88-Year-Old Survivor of Japanese Sex-Slave Camp Rejects Agreement With Japan

By Dennis J. Bernstein, Reader Supported News

07 January 16

 

n the waning days of December, foreign ministers from Japan and South Korea announced with great fanfare a “resolution” to the so-called “comfort women” issue. According to historical documents and extensive testimony, some 200,000 people, mostly Asian women and girls from Japanese colonies, some as young as 10, were captured or lured with false promises of factory work or other types of employment. They were then sent to brothels to provide sex to Japanese soldiers. There they were held captive as sexual slaves and raped dozens of times a day. Some were held captive for many months or even years; the majority did not survive their enslavement.

This atrocity was first revealed publicly in 1991, when a Korean survivor of the rape camps, Kim Hak Sun, disclosed her experience. The Japanese government denied it at first, then offered a weak apology and donated a pittance as hush money, filtered to South Korea through private sources. The majority of “comfort women” refused both the apology and the bribe.

The current agreement was hailed globally as a major breakthrough in relations between the governments of Japan and South Korea and is expected to pave the way for a new century of cooperation between the two countries. In the US, major news outlets reported the agreement as a victory for the women and their supporters, who have been protesting non-stop since 1991.

The report in USA Today is typical of what made it into the US corporate press: “Japan and South Korea reached a landmark agreement Monday to end a long-running dispute over Korean women used as sex slaves by the Japanese military during World War II. The issue disrupted relations between the two key U.S. allies for decades and hindered U.S. diplomatic and security goals in the region. Under the agreement, Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will issue a formal apology to the women – known as “comfort women” – who were recruited or coerced into providing sex for Japanese soldiers. Tokyo will also provide about 1 billion yen ($8.3 million) to a compensation fund that will support the remaining victims.”

In October of 2015, I spoke with 88-year-old “Grandma” Yong Soo Lee, a former comfort woman and unrelenting activist, who had traveled to San Francisco to testify before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She came in support of a memorial to the extreme violence suffered by hundreds of thousands of women who were kidnapped and abused during the Japanese Empire. (“Grandma” is an honorary title given to these women; most were never able to have children due to the psychological and physical abuse they suffered.)

Grandma Lee denounced the current agreement as soon as she was informed of the details. “This agreement seems to have been made without having the victims in mind. I dismiss it in its entirety,” she said, and she rejected the Korean foreign minister as an outright traitor.

When we spoke in Oakland in October, the 88-year-old honorary Grandmother was strong, forthright, and unrelenting in her demands for real justice for the women who were so terribly abused. In her own case, Yong Soo Lee had been lured out of her family’s arms, taken by the Japanese, and forced into sexual slavery. She has spent most of the past 23 years trying to convince the Japanese government to admit guilt and render an official apology. At one point, Grandma Lee attempted to take her own life, during a protest in front of the Japanese Embassy in South Korea to call attention to plight of the women. She told me she is compelled to do this work, to “speak out” for all the women who did not survive their ordeal. In fact, some 75% of all the women forced into sexual slavery died during their enslavement, a higher rate of death than frontline combat troops. Grandma Lee told me it was still, after so many years, difficult to tell her story.

“When I tell my story to people,” she said, “it’s like I am talking to my mom about what happened to me, so it makes me cry. For 23 years we have been demonstrating in front of the Japanese Embassy, rain or snow. I sometimes feel like why do we have to keep doing this? We are human beings. We are not animals roaming around the streets. When we started, I was still young. Now I am old,” she said, “and it makes me wonder why I keep doing this. The reason is that it was the difficult times our people went through, because of the war Japan started. Why were Korea’s daughters taken away and abused?” she asks.

Grandma Soo says she doesn’t feel comfortable using the phrase “comfort women,” because it’s a deceptive misnomer and a way of mitigating the level of violence perpetrated on thousands of mothers and sisters and daughters, a name imposed on these victims of mass state-sponsored rape. “When I go to Japan, I tell them I am not a comfort woman. I am Yong Soo Lee. That is the name my parents gave me. I tell them it was you, the Japanese, who took us away, took away our names, and made us into the comfort women, so you have to take responsibility for it,” she said. “When they call us the comfort women, it means we volunteered to go and give comfort to the soldiers. But Japanese authorities have already confessed that it was the Japanese government that created the system of comfort stations. Because it was you, Japan, that made us the comfort women, you must be responsible and officially apologize and make legal reparations. Be responsible. That is what I am saying.”

After the agreement was signed Seoul in December, the South Korean Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sung-Nam Lim, met with Grandma Yong Soo Lee and several other survivors. Captured on video tape, the confrontation seems to catch the vice minister off guard, as Grandma Yong Soo Lee refuses to sit down and instead opens up with a barrage of angry questions.

“Who are you? Who are you? What do you do? Are you the person who settled this?” Grandma Yong Soo Lee asks. “You’re here to report to us that you have this settled now? What are you doing? Why are you trying to kill us twice? For what? Are you going to live this life for me?”

The minister repeatedly urges Yong Soo Lee to take a seat, but she refuses to be placated or polite in the face of what she considers the total abandonment of the women she represents. “Please take a seat,” says the Minister. Yong Soo Lee refuses and continues standing, her outrage clear even without a translation. “Shouldn’t you have met with the victims first before you agreed on a settlement? Isn’t it only right that you should tell us what you’re agreeing to? Did you exclude us because we’re not educated, because I’m too old? Because you think I don’t know anything? What have you done? Which country’s foreign ministry are you part of?”

