S Korea to build 'comfort women' museum in Seoul

If you look at the posters, they're women who have already died, and these protestors are very young, young enough to be their grandchildren. Just more proof that this issue will never die, even to distant generations, no matter what Japan does.

While agree that this atrocity should never be forgotten, the Korea keeps bringing up and waving the victim flag to get more money from Japan does get a bit tedious. However, Japan has a group of old cronies called, 'historical revisionists' (whatever that means) who are downplaying and even denying these even ever took place. Then, there's that flipping nutter running the ANA hotels putting his BS book in all his hotel rooms. Yeah, Japan does still have a few enemies in Asia, but it seems Japan is its own worst enemy by trying to rewrite history to suit itself.

running the ANA hotels

APA hotel chain.

DisillusionedToday  07:28 am JST

However, Japan has a group of old cronies called, 'historical revisionists' (whatever that means) who are downplaying and even denying these even ever took place.

If a bunch of old cronies are denying it ever took place then they are on the far end fringe. The J-govt recognizes the existence of the Comfort Women System, without which they could never have reached the landmark 2015 agreement with South Korea to permanently resolve this issue. Oh, that that seem to be reneging on right now.

Many people don't know that the military brothel where captured Korean and other Asian women were held to "comfort" the troops, was the creation of Nakasone who was a lieutenant in the Japanese Imperial Army at the time. He later went on to serve as Prime Minister of Japan from 1982 to 1987. This isn't rumour. He states this clearly in his own memoirs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/opinion/comfort-women-and-japans-war-on-truth.html

Nothing wrong with building a museum for the comfort women. we have atomic bomb museums, holocaust museums.. the primary role of museums is to teach future generations about the past whether good or bad. If the past is bad then we should learn from our mistakes, lest we repeat them again..

Atomic bombs and the Holocaust are well documented events with little role in world affairs. In contrast, Comfort Women are a widely debated issue used by South Korea, not as an issue of Womens rights, but a political and diplomatic tool. In other words, what use is building a Museum that displays one prejudiced side of the story for the sole purpose of instilling hatred and bias? This is just an extension of the monuments the Chong Dae Hyup activists are putting up everywhere they can pull one over on the local population.

But it did it didn't happen, right....?

Good idea. And put a branch in Tokyo, preferably right in front of Yasukuni Shrine.

Cripes.  Bet that museum will be a bundle of laughs.

Japan maintains that there is a lack of documentary proof that the women were forcibly made to work at the brothels.

Just because the JIA did their best to destroy records and other evidence doesn't mean it didn't happen. I mean, you've had JIA personnel themselves that have blown the whistle. No use in pretending nothing happened. Just makes the offenders (factions of the JIA) look even more disgusting.

zichiToday 10:22 am JSTThe Imperial Shrine of Yasukuni, war museum with its own revisionist history of Imperial Japan. The Atomic Bombing Museums Revisionist history is always of concern.

Nothing wrong with the Yasukuni Shrine. Many foreign dignitaries have visited there including a USMC General. As for the Yuushukan, visited it twice and didn't see this "revisionism" you're talking about. Do you hnstly think a museum in South Korea about the Comfort Women is going to show how the parents of many Korean girls sold them off? Or the extent of Korean involvement that permitted the CW system to work?

Atomic bombs and the Holocaust are well documented events with little role in world affairs.

What a ridiculous statement.

AgentXToday 11:13 am JSTJapan maintains that there is a lack of documentary proof that the women were forcibly made to work at the brothels.

Just because the JIA did their best to destroy records and other evidence doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Why would the IJA destroy records of a Prostitution System at a time when prostitution was legal?

LandofExcusesToday 11:29 am JSTAtomic bombs and the Holocaust are well documented events with little role in world affairs.

What a ridiculous statement.

Ridiculous only if you think the aren't well documented.

It appears young Koreans are very much energetic and interested in politics. I wish Japanese young generations as much energetic and serious as young Koreans shown here. Japanese young people are like old men who lost steams or sick men as is reported killing people without a reason or killing their children and wife.

Atomic bombs and the Holocaust are well documented events with little role in world affairs.

What a ridiculous statement.

Amen

Why would the IJA destroy records of a Prostitution System at a time when prostitution was legal?

Um, maybe because it wasn't prostitution??

Money can never make up for what the Japanese did to Korea.

It appears young Koreans are very much energetic and interested in politics.

The politics of looking backwards only leads to trouble, and even to war - not the kind of politics a healthy society engages in. Nothing inspiring about a group of young people choosing a 70 year old grievance over urgent issues that will impact our immediate future. It's a sign of regression.

Japan lacking remorse and compassion to neighbouring countries' sufferings, poor diplomatic skills and arrogance manner from some of their politicians to appease their rightist group, this is NOT money can make up for what Imperial Japan has done to her neighbours! But I doubt they will see this as this issue is really resentful but forgotton willfully!

Aly RustomToday 11:50 am

Why would the IJA destroy records of a Prostitution System at a time when prostitution was legal?

Um, maybe because it wasn't prostitution??

Every piece of evidence confirms that it was a organized military prostitution system. It was not "sex slavery". The real issue is HOW these women ended up there. But if one distorts the issue to that extent there's zero hope for ever determining e facts or any kind of resolution.

zichiToday 12:04 pm JSTYushukan Museum revisionist history

https://qz.com/223897/the-story-of-world-war-ii-according-to-japans-controversial-war-museum/

Utterly biased article. You're in Japan? Go there yourself.

"The museum also says that the US forced Japan into war." LOL

Nowhere does it say that. It describes the diplomatic events leading up to Japan's colonial aspirations and refers to the economic sanctions imposed just prior to the military taking control of the government.

Every piece of evidence confirms that it was a organized military prostitution system. It was not "sex slavery".

Because alot of the evidence was destroyed by the Japanese military. They did the same thing with UNIT 731. Unfortunately, they couldn't get rid of the victims or the eyewitnesses.

On April 17, 2007, Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Hirofumi Hayashi announced the discovery of seven official documents in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, suggesting that Imperial military forces - such as the Tokkeitai (Naval military police) - forced women whose fathers attacked the Kenpeitai (Army military police) to work in front-line brothels in China, Indochina, and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing to having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokkeitai members having arrested women on the streets and putting them in brothels after enforced medical examinations.[32]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women

and it wasnt just asians either- ever heard of Jan Ruff O'Herne?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Ruff_O%27Herne

@Ossan

Atomic bombs and the Holocaust are well documented events with little role in world affairs

Little role? Good grief

what use is building a Museum that displays one prejudiced side of the story for the sole purpose of instilling hatred and bias? 

Ask Yasukuni; the Yushukan is a prime example of such a 'museum'

As for the Yuushukan, visited it twice and didn't see this "revisionism" you're talking about

Bizarre. You didn't see the panels explaining the 'discipline' of Japanese troops in Nanjing, and how the people of Nanjing welcomed the Japanese troops into their city as liberators? You didn't see the panels claiming Japan was forced into the war by the US oil embargo (while failing to mention the reason for the embargo was Japan spending the previous 4 years murdering its way across China)? You didn't see the large locomotive engine from the Death Railway in the entrance hall, with an information panel explaining the railway was built by the Japanese army, but failing to mention the slave labour they used and the fact that over 100,000 of those slaves and POWs died during construction? Some powerful selective vision going on there.

Why would the IJA destroy records of a Prostitution System at a time when prostitution was legal?

A pertinent question; obvious answer being, they knew they'd done wrong and wanted to avoid punishment.

