Japan’s Prime Minister cancels out 2015 apology
Grandma Yong-soo Lee informs the Korean delegation to Japan about steps to resolve the “comfort women” issue
April 24, 2022
Rising hate and cycle of impunity: Content warning – disturbing image
May 29, 2022
Japanese PM asked German leader for help in removing ‘comfort women’ statue
Read the full story HERE
Statement of CARE on PM Kishida’s history revisionism
What was your 2015 apology for, Japan?
Imagine a German Chancellor going around the world asking to remove The Holocaust memorials.
Japan’s current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was the Foreign Minister who negotiated and announced the so-called “‘Comfort Women’ Agreement” between Japan and South Korea in 2015. The validity of this “agreement” was seriously questioned because there is no signed document of this “agreement,” it was never ratified by neither Parliaments, and more importantly, the surviving victims were excluded from the negotiation, thus, the result was far from a ‘victim-centered’ resolution.
In this “agreement”, then Prime Minister Abe expressed deep remorse and apology, without specifying what government wrongdoing he was apologizing for. Japan offered 10 billion Yen (around US $9 million then) as a humanitarian assistance for the Korean victims – not as a government compensation based on the acknowledgement of the government responsibility for the military sexual slavery. Half that money is still sitting around while the Foundation that was set up to expend the money has been dissolved.
The surviving victims and their supporters in the victim countries renounced the agreement because of the lack of acknowledgement of the government responsibility for creating and operating the system of military sexual slavery, as well as Japan’s obvious attempt to silence the victims and erase this history in the international community.
Japan has proven to be double-faced.
On the one hand, Japan has been insisting that the “comfort women” issue has been “finally and irreversibly” resolved because it apologized and paid money according to the 2015 “Agreement”. On the other hand, however, the Japanese government’s policy has been to deny, revise and erase the “comfort women” issue, which goes against the spirit of the apology. Japanese Consul Generals in the US and Germany have been persistently asking various cities to REMOVE the “comfort women” memorials in public spaces. In fact, Japan successfully removed two “comfort women” statues in the Philippines.
Throwing the “comfort women” issue in the bucket of the so-called “historical issues” between Japan and Korea – as the new Korean administration and Japanese government are trying to do – such as the forced Korean laborer issue won’t work, because the nature of the military sexual slavery is fundamentally different from the forced laborer issue; therefore, the resolution of the two issues should be dealt with separately.
The issue of the Japanese military sexual slavery HAS NOT been resolved, and it won’t do any good to try and revive the 2015 announcement.
At this point, the only option to properly resolve the issue is to refer it to the International Court of Justice, as the last surviving activist Grandma Yong-soo Lee is calling for, since it will be the only way to recover the honor of the victims, and to keep Japan from further revising this history.
Please sign the petition for ICJ referral: https://www.change.
