South Korea Advocates for WWII-era Survivors of Sexual Slavery

Former ‘comfort women’ protest in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in 2011 (Wikimedia Commons).

South Korean Second Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Choi Jong-moon stressed that Japan must address the sexual enslavement of South Korean women during World War II at a U.N. Humans Rights Council meeting on February 23.

More than 200,000 women, most of whom were Korean, were forced to engage in sexual acts with Japanese soldiers from 1932 until the end of World War II. Dozens of survivors, euphemistically referred to as “comfort women,” testified that they were coerced into sexual slavery. 

“The tragedy of the comfort women must be addressed as a universal human rights issue, and the recurrence of such grave violations of human rights in conflict must be prevented,” Choi said.

The exploitation of these women has kept tensions high between the countries for decades. However, the issue has received renewed attention after the Seoul Central District Court ruled in January that Japan must pay reparations equivalent to $90,000 to 12 women who filed suits against the country.

Japan dismissed this ruling, arguing that the suit violates its national sovereignty. Tokyo maintains that the comfort women issue has been resolved, pointing to a 1965 settlement, in which it paid Seoul $500 million for economic recovery. 

Further, the Japanese government has referenced a 2015 agreement between then-Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and then-South Korean Prime Minister Park Geun-hye, in which Japan accepted responsibility for the enslavement of comfort women and agreed to pay $8.3 million to a fund for the victims.

However, activists criticized the Japanese government’s response, arguing that the 1965 agreement may have ended compensation between the countries, but not between individuals.

“The problem is that Japan has always treated the issues related to its history like propaganda, which is irresponsible behavior as a country to communicate with other countries,” Hosaka Yuji, a professor at Sejong University, said. “The Japanese government has said that the Korean comfort women were not sexual slaves, [but rather that] they were voluntary prostitutes.”

Additionally, former comfort women have rejected the 1965 and 2015 agreements as insufficient. Lee Yong-soo, a 92-year-old survivor of sexual enslavement by the Japanese military, called for Japan and South Korea to settle the issue in the International Court of Justice. 

The concern that previous deals have not emphasized survivors’ views was evident in Choi’s remarks to the UN on Tuesday.

"The Korean government will keep endeavoring to restore the dignity and honor of the sex slavery victims—a dwindling number of elderly women in their 90s—with a survivor-centered approach at the core," Choi said.