It was not "sex slavery". The real issue is HOW these women ended up there

i.e. it was sex slavery because the women were abducted or bought and sold. As you said yourself, "Do you hnstly think a museum in South Korea about the Comfort Women is going to show how the parents of many Korean girls sold them off?" The fact you asked this question shows you accept that human trafficking, the buying and selling of people, was how this system operated, so it's very strange for you to then claim it wasn't slavery. If a woman is purchased to be used in a brothel, how on Earth is that not sex slavery? The one thing you've said here with which I agree is that it's probably unlikely the proposed museum will admit to the involvement of Koreans in Japan's procurement of women, and that is problematic; but the involvement of Korean brokers doesn't absolve Japan of its guilt in setting up and operating the system or of buying the women who were sold, and it certainly doesn't validate your claim that this wasn't slavery.

Nowhere does it say that.

On the contrary, it explicitly states that - and I'm directly quoting from photos I have of information panels in the Yushukan - Japan was "compelled to take up arms" and "cross swords with Britain and America" for "self-defense". The Yushukan is a revolting exercise in revisionist propaganda.

Because alot of the evidence was destroyed by the Japanese military. They did the same thing with UNIT 731. Unfortunately, they couldn't get rid of the victims or the eyewitnesses.

Exactly. It must be terrible to know that your true national identity is capable of doing those things (inc Unit 731 et al) - and then go on to deny it.

I used to deny wrongdoings when I was a kid, but then I grew up and learned that it's far more classy and productive to just own up to it and admit guilt.

classless idiots living in the past, Japan already paid repatriations and formally apologized. Can't let it go? Korea has always been a classless nation

Japan already paid repatriations and formally apologized

Individual politicians have apologized, but there has never been one issued on behalf of the nation, ratified by the government. So it's hard to say Japan has formally apologized.

Dango bongToday 02:41 pm JST

classless idiots living in the past, Japan already paid repatriations and formally apologized. Can't let it go? Korea has always been a classless nation

Not sure what it has to do with "class"...

It's not only about reparation or apology, it's mainly to block revisionism which if one lived in Japan for more than a week knows is a reality.

Saw the movie clip on tv today.

Must say looked like a pretty shabby system to me.

"Japan offered an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.6 billion) payment to South Korean survivors"

If that was the sum offered, you could bet your last shekel that the Korean mantra would now be on of 'let bygones be bygones' . Unfortunately, the amount in $ terms cited is out by about 800X

If Korea does this they should pay back the millions Thur stole from Japan. Classless Koreans.

Japan has formally apologized and both countries signed an agreement Un which Korea pledged not to make public statements or issues out of it again. Lying, classless money stealing hypocrites.

Hei UNESCOS, this deserves to be a WH ! Japanese cruelty is a WH. Are you buying japanese products to finance the next holocaust?

classless idiots living in the past,

Korea has always been a classless nation

Classless Koreans

Lying, classless money stealing hypocrites.

Racist, repetitive agenda. Change the record, eh?

Toasted HereticToday 05:03 pm JST

classless idiots living in the past,

Korea has always been a classless nation

Classless Koreans

Lying, classless money stealing hypocrites.

Racist, repetitive agenda. Change the record, eh?

Strangely enough, he hasn't been moderated ...

Strangely enough, he hasn't been moderated ...

Oh, not saying it should be removed. Just gets a bit meh. There does seem to be a lot of it about recently.

I think it is great that they should build a "comfort women" museum.

Because adressing what happened 70 years ago is the most pressing issue today. Not that Japan, SK and the US should work together to counter the threat that is NK (and of course China in the background) to peace and prosperity in the region.

Yes indeed when a disgruntled Japan won't lift a finger to offer logistical support to US troops fighting to save Seoul, unlike what happened during the first Korean war, this brand new shiny building will be more target practice for Kim Jong-un's howitzers....

And will Japan even care for a second when the SK capital lights up in flame ? Ha ha ha, you must be joking.

So yeah, keep up the good work SK, make more friends in the region . And please send us more of your manufactured musical soft porn, you regard as your current cultural heritage, we need to be kept entertained as we wait for the day of reckoning.

So much hate in SK. They pretty much dislike everybody, even themselves.

Because adressing what happened 70 years ago is the most pressing issue today

Why stop there? Tear down Pearl Harbour, Auschwitz, the Hiroshima Peace Museum as well, eh?

Why not even more recent museums to man's inhumanity? The National September 11th Memorial & Museum.

After all, it's just stuff that happened in the past.

So much hate in SK. They pretty much dislike everybody, even themselves.

Absolute bilge. Less projection more introspection, perhaps?

"eh ?" this "eh ?" that....

Captain Canuck has taken over the comment section.

He's finished early his 英会話 lesson or he's waiting for his shift in Roppongi so he thought he would try to pose as a great thinker.

Not Canadian.

So, you agree that all memorials and reminders of man's inhumanity to man should be torn down an/or dismissed, yes?

Good. For a moment there, I thought it was just ROK you meant.

The support is much appreciated. No really, I assure you, you are that important of a man.

Be well, you have fought well for justice tonite.

I'm honored.

Anyway, you agree that all memorials and reminders of man's inhumanity to man should be torn down and/or dismissed - so that's a step forward. If you're going to apply it to one country; apply it to all.

None whatsoever.

Ok, so your comment "They pretty much dislike everybody, even themselves" was mere whimsy. Fair enough; it's hard to tell online.

I pity suicidal imbeciles who would rather kowtow to the autocrats in China, ignore the loonies across the border than work with the Japanese and this for reasons that are too messed up to understand...

Acknowledging attrocities is not kowtowing to anyone. It's not capitualation or a sign of weakness. As I'm sure you well know, every country has done bad things. Owning up to it and accepting it is surely a postive thing?

By "loonies across the border"; I presume you mean the regime in the DPRK? Maybe ignoring the bluster in favor of dialogue or stopping all aid (worst comes to the worst) is more preferrable?

Has this website no intellectual integrity? Can the discussion really not be moved on by new evidence about the actually events and the motivations of the parties included?

Does this same discussion, and the same old falsehoods, really need to be repeated day in day out by the same people posting the same links and comments?

@ Dango bong

Japan has formally apologized and both countries signed an agreement on which Korea pledged not to make public statements or issues out of it again. Lying, classless money stealing hypocrites.

Thank you for being so straight forward.

To it I would also add "deluded" ... deluded as to what the agendas of those behind the the campaigns are.

Of course, it's purpose will be to re-affirm an entirely incomplete and false picture of what went on.

They are unlikely to shakedown Japan for more money now though.

The real agenda now is just about damaging, in particular, popular support for Japan in the US, and the US-Japan-South Korean alliance against Communist China and NK.

It's bizarre how both "liberals" and "patriotic conservatives" are swept along by the confusion they are creating to support strategies that benefit to notoriously undemocratic, anti-US/West nations with appaling human rights records in the here and now.

How wonderful to be able to keep people blinded to them by whipping up hate about imaginery events 70 years.

Let us be reminded of these people's intellectual integrity

In an interview with Professor Chunghee Sarah Soh of San Francisco State University, a former Korean comfort woman Kim Sun-ok said that she was sold by her parents four times.

Yet she testified before UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy that she was abducted by the Japanese military.

A former Korean comfort woman Mun Oku-chu said in her memoir:

"I was recruited by a Korean comfort station owner. I saved a considerable amount of money from tips, so I opened a saving account. I could not believe that I could have so much money in my saving account. One of my friends collected many jewels, so I went and bought a diamond. I often went to see Japanese movies and Kabuki plays in which players came from the mainland Japan ... I felt very happy and proud. I received permission to return home, but I didn't want to go back to Korea. I wanted to stay in Rangoon."

According to Professor Ahn Byong Jik of Seoul University, Mun Oku-chu continued to work as a prostitute in Korea after the war.

Yet she testified before UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy that she was abducted by the Japanese military.

In an interview with Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh (15th May 1991) a former Korean comfort woman Kim Hak-sun said that she was sold by her mother.

