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DEAD END? US’ Two Biggest Allies, Japan & South Korea, Find No Comfort In Ties Over Issue Of ‘Comfort Women’

By Neeraj Rajput

Soon after completing our media coverage of Buddhist monks staging a peaceful protest against the simmering war tensions in the Korean Peninsula outside the famous Gwanghwamun Palace of Seoul, my cameraman and I decided to walk toward our hotel on foot, which was a few meters away.

Barely had we moved, we came across another protest by a few women outside a multi-storied building, which we knew housed the Japanese Embassy.

My visit to South Korea was about six years ago.

The May 7 visit of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to Seoul as part of ‘shuttle-diplomacy’ and his statement “heart hurts” over the colonization of Korea (North and South) made fresh the old wounds of ‘comfort women’ in the Korean Peninsula. There was no apology in his statement.

This was the first visit of a Japanese PM to Seoul in the past 12 years, which came soon after South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol paid a visit to Tokyo in March this year.

These visits had raised hope of ‘closing a chapter on the historical disputes which have dominated Japan-South Korea relations’ over the past few decades.

In 2017, the world foresaw a war between South Korea and North Korea. Anticipating a war in the Korean Peninsula, my news channel assigned my cameraperson and me to go to Seoul on a journalistic visa.

After visiting the heavily guarded DMZ, the Demilitarized Zone on the North and South Korea Border, for our reportage and peaceful protest by the Buddhist monks in the heart of Seoul close to the US Embassy, we came across the protest outside the Japanese Embassy.

But why were these women staging a protest outside the Japanese Embassy in South Korea when the Korean Peninsula was on the brink of war after a series of ballistic missile tests by neighboring dictator Kim Jong Un?

We asked a passerby, who told us these women were ‘comfort women’ of South Korea protesting along with some NGOs outside the Japanese Embassy.




Comfort Women
Statues of Comfort Women/File Photo

Since the ‘comfort women’ issue was outside our reporting assignment on tension with North Korea, we had not covered the protest. But then began the quest to know more about these comfort women.

For the past many years, every Wednesday, these elderly women staged protests outside the Japanese Embassy to pressure Tokyo to apologize for the cruel treatment meted out to them during the Colonial period.

The Korean Peninsula (when North Korea and South Korea were united) was under Japanese imperial rule from 1910-45. During this period, the Japanese army forcefully made numerous Korean women sex slaves, and they were called ‘comfort women.’

The Imperial Army established ‘official brothels’ or ‘comfort stations’ for Japanese soldiers where these women were raped. Women were tortured, too, if they didn’t obey the orders.

Many such women committed suicide or died due to the cruel behavior of the Japanese soldiers. Such comfort stations were established wherever the Imperial Japanese army went for war, as far as China and Myanmar besides South Korea.

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