JUSTICE LONG OVERDUE FOR KOREAN “COMFORT WOMEN”

By Elisa Gahng and - - Reprint | | Print |

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OAKLAND, May 1 2005 (IPS) - Surviving Korean \”comfort women\”, forced to serve as sex slaves to Japanese military officers during WWII, have waited over half a century for an apology from the Japanese government, and with mounting international pressure, they just may get one, writes Elisa Gahng, a senior at the University of California at Berkeley and intern with the Women of Colour Resource Centre in Oakland, CA. In this article, Gahng writes that these women, now aged 65 to 80, were among 200,000 young women kidnapped from Korea\’s poorest regions. In three years, the average comfort woman was raped 7,500 times and some by as many as 30 military officers a day. Their quest for justice began in 1991 when a group of Korean grandmothers publicly told their tragic stories and filed a class action law suit against the Japanese government demanding reparations. Japan\’s government still refuses to assume responsibility and even denies the existence of comfort stations. But growing global pressure may turn the tide. Multiple inter- governmental agencies, such as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), have urged the Japanese government to make an official apology and assume responsibility.

Surviving Korean “comfort women”, forced to serve as sex slaves to Japanese military officers during WWII, have waited over half a century for an apology from the Japanese government, and with international pressure mounting, they just may get one.

These women, now aged 65 to 80, were among 200,000 young women kidnapped from the poorest regions of Korea. Kept in rooms just large enough to fit a mat, in three years the average comfort woman was raped 7,500 times, and some were raped by as many as 30 military officers a day. After all that they have endured –including beatings and knife slashings– and all they continue to endure –such as sexually transmitted diseases, psychological trauma, and societal and familial estrangement– these women may get to taste justice in their lifetime.

They are not asking for much. They want a formal apology, reparations, and a revision in Japanese history books to include an admission of this painful truth so that future generations will learn from the past.

Their quest for justice began in 1991 when a group of Korean grandmothers led by Kim Hak Sun (1923-1997) finally broke their silence and publicly told their tragic stories. Together, they filed a class action law suit against the Japanese government demanding reparations for the human rights violations committed by the Japanese during its occupation of Korea. Without fail for years and years, rain, snow, or shine, these grandmothers have protested every Wednesday in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Yet the Japanese government is still refusing to assume responsibility and even denies the existence of comfort stations.

The Japanese government may have been able to drown out the demands of these aging grannies, but with global pressure building in their favour, the tide may be turning. Multiple intergovernmental agencies, such as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), after extensive investigations have urged the Japanese government to make an official apology and assume responsibility.

Even South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun has joined this growing global chorus. He declared in 2003, “If Japan is angered by North Korea’s kidnapping of its citizens,” the government should pay reparations to “the thousands of Koreans forced into labour or sexual slavery for its wartime army”. This was a major break for the South Korean government, which had ignored claims by the comfort women in order to preserve diplomatic relations with Japan and to bury this shameful chapter in Korean history.

Now comfort women from Taiwan, Philippines, and Europe have filed an official claim at the United Nations, together with Korean comfort women, against the Japanese government. Even Eve Ensler, the famous author of The Vagina Monologues, announced this month that she is launching a global campaign on behalf of the comfort women.

All that remains is for the Japanese government to admit their responsibility. Some speculate that the government is waiting for the last comfort woman to die in hopes that the movement will perish along with them. What the Japanese government does not realise is that these courageous grandmothers have moved a world from silence to resistance. The movement is now too large for the Japanese government to simply wait it out. The issue can no longer be ignored.

The global consensus is in, and Japan should do what is right and return to these aging grandmothers what its government took away so many years ago: their dignity. Indeed, 50 years is far too long. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)