In 1993 Kim Hak-sun told Professor Ahn Byong Jik of Seoul University, "My mother sent me to train as a Kiseng in Pyongyang and then sold me."

Yet she testified before UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy that she was abducted by the Japanese military.

In 1993 a former Korean comfort woman Kim Gun-ja told Professor Ahn Byong Jik of Seoul University, "I was sold by my foster father."

Yet she testified before UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy that she was abducted by the Japanese military.

In 1993 a former Korean comfort woman Lee Yong-soo told Professor Ahn Byong Jik of Seoul University, "At the time I was shabbily dressed and wretched. On the day I left home with my friend Kim Pun-sun without telling my mother, I was wearing a black skirt, a cotton shirt and wooden clogs on my feet. You don't know how pleased I was when I received a red dress and a pair of leather shoes from a Korean recruiter."

Yet she testified before UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy that she was abducted by the Japanese military.

Her false testimony resulted in the passage of United States House of Representatives House Resolution 121.

According to Professor Chunghee Sarah Soh of San Francisco State University, a former Korean comfort woman Moon Pil-ki was recruited by a Korean comfort station owner's agent and taken to Manchuria with four other women.

Yet she testified before UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy that she was abducted by the Japanese military.

In 1993 a former Korean comfort woman Kil Won-ok told Professor Ahn Byong Jik of Seoul University, "I was sold by my parents."

Yet she testified before UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy that she was abducted by the Japanese military.

In Professor Chunghee Sarah Soh's book "The Comfort Women", she relates the story of Kim Sun-OK who was sold by her father 4 times from the age of 7 years old for the price of 500 Won (approximately $30). Each time she paid off "her debt" she was returned to her parents who then sold her again ultimately ending up in Manchuria comfort station in 1941.

Her misfortune was to be the pretty daughter and, hence, her parents could get more for her.

According to several witnesses, Chong Dae Hyup (pro-North activist group) coached women to say "I was abducted by the Japanese military."

Professor Ahn Byong Jik of Seoul University says,

"When I interviewed former comfort women in the early 1990s, none of them had anything bad to say about the Japanese military. They hated their parents who sold them and Korean comfort station owners who mistreated them.

But after Chong Dae Hyup put them on its payroll, their testimonies had completely changed."

A former Korean comfort woman Sim Mi-ja who refused to be on Chong Dae Hyup's payroll said,

"The Korean women, who testified before UN Special Rapporteur, lied on behalf of Chong Dae Hyup. They are swindlers".

In an interview with Professor Park Yuha of Sejong University in South Korea, a former Korean comfort woman Bae Chun-hee said she hated her father who sold her.

She said that men who recruited Korean women and operated comfort stations were all Korean, and that the women who testified before UN Special Rapporteur lied on behalf of Chong Dae Hyup.

Has this website no intellectual integrity?

Oh, it was just waiting until you came along.

How wonderful to be able to keep people blinded to them by whipping up hate about imaginery events 70 years.

I've heard that argument too. Usually from holocaust deniers. What's your excuse?

@G.MAL

So much hate in SK. They pretty much dislike everybody, even themselves

Now then, what drivel is this?

@Heretic

Zhongnanhai (中南海) is the part of Beijing where the CCP top brass usually work i.e. he meant the CCP

Aly RustomToday 12:48 pm JSTEvery piece of evidence confirms that it was a organized military prostitution system. It was not "sex slavery".

Because alot of the evidence was destroyed by the Japanese military. They did the same thing with UNIT 731. Unfortunately, they couldn't get rid of the victims or the eyewitnesses.

Evidence from Unit 731 was not destroyed. It was taken over by the United States. Prostitution wasn't a crime at the time therefore no need to destroy anything. Did you notice how the "Comfort Women" were not brought up by anybody at the International Tribunal for the Fareast where war crimes were tried?

Those who claim intellectual integrity don't always have it.

@zichi

Dammit, wish I had said that :-)

Cripes. Bet that museum will be a bundle of laughs.

Really? How many users would be upset if someone said this about the A-Bomb museum in Hiroshima? Seriously, people need to calm down and stop jumping to Japan's defense on this issue. Let them have their museum, Japan has their wartime museums despite them committing some atrocities during WWII as well.

Really? How many users would be upset if someone said this about the A-Bomb museum in Hiroshima? Seriously, people need to calm down and stop jumping to Japan's defense on this issue. Let them have their museum, Japan has their wartime museums despite them committing some atrocities during WWII as well.

Exactly.

It's all about education, understanding and accepting.

Unfortunately, to do this means you will be ridiculed by some.

Personally, I'd rather the ridicule than the ignorance. Just because you highlight any country for their wrongs does not mean you hate that country.

Different kettle of fish when you denigrate an entire people. That's outright hatred.

ossan,

Evidence from Unit 731 was not destroyed. It was taken over by the United States.

The US took the research data, yes; but evidence was most certainly destroyed. The buildings, the bodies, as much physical evidence of what was done there as possible, were all burned by the departing Japanese.

Prostitution wasn't a crime at the time therefore no need to destroy anything.

Human trafficking was though. As you've acknowledged yourself up the page, Japan was buying women for its brothels i.e. it was engaging in human trafficking, and on a massive scale.

@zichi

even before the outbreak of the war there were conventions prohibiting human trafficking Japan was a signature. It also applies to forced laborers.

You are confusing a number of entirely different things here - especially that the early comfort wome were all Japanese - however, in the later period Japan was not trafficking Korean women, the Korean sex industry was.

Just why that was has been clearly studied and documented. It was because their business was dropping off in the mainland, due to the war time recession, and so they took it overseas to Manchuria, Formosa and elsewhere.

With regards to the Myth of Forced Conscription

Anyone with any intellectual integrity would be found to take on board the works of

Park Kyongsik and A chronicle of the forced conscription of Koreans

Professor Chung Dae-kyun who wrote, "Korean residents in Japan: The myth of forced conscription" and "Tell me about that day, Father: The movement to restore the history of Korean residents in Japan" for the Youth Association of Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan).

After a wide survey, he found,

"If we examine the oral accounts contained in the report, there are almost no accounts of the kind the editor was anticipating.

Certainly we can discern that that they were thrown into factories in a foreign country and forced to do hard labor, however there are almost no accounts of actual “conscription” such as driving a truck into a village, threatening people with bayonets and taking them away by force."

You might cross reference that with, "The treatment of Korean residents: transitions and situation today" by Morita Yoshio (1955).

As with the wartme prostitute issue, we have a problem of extremely narrow and specific historical events, occurring at a specific times, being exaggerated and applied to all by people who were not there, who were not alive, who cannot even speak Korean or Japanese to know what actually happened.

The use of the term should be limited to the conscription that occurred from September 1944 to the end of the war and applied to all Japanese citizens whether born in Japan or Korea.

it refers to wartime labor mobilization in which the Korean-Japanese had it easy, as they were only sent to labor camps, while the Japanese-Japanese were sent to the front lines.

Which would you have preferred?

The individuals were not Koreans they were Japanese citizens at the time, and no one was allowed to sit around drinking tea for the duration of the war.

The theory of forced laborer arose from 'A Chronicle of the forced conscription of Koreans' (1965) by Park Kyongsik.

So, if you have intellectual integrity, ask yourself, "who was Park?".

Who was Park ... and what was going on?

Park was part of the educated the elite of the pro-North Korean, Pro-Communist or Pro-Juche group in Japan. The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon).

Same players, same game.

Are you a player or are you being played by them?

At the time Chongryon was actively promoting a repatriation campaign, and the necessity for Korean residents of Japan to return to participate in rebuilding their homeland.

How did that work out for the ones that fell for it?

it was designed to create a basis for Korean residents not to remain in Japan and to return "home" instead, therefore, it stressed that Korean residents had been brought to Japan through “forced conscription” ... which was not true.