“Of course I’m from the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” replies the Minister.

Yong Soo Lee continues to press him: “What does the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs do? Is that a Japanese entity? Are you their collaborator? Shouldn’t you have told us first? We suffered because we had no country, our country was too weak to protect us. We suffered as part of the nation’s suffering. Why are you killing us twice? For what? Are you going to live this life for me? You should have told us first. How could you do this, when we are alive as witnesses and evidence of history? What kind of work have you done? Do you not have parents? I am a rightful citizen of Korea. I am the daughter of this country. Why are you not trying to understand us? You do not care about us at all?”

In our interview in October, the 88-year-old survivor of mass rape and torture elaborated on her global mission to attain justice for the women, many of whom have already passed on without an apology or acknowledgement for their suffering.

“The victims have been shouting in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul for 23 years. I did that as a living witness to this history. We kept shouting, for 23 years, and all we were demanding was an official apology and legal reparations. If you said the same thing for 23 years, you would have heard, even if you were deaf. You would have seen, even if you were blind. I started out as a victim,” she said, “but now, as an activist for women’s human rights, I decided to go around the world and talk to the people in order to resolve this problem. I came to San Francisco because I heard that good people are trying to build a memorial. I also heard that Japan is paying lobbyists in order to block the effort. That doesn’t make sense, so I came here to express my love and respect for the people of San Francisco, and to plead with the people of San Francisco to please, please, erect the memorial, as an activist who works for women’s rights around the world.”

Grandma Yong Soo Lee said it is crucial for her to communicate with young people about what happened in order to prevent it from happening again. “I always emphasize my story to the students, and especially the younger people, because they are our future and are going to protect the country and society. That’s why I believe the younger people are so important,” she said.

She is outraged at how much money the Japanese government has spent to undermine the truth of the comfort women. It’s been reported that the Japanese government has created a budget of $500,000,000 to whitewash this history. At the SF City Hall meeting where Yong Soo Lee testified in October, there were hecklers accusing her and others of being willing prostitutes, in it for the money. “The Japanese government is spending so much money to sabotage the plans to establish memorials in the US,” she said. “That is very low, very bad behavior. They must be straightforward and accept responsibility. That is the only way they will regain their honor. I want them to stop harassing the good, respectful people in San Francisco and cooperate with their plan to erect the memorial. More importantly, to teach and tell the young people in their own country, as well as the young people here in California, that what they did was wrong and they should work together to resolve this.”

Activists working on the issue have expressed outrage at the agreement. They have been quick to condemn it as nothing more than a political sell-out to bolster the US “Pacific Pivot.” The “Pivot to Asia” refers specifically to the professed US policy to deploy 60% of all military forces to Asia and the Pacific Rim. The policy is meant to counter the rising influence of China. It also involves cyber-warfare, information & cultural warfare, legal warfare, as well as a plan to isolate China economically through the Trans Pacific Partnership, the twelve-nation “trade” deal that excludes China. The lynchpin of the pivot is the building of multilateral military alliances with all of China’s regional neighbors and the projection of military force to threaten and coerce China. South Korea and Japan are the key players in this clearly delineated US policy.

Phyllis Kim is the director of the Korean American Forum of California, which sponsored Grandma Yong Soo Lee’s visit to San Francisco in October. In a recent radio interview, Kim told me the group rejects the agreement out of hand. “We denounced the agreement that came out yesterday from a meeting between the Korean and Japanese foreign ministers,” she said. “The victims also immediately rejected the agreement. If the two governments wanted to actually resolve the issue they should have listened to the victims. These victims didn’t just sit and wait around for some kind of magic to happen. They have been active for the past 25 years, actively demanding an official government apology and legal reparations from the government of Japan, which they did not get,” Kim said. She said the victims’ voices should have been included in any negotiations, “but that did not happen.”

In addition, Kim said, “There were victims from eleven different countries. South Korea is just one of the eleven countries. Some estimate that as many as 400,000 women were victimized by the institutionalized system of sexual slavery from 1932 until the end of WWII. These victims are scattered among these eleven countries, including South and North Korea, China, Taiwan and Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, some Dutch women, Philippines, Vietnam and East Timor. These victims also deserve to be part of any kind of negotiation or settlement made with the Japanese government, but these women outside South Korea were completely excluded from these negotiations.

Finally, Kim questioned the sincerity of Japan’s recent apology. “The apology offered by Prime Minister Abe sounds sincere on paper,” she said, “but the reasons the victims were not able to accept the previous apology was because the Japanese government has been relentlessly working to downplay, whitewash, and eradicate any responsibility the government of Japan bears for these war crimes. Even in the US, there was an attempt to lobby against passage of House Resolution 1021 urging Japan to make amends in 2007. There were numerous attempts and lobbies against installation of comfort women memorials in the US,” said Kim. “Japanese diplomats raised objections against McGraw Hill, the textbook publisher, for including a passage about comfort women in its history textbook.” And she was quick to add, “If the Japanese government is sincere about its will to resolve this issue once and for all, there needs to be an official government apology, which means the apology needs to be approved by the Japanese cabinet, which never happened.”

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Dennis J. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.