Y.Jacket comments

Seth MToday  07:19 am JST

Now lets put this to perspective:

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190826000321

"This means that nearly 1 in 4 young Koreans have been out of work."

More time available to participate in demonstrations and spread anti-J propaganda.

browny1

I am very disappointed that you can not bother to substantiate the documentation to which you refer, after declaring that they exist.

The excuse that documentation damning the IJA was destroyed is ridiculous because prostitution was not illegal at the time therefore there existed no need to "destroy" any evidence. As I've said before, this is the "dog ate my homework" argument. Military prostitution systems were not a chargable offense against Japan at the Tokyo Trials, not against Germany at the Nuremberg Trials.

Testimonies given by surviving CWs which have received the most media coverage and influenced world opinion has been found to be contradictory and "not credible" by several South Korean scholars. These people are not "nayersayers" and they certainly aren't Japanese or right wing.

I am only interested in the truth. Not the repetition of fallacies.

I

1glennToday 12:16 pm JSTThe war was a long time ago, and it is best if we try not to hold grudges, especially since most of those involved in the conflict have now passed away. Those raised after the war have known mostly peace and goodwill between the former combatant nations. However, the Japanese military did many things much worse than the conscription of young women for the comfort of their military men. Since captured enemy combatants and civilians were routinely executed by the Imperial Japanese forces, is it so hard to accept that lesser crimes were also committed?

Yes it is. Because the International Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trials) addressed all charges, prosecuted them and convicted many. Naturally as in all Courts of Law the charges were verifiable. In contrast, the claim that "200,000 women were kidnapped by IJA troops" can not be supported by any documented evidence whatsoever. Some South Korean scholars have pointed out the origin of this number and that it does not reflect reality. Contradictory testimony by surviving Comfort Women coached by the Chong Dae Hyup have also been found to be "not credible" by South Korean scholars as well, particularly as some testimonies fluctuate between having been sold by their parents and being kidnapped by Japanese troops.

You are arguing that because Japan was guilty of other war crimes, it follows that they must be guilty of this charge. That's not how it works.

LandofExcusesToday 12:25 pm JST But if you mean "kidnapping 200,000 women" as "the act" then no, Japan should never admit to an act that never happened, an undocumented unproven false claim which US records from during and after WWII, as well as a 7 year multiagency investigation by the US government found no evidence to support. A number of South Korean scholars question also question this claim with at least one having been persecuted by the South Korean judicial system for expressing a view counter to that held by South Korea.

The above is an excellent testimony as to why Japanese universities are amongst the world's worst.

How about the University of San Francisco?

"In The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan, Chunghee Sarah Soh, a professor of anthropology at San Francisco State University who specialises in issues related to gender and sexuality, says the widely cited figure of 200,000 comes from a 1981 essay in the Hanguk Ilbo by Yun Cheong-ok, a professor of English literature who claims that of 200,000 “volunteers” only 50,000 to 70,000 were sent to the front lines to become comfort women. Yun “did not reveal the source of the figures given in her essay”, Soh says. She tells us a writer named Kim Teok-seong used the same figures a decade earlier in an article in Seoul Sinmun, and provides an excerpt.“From 1943 to 1945 approximately 200,000 Korean and Japanese women were mobilised as cheongsindae [comfort women for the Japanese military],” Kim wrote. “The estimated number of Koreans among them is between fifty and seventy thousand.”

In other words, according to these sources, not all 200,000 were used as comfort women, and even of those that were, not all were Korean. On the other hand, Kim makes no mention of recruits prior to 1943, when most comfort women survivors say they were recruited.

http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2062028/can-korea-handle-truth-about-japans-comfort-women"