politics

Kishida to visit S Korea Monday for 'comfort women' talks

21 Comments
By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Jack Kim

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21 Comments
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Any reason JT can't use a non-biased source besides AFP?

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the agreement would be the final settlement so that the issue would not be brought up again.

After reaching this historic milestone, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will then head to Jerusalem to broker a final settlement between the Palestinians and Israelis, which many consider to be a much more simple task than the agreement he'll be creating with Korea.

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Isn't Christmas Eve (here In Canada, anyway) a good time to ask for miracles?

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Yeah,then off to Iran,,Yemen,Somalia,The Sudan etc etc Supey you got it> It might help if Japan admitted that this DID happen(SEX SLAVES)

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Japan has already admitted to the existence of the Comfort Women System but the idea of 200,000 women being kidnapped, a physical impossibility, or that they were "sex slaves" is a fallacy. They were military prostitutes and were paid. "Se Slaves" is a label created to further vilify Japan on this issue. http://eng.the-liberty.com/2014/5641/

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the agreement would be the final settlement so that the issue would not be brought up again.

If (only if) South Koreans stopped bringing up this issue, they would bring up something else. No point.

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I'm optimistic that solutions can be found pretty soon!

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hope he will avoid some typical foot in mouth comment.

I can see this guy being p.m one day. ;0/

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Yeah, they are going to love it that a guy named "Kishida" is coming over for a talk about sex slaves.

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Japan should settle the comfort women issue at the earliest and do not allow it to linger on as an irritant in its relations with South Korea for an infinite period.

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Gokai, that's like when Japan's Teikoku (Imperial) Oil Company was drilling for oil off Senkaku. Not the best name for a company, that.

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I am delighted to know that Japan would be taking some useful steps. Hopefully, we can resolve Karayuki-san's issue. We can make some kind memorial for these brave women.

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@tinawatanabe With "if", you could put Paris in a bottle as they say in French. Let's see Japan actually doing something about it, settling it for good the proper way. After that, if South Korea wants to bash Japan for another reason not yet spoken, it will be as you say and everybody will agree. But if not and things go back to some kind of normal, everybody will see that the "no point" argument was a poor excuse.

@OssanAmerica Come on, there are thousands of witnesses (victims or the soldiers that delivered them), historians, documents, even physical sites of the comfort women system. And to all that, you oppose what a single guy has supposedly found out? A guy that is even claiming that nothing at all happened in Nankin, or that Unit 731 is a myth? This is just way beyond reason.

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This is it! We're watching historic moment right here! The End of Korean-Japanese hatred! Freakin finally!

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No it won't work

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idir13013Dec. 25, 2015 - 09:47PM JST @OssanAmerica Come on, there are thousands of witnesses (victims or the soldiers that delivered them), historians, >documents, even physical sites of the comfort women system. And to all that, you oppose what a single guy has >supposedly found out? A guy that is even claiming that nothing at all happened in Nankin, or that Unit 731 is a myth? >This is just way beyond reason.

You seem to have bought the whole package. There are no "thousands of witnesses". In fact the elderly Korean population of Cheju Island from where women were allegdly "kidnapped" unanimously claim that no such thing ever happened. In 1993 Professor Ahn of Seoul University interrogated 50 former Comfort Women and found their testimony "unreliable". US Army Report 49 containing the interrogation of captured "Comfort Women" from a Comfort Station in Burma in 1944 during the war concluded that the women were Paid Military Prostitutes. There are no "documents" which support anyclaim of "sex slavery" or "abduction". But if "one single guy"'s view isn't good enough for you, how about a 7 year 30 million dollar inverstigation carried out by the United States Government involving multiple agencies? https://www.archives.gov/iwg/ "The report was published in the spring of 2007. Out of millions of pages of newly declassified material, much of it related to Japan, and they were unable to find evidence of forced prostitution." This nonsense has reached a point where South Korea itself is starting to back off. Best try to catch the bus.

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@OssanAmerica. First of all, thanks for the link, always better discussing as adults than punding the keyboard with no apparent goal.

The documents you are referring to are all saying the same thing basically. That there were not many Japanese documents discovered, whether it is the comfort women issue, Unit 731 and a whole lot of other things. But this is not surprising at all since the Japanese destroyed as much evidence as they could. Just look at " Directive by Imperial Household Ministry to destroy wartime documents" and you will find info about this (uncovered two years ago).

As for American documents, it is also clearly stated that they were at the time focusing on finding out the truth about American interests, such as about the Pearl Harbor attack and POWs.

That is why the actual witnesses, soldiers or victims, all saying the same thing, and all covered by media through the years, are vital. There are women in many different countries all saying the same thing, but this is not enough? Even Japanese imperial soldiers have come out and acknowledged the system, but this is not enough?

And finally, and this is where your whole argumentation is really hard to understand: Japan itself acknowledges the system. The PM in 1993 did it clearly in a famous statement, and even Shinzo Abe (though it is hurting him to do so) just set up a special fund TODAY to provide money to women that were forced to be sex slaves in Korea, as well as written apologies from Abe himself. When even the most hardcore nationalist that Shinzo Abe finally recognizes the system and is not denying anything anymore (except possibly the exact magnitude of things), isn't it time to understand that there is no conspiracy, only the true history that has been told by most people for decades?

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@idir13013

You see? People have been repeating the same arguments all the time about this issue and we need to change point of view a little. Not for evading criticism but for better capturing how the penninsula were like, especially women were treated since early 20 century, as being described by Prof. Park Yu-Ha or Prof. Ikuhiko-Hata.

I hope JT would not delete me this time.

Have you ever spent a little time on Comfort Women during/after Korean War?

They were called Yanggongiu, Blanket Corp, The Class V Supply etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jlfAqR8uBc

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Good gesture by the Japanese government but a waste of time. No doubt that any measures that comes out of this meeting will still not be enough for the Koreans. They will renege on their agreement just like the 1965 agreement and demand more to the Japanese government all the while somehow ordering their citizens that the Korean government is not responsible for their actions of concluding any further compensation due to the conclusion of that very same agreement in 1965.

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2015/12/24/2015122401337.html

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Japan has clearly been the reason this issue is in the news today with its constant denials THAT is why Korea has pushed this issue.

BOTH sides need to get their acts together, Japan says it was settled in 1965 BUT most LDP DENY sex slaves even existed SO how could the issue have been settled???????

If this new idea gains traction then Japan MUST stop denying, but do note that the govt mouth pieces are silent on this bit. They want statues removed, issue put to bed etc, but don't seem to want to put a muzzle on the fools who have not learned what Japan did in the 1930-45 time period

There is a chance here, hopefully Japan wont blow it AGAIN!

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