If you are interested, and the moderators allow, I am happy to full in the historical gaps in yours and others knowledge about these development.

Both campaigns are malicious and bogus.

Dishonourable for Japan to run away from the truth rather than facing the harsh truth of Japanese aggression!!

@zichi

"intellectual integrity"

ah your favorite fall back!

No, my fallback are;

the facts,

understanding the players, and

understanding the greater historical context to understand the game.

As soon as the word Chongryon (North Koreans association in Japan) or their equivalent North Korean allies in South Korea arise, you can be sure of the need to apply great caution ... unless, of course, you support the North Korean regime.

There is another historical element to consider in both these issues, and that is the American post-war conduct in Japan, Korea, and elsewhere in SE Asia, where its military carried out and "enjoyed" exactly the same excess that are habitually accused of the Japanese.

For example, in Korea where mass rapes of Korean village women led to the camptowns being set up with comfort women who served the Japanese, or in Japan where women were coerced by poverty to sell themselves into comfort stations to serve the American military, in order to stop the rapes, and forced to serve up to 60 men a day. Some ending up committing suicide because of the abuse.

Now, all of that is historical facts that I can sustain. I've long considered that popular consensus in the US is based on a whole heap of daddies and grandpappies with someone to hide about what they did in the war.

The British coming out look far more decent in this department, something to do with tea and bromide I believe. The French and Dutch less so, they were among the more vicious colonist. After the war, the Japanese had to protect the Dutch from the Indonesias who want to literally chop them up to pieces.

I expect none of this complexity to be present in the Korean exhibition that will have no right to call itself a museum.

The difference between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is that we can be sure they happened. We have the evidence.

The Comfort Women issue ... little to no evidence and plenty to contract it and the ingegrity of its proponents.

@Kasper123

Dishonourable for Japan to run away from the truth rather than facing the harsh truth of Japanese aggression!!

What the evidence shows is that, time and time again, the Japanese police were rescuing women from Korean traffickers at the time.

You will find that not just Japanese academics but also Koreans are working their way towards the truth.

When the article says, "Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women" it is an absolute lie. A fallacy (appeal to authority).

Hammerhead, The Japanese imperial army committed atrocities, inhuman barbaric acts. Will say 20,000 or even 2000 women forces into prostitution, will somehow nullify the violation and cruelty? Your denial feeds equality minister Chung Hyun-Back political agenda.

New gender equality minister Chung Hyun-Back, a political activist, is determined to legally hold the people of Japan legally responsible for past atrocities committed by imperial Japanese troops during World War II.  

New gender equality minister Chung Hyun-Back is obsessed with extracting retribution through the generations, fanning the flames of bitterness resentment and hostility for young people in Japan that have no need to apologies and are not remotely responsible legally or otherwise for atrocities committed before their birth.  

Every time some right wing political fossil pontificates dogmatically about 'comfort women' or goes into denial over clear acts of crimes against humanity, or an owner of hotel chains places false and distasteful literature in rooms, Political activists similar to Chung Hyun-Back will hold these examples up as actions and views that quite wrongly prove complicit connivance of an entire nation.

Maybe the one-billion yen ($8.6 billion) payment to South Korean survivors, will be able to contribute to this museum, and if Chung Hyun-sees fit or warranted  funding 'comfort women'  listing in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Just don't expect legal liability redress , atonement, or moral penance from my generation. Cynically acts of parading these frail survivors to fan the flames of hatred and discontent will be met with resentment and disgust.

Ossan

Evidence from Unit 731 was not destroyed. It was taken over by the United States.

Alot of it was destroyed but the Americans did manage to salvage them.

"With the coming of the Red Army in August 1945, the unit had to abandon their work in haste. The members and their families fled to Japan.

Ishii ordered every member of the group "to take the secret to the grave", threatening to find them if they failed, and prohibiting any of them from going into public work back in Japan. Potassium cyanide vials were issued for use in the event that the remaining personnel were captured.

Skeleton crews of Ishii's Japanese troops blew up the compound in the final days of the war to destroy evidence of their activities, but most were so well constructed that they survived somewhat intact."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Destruction_of_evidence

Prostitution wasn't a crime at the time therefore no need to destroy anything.

Again, it was not prostitution.

"On April 17, 2007, Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Hirofumi Hayashi announced the discovery of seven official documents in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, suggesting that Imperial military forces - such as the **Tokkeitai (Naval military police) - forced women whose fathers attacked the Kenpeitai (Army military police) to work in front-line brothels in China, Indochina, and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing to having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokkeitai members having arrested women on the streets and putting them in brothels after enforced medical examinations."**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women

Did you notice how the "Comfort Women" were not brought up by anybody at the International Tribunal for the Fareast where war crimes were tried?

They didn't have to. There were plenty of war crimes to indict the guilty men. they didn't need the comfort women. But their cause does have support worldwide.

"The cause has long been supported beyond the victim nations, and associations like Amnesty International are campaigning in countries where governments have yet to support the cause, like in Australia,[151] or New Zealand.[152] Support in the United States continues to grow, particularly after the United States House of Representatives House Resolution 121 was passed on July 30, 2007, asking the Japanese government to redress the situation and to incorporate internationally accepted actual historical facts about this program into their educational system. In July 2012, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a strong advocate of the cause, denounced the use of the euphemism 'comfort women' for what should be referred to as 'enforced sex slaves'.[153] The Obama Administration also addressed the need for Japan to do more to address the issue.[154] In addition to calling attention to the issue, the American memorial statues erected in New Jersey in 2010 and California in 2013 show support for what has become an international cause.[155]

On December 13, 2007, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on "Justice for the 'Comfort Women' (sex slaves in Asia before and during World War II)" calling on the Japanese government to apologise and accept legal responsibility for the coercion of young women into sexual slavery before and during WWII.[156]

In 2014, Pope Francis met with seven former comfort women in South Korea.[157][158] Also in 2014, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called for Japan to, as the Committee's deputy head Anastasia Crickley put it, "conclude investigations into the violations of the rights of ‘comfort women’ by the military and to bring to justice those responsible and to pursue a comprehensive and lasting resolution to these issues.”[159] U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay had also spoken out in support of comfort women several times"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women

Not to mention testimonies by women who were not even Korean....

Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps. But one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the “Comfort Women”, the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army... ...I have forgiven the Japanese for what they did to me, but I can never forget. For fifty years, the “Comfort Women” maintained silence; they lived with a terrible shame, of feeling soiled and dirty. It has taken 50 years for these women’s ruined lives to become a human rights issue. I hope that by speaking out, I have been able to make a contribution to world peace and reconciliation, and that human rights violation against women will never happen again.

— Statement by Jan Ruff O’Herne at a 2007 United States congressional hearing[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Ruff_O%27Herne

I love how people think they've got it going on just because they've curated some info on wikipedia...

On the other hand, if we look at the work of an academic who was actually alive at the time, such as Ch’oe Kil-song who wrote, 'The Origins of the US Army's Korean Comfort Women', we find

"Neither I nor the many other scholars who had done field surveys throughout South Korea had ever heard of the so-called "comfort women". And yet, the issue found its way into Japanese-language media and then became a political problem and human rights issue within South Korea. I realized early on that this had been caused by the false testimony of Yoshida Seiji and misreporting published in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun."

"There is no clear difference between the way that comfort women were recruited by the Japanese Army and the way that they were recruited by the US Army ... If a statue is built in memory of the comfort women of the Japanese Army, there will be some people who will pipe up and ask for another statue beside it in memory of the comfort women of the US Army. The immature diplomatic actions of South Korea need to stop immediately."

Ch’oe Kil-song analysis the psychological problems these people - the nationalist hate mob - suffer from in great detail, how it developed both culturally and historically.

I love how people think they've got it going on just because they've curated some info on wikipedia...

As opposed to other people who don't even bother to cite a source?

