Commemoration goes on despite Japanese protests

On Aug. 14, 1991, Kim Hak-sun publicly announced that she had been a “comfort woman,” one of the Korean women who were forced to serve the Japanese army as prostitutes during World War II. In doing so, she broke decades of silence about a wartime atrocity.

Exactly 27 years later, South Korea honored Kim by commemorating the country’s first “Memorial Day for Japanese Forces’ Comfort Women Victims,” Reuters reported. Hundreds of people gathered near a bronze monument to the comfort women that stands just outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul, holding candles and cutouts of yellow butterflies, a symbol of freedom from violence for the women affected.

They were joined by protesters in other Asian countries. More than 50 activists gathered outside the de facto Japanese embassy in Taipei, Taiwan, wielding posters with the face of the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Chinese characters for “apologize.” In the Philippines, activists held rallies in Manila calling on the Japanese government to issue a formal apology to Filipino women enslaved by the Japanese army.

The protests come amid months of mounting pressure on Abe’s conservative government to do more to acknowledge the comfort women. According to experts, three quarters of the 200,000 or so comfort women died in captivity, and those who survived were likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder even 60 years after the war.

But Japan says it has already done its part. Following a series of class-action lawsuits in 2015, the Japanese government signed a deal with South Korea in which it issued a formal apology and provided $8.3 million in reparations to survivors. Both governments said the agreement would be the “final and irreversible resolution” to the issue, but recent polls suggest that a majority of South Koreans think that the deal was insufficient, the Diplomat reported.

Japan has yet to strike similar deals with other countries where women were forced into service as comfort women, including China, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia.

In March, South Korean President Moon Jae-in described Japan’s wartime use of comfort women as “crimes against humanity.” While he refrained from formally calling for the deal to be renegotiated — it was struck by his predecessor, Park Geun-hye — he said that “to resolve the comfort women issue, the Japanese Government, the perpetrator, should not say the matter is closed.”

Moon’s remarks prompted a sharp rebuke from Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who described them as “extremely regrettable,” Reuters reported.

In Japan, the national commemoration of comfort women has reportedly been seen as an affront in and of itself.