{"id":4196,"date":"2016-03-14T01:00:56","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T05:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/?p=4196"},"modified":"2016-08-15T07:49:04","modified_gmt":"2016-08-15T11:49:04","slug":"meaning-of-12282015-japan-and-south-koreas-oral-agreement-on-comfort-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/2016\/03\/meaning-of-12282015-japan-and-south-koreas-oral-agreement-on-comfort-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Meaning of 12\/28\/2015 Japan and South Korea’s Agreement on Comfort Women"},"content":{"rendered":"
On December 28, 2015, it was announced by the governments of South Korea and Japan that they had reached an agreement to settle the decades-old dispute on the Comfort Women issue.\u00a0 Just exactly what was that agreement, and did it settle this long dispute between South Korea and Japan?\u00a0 This article discusses these questions.
\n<\/p>\n
What was the “agreement”?<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 The Foreign Minister of South Korea Mr. Yun Byung Se and the Foreign Minister of Japan Mr. Fumio Kishida in a news conference in Seoul on December 28, 2015 announced an agreement on comfort women.\u00a0 The main points of the agreement were:<\/p>\n The agreement expressed an apology and remorse by Japan on the sufferings experienced by the comfort women, but it did not acknowledge any responsibility that the Japanese government was responsible for it.\u00a0 In other words, the Japanese government accepts no legal responsibility for causing this injustice.\u00a0 The $8.3 million payment can be interpreted to be a humanitarian contribution by the Japanese government, and not a legal reparation for the injustice she inflicted.<\/p>\n There is no mention of any follow-on action to help educate the people of Japan (and the world) on the role of the Japanese government in causing this most inhumane atrocity on hundreds of thousands of women and girls, so that this kind of atrocity will not be repeated again in the future.\u00a0 The purpose of the agreement seems to be just the opposite, so that the issue of comfort women will never be raised again.\u00a0 On Japan’s request to remove the comfort women statue in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, as a comparison, one should ask “Did Germany ever request the removal of any Holocaust memorial or remove that part of history from their textbooks?”<\/p>\n What was the response of the South Korean comfort women and organizations who have championed the comfort women issue?<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0 The response has been swift and overwhelmingly against the so called “agreement.”\u00a0 For example, on the same day December 28, 2015, six organizations that have championed the comfort women issue in South Korea, including the “House of Sharing” and “The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan” issued a joint statement.\u00a0 Here are excerpts from that joint statement:<\/p>\n Grandma Lee Yong-soo, 88, one of the former comfort women, said “We are not craving for money.\u00a0 What we demand is that Japan make official reparations for the crime it had committed.\u00a0 This agreement seems to have been made without having the victims in mind.\u00a0 I dismiss it in its entirety.”<\/p>\n What has been the response from the rest of the world who have been involved in this issue?<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 People across the world who have been following the comfort women issue have also responded essentially unanimously against the “agreement.”\u00a0 Many stake holders, such as the Comfort Women Justice Coalition (CWJC) and the Korean American Forum of California (KAFC), have issued press statements to denounce the agreement, with comments such as:<\/p>\n As though the words chosen in the agreement and their ambiguity did not already convey the Japanese government’s insincerity, on the day that this agreement was announced, the wife of Prime Minister Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo where 14 Class A convicted and executed Japanese WWII war criminals are enshrined.<\/p>\n In addition, only three weeks after the so-called “breakthrough” agreement which was supposed to be final and irreversible, the same Japanese Foreign Minister Mr. Kishida denied that comfort women were sex slaves.<\/p>\n U.S. government’s position:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 The U.S. government welcomed the agreement.\u00a0 Secretary of State John Kerry said “We applaud the leaders of Japan and the Republic of Korea for having the courage and vision to reach this agreement, and we call on the international community to support it.”\u00a0 But the U.S. government apparently also ignored the strong sentiments of the South Korean people.<\/p>\n The comfort women issue has been a long standing dispute between Japan and South Korea.\u00a0 Even as late as March 2014 when President Obama tried to bring Prime Minister Abe and President Park together in Europe, they barely looked at each other.\u00a0 Why did President Park compromise so much now?\u00a0 The South Korean government did not consult with any of the people or organizations that have been deeply involved in the comfort women issue for years or even decades, and the South Korean government should know that these people and organizations have broad support among the South Koren people.\u00a0 Therefore, a natural question to raise is what pressure did the U.S. exert on South Korea and what were promised to President Park for her to change her mind and concur with this agreement?\u00a0 How far will the U.S. government go in terms of ignoring global moral responsibility in order to pivot to Asia to isolate, surround, and weaken China?<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/span>:<\/span> \u00a0<\/strong>The so-called breakthrough agreement between South Korea and Japan announced on December 28, 2015 on the long-standing dispute on comfort women is far from a breakthrough agreement.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, it raised more issues than resolving issues.\u00a0 It definitely did not reflect the sentiments of the South Korean people, especially the former comfort women and the organizations that have championed their cause for decades.\u00a0 Its apology lacked sincerity, and it did not acknowledge and assume responsibility for the atrocity that the Japanese government inflicted on innocent women and girls.\u00a0 It did not mention any follow-on action to educate people about what happened in the past so that these wrongs will not be repeated in the future.\u00a0 Its purpose seemed to be just the opposite, so that this issue will never be raised again in the future.<\/p>\n The fact that President Park seemed to have changed her mind in the last year on this long-standing, important issue, while going against the sentiments of her people, raises the question on the complicity played by the U.S. government, in particular, what pressure did the U.S. exert on South Korea and what were promised to President Park by the U.S. government?<\/p>\n Finally, besides the comfort women in Korea, there were many other comfort women in other parts of Asia, such as China, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, etc.\u00a0 What is Japan going to do to right the injustices inflicted on these other women and girls?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On December 28, 2015, it was announced by the governments of South Korea and Japan that they had reached an agreement to settle the decades-old dispute on the Comfort Women issue.\u00a0 Just exactly what was that agreement, and did it settle this long dispute between South Korea and Japan?\u00a0 This article discusses these questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4196"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4317,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4196\/revisions\/4317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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