It works wonderfully because they or their compatriots have already spent 1,000s of hours fighting strategic 'information war' battles over Wikipedia to corrupt the information there ... then to use it here and elsewhere.

Someone has been listening a bit too much to Alex Jones.

Someone has been listening a bit too much to Alex Jones.

I think you reached into your "bag of insults" and pulled out the wrong one.

I think you reached into your "bag of insults" and pulled out the wrong one.

Look who's talking

Reconciliation between former enemies where atrocities were committed cannot be found through "final and irreversible" agreements or deals.

Politicians invariably provoke, even escalate tension surrounding this issue, especially when clearly time is running out for 38 survivors to find closure, if in fact closure could ever relieve the suffering psychologically.

Make no mistake. There is an agenda at work here, folks, to obscure the truth and dump the blame onto the victims of all this - the women themselves.

It's playing out before your very eyes; under the guise of "intellectualism" and accusations of being PC.

It's the equivalent of holocaust denial. Be wary of it.

@Toasted Heretic

Another tired and worn out trope, TH, attempt to equate honest enquiry with neo-Nazidom.

You'll notice that 90% of the sources I am quote are from Korean and Korean women academics.

It's a bit difficult to stick the "Japanese right winger" label on them but you could try the "Self-hating Korean" one ... again borrowing from the Holocaust Industry, the same parties as we are discussing do try that on too.

VANK, of the 'Voluntary Agency Network of Korea' has been well studied and documented. I think their influence, and funding, has waned recently, however, for years they hammered internet companies into submission over their various anti-Japan campaigns.

They claimed, "100,000 Korean members and 30,000 Koreans abroad members".

With the Chinese, it is largely Chinese overseas students who are mobilized by intelligence agents working in embassies.

To a degree, the women were "victims" and "forced", but they were 'economic victims' and forced by 'economic pressures', as indeed, were the traditional sex industry and brothels. But that's capitalism for you. As soon as the market is opened up, so are women's legs.

They were also victims to the state of the nation, the Korean Yangban ruling class having run the country into the ground, who turned into economic opportunists. And many "forced" to leave Korea as they could no longer marry a Korea, hence taking their sex businesses elsewhere, or marrying foreigners, as they do Americans to this day.

'The Origins of the US Army's Korean Comfort Women' by Ch’oe Kil-song, details how this happened and how rapidly this happen. Their village was right on the border between north and south.

When the US Army came to our village there was an explosion of sexual violence, and when prostitutes flocked to the village, we welcomed them in the way that I described earlier. The prostitutes were the village's saviors. We had the real fear that, without them, all of the women in the village might become the target of sexual assault. In other words, we invited the prostitutes in as a means of self-defense, and that is how we became a "prostitution village".

The US Army stockpiled condoms in order to protect its men from STDs. Whenever it rained you could see condoms flowing everywhere. Children filled them up with water and played with them. At my uncle's house condoms could be procured cheaply so he cut them into long, thin strips with a razor to make rubber strings and set up a business of sewing them into the ankle part of socks.

To understand the contrived moral outrage, one has to understand various formative developments in the Korean psyche and, in particularly, it attitude towards sex and sexual purity, from its Confucianists roots to the influence of extreme forms of Protestantism after the war (from American missionaries, to deeply political cults like the Moonies - Unification Church).

Briefly, under normal circumstances women who lose their chastity are despised, but particularly when the country is attacking an external enemy they suddenly become "victims" or "patriots", e.g. described as "our nation's daughter" or "a good women victimized by beastly Japanese, GIs etc". The shame of the comfort women is the shame of all Koreans", the comfort women being transformed into victims of crimes against the entire Korean people, who now had a noble mission of promoting nationalist sentiments.

A Christian like redemption story.

Now this is important ...

What is going on, is the losing of their virginity for money, is being re-defined as a "rape" in order to be able to re-deem or translate it into a socially acceptable construct. A face saving re-invention. Like I noted earlier, prostitutes are also commended for their filial piety and devotion to their families.

Yang Hyunah has put at issue the discrepancy between Korean nationalist discourse and the confessions of the prostitutes.

Under normal political circumstances, women who lose their virginity are despised, but particularly when the country is attacking an external enemy they suddenly become "victims" or "patriots". The taking of the virginity of Korean women by Japanese troops was not only a rape of the women themselves, but also a rape of the whole nation of Korea.

There is an excellent document made public recently referred to as "The Diary of a Japanese Military Brothel Manager" by a Korean comfort station manager called Mr Bak from South Gyeongsang. It was never meant for publication but it is daily record of real life at a comfort station during 1942 to 1944.

It debunks all of their myths.

Written by a Korean in Korean at the time. Google it. It comprises of twenty-six volumes found thirty-six years ago before the issue became politicized, by Oh Chae-hyeon, curator of the Time Capsule Museum in Paju.

It goes into many details, e.g. period when comfort women were "forced" to remain in doors being due to outbreaks of plague, or other epidemic diseases, or nearby military movement that would threaten them. It details how much they were paid, how they were allowed breaks, how they had slow periods, they had their own Association called the "Comfort Station Association", referred to as a "geisha agency," and regular meetings. They were not treated as being a part of the military.

Someone erroneously mentioned, I think it was Zichi that the system started in 1932.

It did not. It started in the late nineteenth century, when Japanese prostitutes known as karayuki-san, exported the sex trade abroad to Korea, Shanghai in China and elsewhere.

There was nothing new or alien about it for either Korea or Japan. Indeed the same economic "force and coercion" existed within the poor areas of Japan just as Tōhoku right up until the 1970s.

Either you sold your daughter or you and your family died. Life was that hard. Young women took the onus on out of filial duty. Everyone in Asia knows it, and it still goes on today.

It's not right by today's standards, but there was no social welfare back then.

@Hammerhead

tldr

For Westerners, the way in which to understand the Korean nationalist reaction is along the line of very highly exaggerated and unresolved "Freudian issues" around the issues of sex and, in particularly, women's sexuality.

Hypocritically so due to the extremely high proportion of Korean males using prostitutes today.

There are many paper being written about this, again, by Korean and Korean women or feminists, e.g.

'Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism' by Elaine H. Kim, Chungmoo Choi

'Revisiting the Issue of Korean “Military Comfort Women”: The Question of Truth and Positionality' by Hyunah Yang (a professor at the Seoul National University School) and so on.

I think part of that "Freudian element" is a kind displaced Christian guilt for their own interactions with modern day prostitutes, or during their military national service (there are, of course, huge "camptowns" running according to the same old habits, serving the Korean Army in Korea and, in the past, the Korean Army in Vietnam) and amongst Americans of a certain generation for their use and abuse of the “blanket corps” (Korean women who followed pimps searching for American troops during their movements, who operated out of "field brothels" as the Americans lined up outside).

I suspect that many of the vociferous American and Korean-American anto-Japan voices have much to hide.

Certainly their military intelligence knows all about it.

The business were run by the same people according to the same traditions.

In  “Comfort Women of the Empire” Park Yu-ha wrote

There is no evidence, she wrote, that the Japanese government was officially involved in, and therefore legally responsible for, coercing Korean women.

 190 South Korean scholars and cultural figures issued a statement supporting what Ms. Park had tried to do in her book.

Pretty please Hammerhead, your comments must have taken hours to research and compose, rendering and in many ways justifying the reprehensible. shameful forced detention of women, and girls for the sole purpose of reward and gratification of an imperial army intent on rape and pillage, murder and in some cases mutilation. Please accept this was an atrocity.

No one with any intellectual integrity can accept the propagandist line that you have repeated.

The statistical proportion of the number of women suffering 'genuine sex crimes' was lower than the number of women suffering genuine sex crimes within the US military today, and perhaps many times as lower than the number of women suffering genuine sex crimes in the cities of US or Korea today.

