she argues backhandedly encouraged this largely illegal trade. She joins 121 other “comfort women” in a $1.2 million lawsuit that’s expected to go to trial soon. Each former sex worker seeks close to $10,000 in damages, an apology, and an investigation into the government’s alleged encouragement of the activity. The compensation may be minimal, but more meaningful is the message that victory would send, potentially amounting to an admission of government responsibility for coerced prostitution that served the US military. No one is claiming that government agents literally pimped out young women to horny American soldiers. South Korea formally banned the sex trade in the early 1960s, but permitted activities in designated red-light districts at certain times, say scholars and activists. It wasn’t until 2004 that South Korea passed a law doling out harsher punishments for the procurement of prostitution, falling in line with international standards. Former sex workers in fight for compensation-JoongAng Daily The lawsuit alleges that, since 1957, poor and undereducated South Korean women were pressured into prostitution in those government-designated zones around American military bases. Authorities should be legally held responsible because they turned a blind eye and therefore promoted the trade, according to the filing. Former prostitutes say that the government rounded up bar workers — some of whom were girls in their mid-teens — and mandated that they undergo forced STD testing. The ones who tested positive for diseases were held against their will in quarantine and treatment centers, say the plaintiffs. “It was terrible. And we believe that the government was responsible for its negligence,” said Kim, the former sex worker, who was tested multiple times. The government also sponsored etiquette and English-language classes for these hostesses, where they were praised for contributing to economic development and national security. Scholars say the South Korean government, run by three dictators from the 1960s to 1980s, sought to please the US military out of fear that it would depart, while bringing in US dollars to buttress this struggling economy. In the past, the South Korean government has denied encouraging prostitution. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family would not comment on the litigation.
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