The weight of evidence, all of which I have presented from Korean sources, shows what you are asserting is blatantly false.

Who are to blame for the experience of the remaining wartime prostitutes are,

a) their parents for selling them,

b) Korean society, for allowing parents to sell their daughters,

c) the Korea sex industry for buying and selling women and girls and contradicting the terms of the contract it had with the Imperial Army.

The weight of evidence shows that the women either accepted their lot at the time - as it was cultural and traditional - or profited from it immensely, in comparison to the other options that the rigidly class bound and chauvinist Korean society offered them.

Paradoxically, becoming a prostitute was one of the few freeing and empowering options that they had, that allowed women to become personally and financially independent.

(The same being true in Japan).

Personally, I think that is a terrible thing, but it was reality in Asia at the time and remains reality for 100,000s in Asia to this day.

Hammerhead,

Who are to blame for the experience of the remaining wartime prostitutes are,

a) their parents for selling them,

b) Korean society, for allowing parents to sell their daughters,

c) the Korea sex industry for buying and selling women and girls and contradicting the terms of the contract it had with the Imperial Army.

But above all, Japan; for invading China and SE Asia and thus creating the entire scenario in which there was a need for soldiers to receive mass 'comfort' in the first place; and for colonising Korea and then buying the Korean women that were sold in its colony to serve that need (not to mention all the non-Korean women)

You've written a huge amount here about how there's no evidence of coercion, about how the women were sold by their fellow Koreans, as though you think demonstrating this would then absolve Japan of any blame. It does not - for in arguing that the women were sold by Koreans, you acknowledge they were bought by Japan, to serve a need that Japan had created. Japan was operating at least one end of a mass human trafficking system to provide sex to soldiers it sent to invade other countries. For all your obfuscations, whataboutery, and focus on Korean involvement, this was an atrocity which must be acknowledged and remembered. Your own extensive posts indicate you know this all happened, and are just looking for ways to shift the blame.

Hi zichi, You have quite rightly pointed out there is no justification for the these acts of prolonged incarceration and imprisonment for the purpose of sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. 

For both the people Japan and Korea (north and south)the necessity to find a means of reconciliation, through the understanding that the people of Japan insistence on maintaining a unique pacifist constitution is proof enough of acceptance that article nine will continue to remain the cornerstone to that commitment. 

I will refrain to directly refer to Hammerhead in the third person.

I would just request that Hammerhead expand upon  " personally, I think that is a terrible thing" and  peruse Kirsten Ainley.....Individual Agency and Responsibility for Atrocity......the forward brings the concept of atrocity into focus.

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds,

and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy

them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every

human being … it is after all only because of the way things worked out that

they were the executioners and we weren’t.......

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/24255/1/Individual_Agency_and_Responsibility_forAtrocity%28LSERO%29.pdf

I love how people think they've got it going on just because they've curated some info on wikipedia...

So Ponch, What's YOUR source? Do YOU have a source?

They just cant let it go. I am so tired of this.

Do you hnstly think a museum in South Korea about the Comfort Women is going to show how the parents of many Korean girls sold them off?

As others have pointed out, once a young woman has been "sold" to a brothel she is a sex slave. Nothing more. I do not see why you find this so hard to comprehend. You accept that the Japanese forces fully supported sexual slavery.

But the bad guys in your eyes do not seem to be the men who raped the girls over and over again or the businesses that bought them like pieces of meat, but the parents.

Now to my mind, not many parents are likely to sell their daughters unless driven to by desperate circumstances or by force. Well Korea at the time was occupied and run by Japan so was responsible for the conditions that led to parents having to sell their daughters into a slavery.

"A (Japanese) prisoner of war who had operated a military brothel in Burma said in the report that he and his wife purchased 22 Korean women from their families, with prices based on their looks, personalities and ages. "

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2016/jan/17/document-proving-wwii-comfort-women-now-home-ku-li/

"A (Japanese) prisoner of war who had operated a military brothel in Burma said in the report that he and his wife purchased 22 Korean women from their families, with prices based on their looks, personalities and ages. "

Again, shocking and barbaric how Japan allowed girls to be sold into sexual poverty and allowed is citizens to be driven to such dispair and poverty that they had no option but to sell their own children.

The fact that this was legal and allowed by the state is utterly shocking and shames Japan.

Yes zichi, Japan was bad back then and run by autocrats who could dispose of people as they wished. Thank you for the history lesson (...)

But Japan has apologized and the country is not run by autocrats today. So they're good.

But other autocrats are still running some countries, including one that is becoming very assertive, pulling the strings of NK and wants to obliterate Taipei unless it shows allegiance to Beijing.

We should worry about this...today.

Move along, move along. It's all old hat. Any discussion of it is automatically anti-Japanese and let's focus on China, instead.

Not Nanking, mind. That would be anti-Japanese, so let's focus on nebulous what ifs and maybes.

@Ah_so

The women were not sold to the army. The army did not buy women. They got paid. It was not slavery.

And, zichi, you continue to post known falsehoods when you write "the underage girls were ordered by procurement" as you know, as you have been told before just recently, the military specifications were utterly specific;

a) over 21, and

b) voluntary.

The women were not even contracted to the army, they were contracted to the brothels and comfort stations. The brothels and the comfort stations contracted to the military.

The women took the advance fee from the Korean brokers/agents/pimps, and signed the contract to repay it.

That is how the system worked, as it works until this day.

If a women or a agents or pimp lied or falsified documents, whose fault it that? The military was managing a war, not a spring break in Florida Keys.

What the record shows, time and time again, many examples of which have been given here, is that when abuses in the hiring process happened, and were brought to the authority's attention, the police stepped in and military alerting commanding officers. At times rescuing 100s of women.

Explain it they were "rescuing" and free women, if at the smae time they were supposed to be "enslaving".

The evidence is there, in Korean, from Korean newspapers.

Those are what the records evidencing the military's involvement show, along with the military providing necessary medical treatments and transportation.

Of course, in a war, in a war zone, you cannot have civilian contractors wandering around where and whenever they want. Seriously guys!?!

Do you think civilian contractors in Okinawa are allowed to wandering around where and whenever they want to this day?

G.MAL.O.Q

Only SK and China have an agenda, other countries have moved on. So yes my take is, in the big picture today, why give a s*** ?

The why to why give a s*** is for the young women and girls who will be trafficked TODAY and TOMORROW.

Not for a bogus, hateful, re-invention of the past that is part of a communistic or nationalistic plot.

Plots exaggerate by a bizarrely and hypocritically schizophrenic attitude towards sex, and a confused national pride.

@itsonlyrocknroll

there is no justification for the these acts of prolonged incarceration and imprisonment for the purpose of sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. 

There were no "prolonged acts incarceration and imprisonment for the purpose of sexual slavery". Check the actually diaries I linked to elsewhere.

The evidence shows the women were allowed to leave by their Korean brothel masters after they had paid off their debts to them, but that many chose not to because they were making such good money.

I would just request that Hammerhead expand upon  " personally, I think that is a terrible thing"

Much of the debate, especially within modern Korea, is based on a disgust at the idea of prostitution. Any prostitution. A disgust of prostitutes. A disgust of commercial sex and of mass sexual activities, e.g. one women having sex with 10 men a day, or 10 different men over 10 different days (depending on the class of prostitute their experience was different, some were just entertainers, others just maids, other worked in tents near the frontline).

What is your position on prostitutes, on the whole?

With the Koreans, it is a strange combination of a core of Confucianist ideals of femine purity and docility (women being the lowest order and subservient to men) with a thin veneer of Christian Protestantism/Moonie-sim on top (denial of the pleasure of the flesh, salvation and redemption etc) both of which are riding upon a huge hypocrisy ... and that huge hypocrisy is that Korean is a huge consumer, and provider, of prostitution and commercial sex and has been for the last 100 years.

Look at the statistics. Look at the statistics of how much they increased the comfort women system after the Japanese left and when the American came. And come they did. It rose 5 times as the highest of estimates of the scale of the entire Japanese empire's to 1,000,000 women in 1950 - with reliable figures being provided by the UN.

It was the American "UN army" that was consuming it in 1950.

There is no evidence to support the 200,000 figure. It was and remains only a "high estimate". However, the 1,000,000 figure is reliable and it remains the estimated scale of the sex industry in Korea to this day.

Although technically illegal,

Therefore it demonstrates not just a use of prostitution but evidence of the society's attitude towards illegal activities, criminality. And remember that the government and authorities were promoting it right up until the 1970s.

According to the government-run Korean Institute of Criminology, 1 in 5 of men in their 20s buy sex at least four times a month, and it has a thriving child and teen prostitution industry. South Koreans are the biggest customers of the child sex industry in the region, expanding to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines.

The feminist point of view now tends to be that the choice to be a prostitute is a woman's right. The choice to voluntarily sell her body, if she so wishes, is hers alone. Clearly millions do and either enjoy it, or the fruits - money and independence - it brings them.

They do it to make "easy money" to buy nice things, to pay off debts, to support family ... just as they did in the 1940s.

Should women or even "girls" be forced by economic pressures to survive in such a way? Of course not.

It would be wonderful if there was a "global socialist state" that served and protected the interests of every women and female child in the world.

If you want that, and vote for that, and are willing to pay the taxes or demand corporate taxes afford such a system, then I would be very happy and not oppose it.

The Japanese world order was not communist but it was far more communalistic and family based than the current American New World Order, and we can see the nature and effect of the US New World Order on prostitution in Asian directly from 1945 onwards, expanding to an industrial level wherever it goes.

Alternatively, we can also measure the improvements to the quality of life, life expectancy, and population Japan brought to the Korean pennisula during its investment into Korea. Huge improvements. It doubled life expectancy and population, banned traditional slavery, educated girls, provided healthcare and so on.

However, it was not possible to rid Korea of every vice.

If a girl wants new shoes and brand handbag, a father is a drunk and a gambler, or a single women keeps getting pregnant and dumping excess children, is that the all the State's responsibility?

Where do you draw the line of personal responsibility?

You cannot blame the Japanese State for all of Korean society's and individals' vices.

@Hammerhead

Again, you clearly acknowledge, at great length, that Japan was purchasing women i.e. human trafficking. How can you possibly think this is going to persuade anyone that Japan did nothing wrong? How can you possibly think Japan did nothing wrong, when you clearly acknowledge it was engaged in mass human trafficking? You think human trafficking isn't wrong?

@G.MAL

We should worry about this...today

False dichotomy. It is perfectly possible to simultaneously be opposed to denial of Japanese wrongdoing re the Comfort Women, while also being concerned about China today, One does not preclude the other.

Only SK and China have an agenda

Do pull the other one. Surely you know of Nippon Kaigi?

The only thing more annoying than Japanese denial of its past crimes is Korean obsession with them

@zichi

As I have underlined each time, every source for the evidence I have provided has come from a Korean. 90% of it from Korean women.

There is no evidence support the 40% to 50% estimate figures you are making up.

If the Koreans who were Japanese at the time are happy to accept Japanese citizenship, then Japan will be happy to hear their legal cases in a Japanese court.

But they will need evidence.

Shameful that the emperor allowed his subjects to be treated like nothing better than property.

Why, Japan banned slavery in 1590. When did the UK or US ban slavery.

It had to do so because the European Christians were enslaved 10,000s of Japanese women. Mainstream historians say 500,000. (The Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sex). The Christians paid a barrel of gunpowder for fifty slaves.

@Yoshi tsune

Again, you clearly acknowledge, at great length, that Japan was purchasing women

'Japan' did not, and never has, purchased women.

Unlike the US, it never engaged in "mass human trafficking" or slavery to build up its economy and industry.

You'll have to accuse the private contractors first.

Japan has and never has had any need to because, unlike Mainland China, it has enough women of its own, enough prostitutes of its own, enough willing women of its own.

It has a perfectly good male-female gender balance.

During WWII the military and private contractors transported a few thousand, perhaps 10,000s to 20,000 at the very most, to wherever their business was but that is all. It was all for their convenience and safety.

You could not have had private transportation wandering all over a war zone. You still cannot today.

The trophies of War.... Women, and young Girls. There should be no denying that. It happened, then, it happens now - it's sadly ingrained into the fighting man's nature.

The Axis nations Lost., yet the Japanese still try to cover up what they did and that simply, just makes things worse for all involved. The Western Allies were also held accountable, and admit their wrong-doings, and try to make sure it doesn't happen again... though with all the covering up, being carried out by the Japanese, I wonder if the SDF, when deployed under the new J.Govt rules, will be anything different from their Imperialistic past.

@Hammerhead

Let's give you an example of free choice back in the 1920's-'40s

"I give you a choice... "

"You keep your testicles, or we kill your Wife, your Kids, your Parents, your Nephews, etc... "

"Your choice."

"Now, let's record this decision as his 'Freedom of choice'. The decision is his to make...."

So, @Hammerhead, what choice would you have made, and if you were to have had that choice recorded in the annals of History, how would you have liked it to have been written down ?

And before you say, this doesn't happen in modern day times... take a look around you elsewhere. Africa for Starters, the Middle-East etc.

The concern is, that given the modern day right-wingest denials of such events, is that the same situation could arise again when Japanese Troops are deployed again for real in an offensive capability.

@ Yoshi tsune

We are discussing legal responsibilities here, not economic trends.

And I would also argue that you cannot blame "Japan" because 53% of Japan was female and had no "demand" for foreign prostitutes. 20% were children and had no "demand" for foreign prostitutes, another 20% were beyond the age of having any interest in sex ... and we can assume that a certain percentage of adult males were either gay, Christian, strictly Buddhists, or happy in their marriages and so, consequently, and had no "demand" for foreign prostitutes.

What percentage does that leave? I'm down to single figures already.

Then we have to ask, what treated foreign prostitutes nicely and what treated foreign prostitutes badly? Let's say, for the sake of argument, 1/3 was bad customers.

Therefore, what percentage does that leave? 1/3rd of a single figure percentage. A few percent of Japan males? Does that seem fair?

In short, no more the number of abuse men or rapists in any nation and much less than, say, USA or Korea today.

Since when do a few percent or rapists define an entire nation?

No one was forced to supply.

No one was forced to offer themselves. Some were "forced, tricked and coerced" by others, and we have documented who, and that they were not contracted to do so.

Therefore, the responsibility is not the nation of Japan's.

There are no ground for collective or inherited guilt.

--

Someone, zichi it was, mentions Nakasone yet again. That's a bit of an own goal really.

Nakasone was responsible for setting up comfort stations in Balikpapan.

Interestingly, Ishibashi Nakazaburio, a Japanese civilian manager of one of them, was charged with kidnapping several Indonesia women and forcing them to render sexual services by the Dutch (who themselves had enslaved and prostituted Indonesian women before the war).

During the case, 3 of the so called "victims" appear as witnesses and actually testified against the Dutch prosecutors claiming that, thanks to Ishibashi, they had a good life during the War.

Ishibashi was found not guilty.

What zichi and the sources he uses are trying to do is exploit a "guilt by association" based on Judeo-Christian values about the shamefulness of sex and prostitution.

Japanese culture never found sex or "comfort" dirty or shameful in that way. It was and is a very clean society. It realized sex was part of human expression and managed it in a typically clean and ordered manner, even during a world war.

This is why I ask, what is your opinion of prostitution in general?

If you are disgusted by commercial sex, if you cannot believe that some women enjoy it, or voluntarily choose it as a profession, then you will have a difficult time looking at the entire issue rationally.

Comfort stations were not brothels. There were differences. Comfort stations were more like officers' clubs, or clubs for other contractors.

Yes, Asia was a chauvinist place back then. Some Asian nations still are.

Then why the purchase of all those Korean women, which you have gone to great lengths to tell us all about?

They weren't purchased, they were contracted.

And it was neither "to Japan", nor even the IJA.

@Hammerhead

I really wish I had a Time-machine to send you back to the day and age that you so honestly support.

Sadly I don't.

So in the meantime, what do you say about those accounts given by the Survivors from those times ? Are they Lying ? And what evidence can you provide to prove that they are ?

@ mmwkdw

Your analogy fails because the Japanese did not go about threatening, "[husbands], your Kids, your Parents, your Nephews, etc" to make women volunteer to become comfort women.

In some case, they were queuing up to.

You are portraying how gangster nations imagine how Japan is. In Japan it were just normal military procurement.

They advised a demand for specified services, received offered of supply, did their best to choose the most reliable offers (and refused many bad ones). The contractors did the rest.

I would say in outlying regions, e.g. from remote parts of Korea to Indonesia, there were cases when the "demand for services" went out to the local village headman and he supplied women. I suspect that were less reliable and, perhaps, he forced unmarried or widow women for the sake of the income. I reported a well documented example in S Korea where supply was motivated by the village wish to stop the rapes and violence by US servicemen.

But in all those cases, you need to accuse the individual who actually carried out the act as they were not representing Japan, nor Japan's interests.

They were acting outside of any official contracting.

Yes, most of the remaining ones are not only lying but have been clearly and specifically proven to be lying, contradicting their earlier statements.

Many others lied purely for the sake of financial benefit and face saving.

They having been coached by the Communist/North Korea leaning Chong Dae Hyup.

This is well documented, when Chong Dae Hyup advertized for women to come forward, even it had to reject many of them because their claims were so unreliable.

Remove Chong Dae Hyup and the Korean nationalists, both in Korea and the US, and you would have a far more real and reasonable discussion.

Largely, Chong Dae Hyup's position has being destroyed by rational Korean feminists academics who reject chauvinist nationalism that has usurped the campaign for their own entirely separate political interest.

@Hammerhead - yes, I can see your deflection argument, the denial of food rations would also be a very significant issue, We could argue over this all night... so let me ask you this one question:

Do you have any personal experience of the Japanese Imperialistic forces in WWII that you can rely upon ?

If a someone crashes into your car, can you sue the motor company for making the automible in the first place?

My experience of the Japanese military are immaterial, we have innumerable original documents that allow us to have a 'big picture view' right over the entire geography and history.

However, I am happy to admit that I was paid for sex by a married women once.

It was great. It did not hurt and I did not feel shameful afterwards. I laughed. I had sex and I got paid (actually it was more of a gift, or may be a guilt payment, because I did a good job, as we had no such contract first).

I also know an ex-prostitute and brothel owner. Not only is she excellent company but she herself admitted that one of the reasons she did was because she also enjoyed sex, and the freedom of the only high paying job her class and education would allow.

We can then look at the diaries of the comfort women and find exactly the same sentiments arising. Time and time again.

We can also find love affairs, camaraderie, and even marriages between the comfort women and the young soldiers - many of whom were in or just out of their teenages and, hence, hardly raping monsters.

For many, the experience was their one and only tender experience of a woman's love and they appreciated it greatly. Many of the reports from both sides are highly emotional.

Such ocurences could not have happened in the perverted picture the Japan Hate mob prefers.

But, historically, we know that they did.

So who is right and who is wrong.

You have to take on board all of the evidence.

Sadly, most of the war time prostitutes in Japan are dead now but there are many still alive who remember the comfort stations set up for the US Army when it arrived in Japan.

@Hammerhead - the article isn't about "Prostitution" ...but about forced War-time "Sexual Slavery". Two completely different things.

Again, I ask, what evidence can you provide to refute what has been stated by many individuals forced into this Wartime slavery trade ?

Now, as to Modern day Prostitution, I am guessing you're in Japan right ? This is the Country, that allowed school-teenagers until recently to engage (semi-openly) Sex activities - was that the arena into which you were referring that you had fun within ? If so, then in some other Countries we would refer to such a person as a Paedophile.

And if you were simply saying you made use of the local illegal Prostitution trade here in Japan, then how do you know that they were not bonded into forced Prostitution ? Just as was the case overseas during WWII ?

It does not seem that you are so pure, as to make any comment upon such matters given your shameful boasts.

Also, please note.. I did say...

 Regardless upon Nationality, there are always going to be a few who try to make the whole look bad in order to support their own twisted thinking of days gone by.

Which covers some aspects of today's Japanese Government.

Though if you reread what I wrote, I am referring to the Japanese People... which is different.

Unless of course, you are trying to argue that the whole nation feels that they did no wrong and that this form of prostitution is to be acceptable even in modern day society ?

Where do you stand ?

the article isn't about "Prostitution" ...but about forced War-time "Sexual Slavery". Two completely different things.

No, that is where you are wrong. That is the fallacy that the Korean nationalists, and all the various Japan Hate mobs, are attempting to create.

This article is about these particular war time prostitutes in Korea and, actually, the activities of Chong Dae Hyup who we have discussed above.

Unlike all of you, Professor Park went to length of actually interviewing them and others.

Her conclusion was that actual cases of abuse were probably in the dozens and that it was, in essence, business as usually.

Basically all of the women who "testified" at the UN committee lied and fabricated, contradicting the many interviews they had given before.

What Park also found was that women who remained independent and were not coerced by Chong Dae Hyup.

Previously they had admitted on many ocassions that their parents had sold them.

Conditionally to Chong Dae Hyup's protection, they changed their story for the UN, to claim that the Japanese Army had abducted them.

Chong Dae Hyup are not a pro-women rights, anti-slavery, or pro-prostitute rights group, they are an anti-Japanese activist group. And they are using and manipulating these old ladies for their own political purposes.

As I reported earlier, that actually statue of a teenage girl was original intended for an anti-American campaign after the Americans killed two young girls in Korea. They were warned off doing so, and instead dragged it out for an anti-Japan campaign.

Their aims is to weaken the USA-Japan, USA-South Korea, Japan-South Korean relationship.

Understand that and you will understand the rest. They are North Korean communist sympathizers.

The title should be changed to "Pro Korean Activists to build 'comfort women' museum in Seoul".

Firstly, it would not be possible to gain free and open access to the remaining prostitutes.

Seconly, what sort of inhuman would force 90 years to relive their experience of being sold by their parents?

And it is not necessary as they have already been interview many times over since before the issue was politicized by the nationalists.

All you need to do is read Professor Park's or Professor Chunghee Sarah Soh's books.

"When I was a history student, I interviewed dozens of Koreans who were born and raised in the Korean Peninsula in the 1920’s and 1930’s including my grandparents about comfort women.

According to what they witnessed, most Korean women were sold by their parents to Korean comfort station owners. There were also some women who were deceived by Korean traffickers. They never witnessed any Korean women coerced by the Japanese military.

Korean men, who had debts from alcohol, gambling and so on, sold their daughters to Korean comfort station owners who shouldered their debts. Each woman’s contract length was determined depending on the amount of debt the owner took over. Korean women were not allowed to leave until their debts were paid off. Any coercion, violence or confinement was exercised by Korean comfort station owners. So the Korean women were the sex slaves of Korean comfort station owners. They were not the sex slaves of the Japanese military. The common perception in the West that the Japanese military operated comfort stations is incorrect."

Bear in mind the young women could also leave if the PARENT or family paid off the debt.

If it was so terrible, why did they not?

What does this say about Korean family values at the time?