Every single week for the past 22 years, a group of elderly South Korean women has camped outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, enduring the heat and humidity of the region’s monsoonal summer and the sub-zero temperatures of the brutal Korean winter.
Why?
They want an apology for being forced into sexual slavery as so-called “comfort women” by the Japanese military before and during World War II — an apology that numerous Japanese governments insist has already been publicly given more than two decades ago.
It has been almost 70 years since the end of World War II and yet this issue still has the power to derail relations at the very top of these two countries.
The issue of “comfort women” is expected to be discussed when officials from Tokyo and Seoul meet Wednesday in an effort to improve frosty relations ahead of President Obama’s tour of the region next week.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye only met for the first time since both taking power last month. And only then because it was organized and led by U.S. President Barack Obama, eager to heal the rifts of his country’s two closest allies in the region.
The two governments “have decided to engage in intensive discussions on various subjects at various levels” to improve conditions surrounding relations, the Japanese foreign ministry said in a statement.
The issue of comfort women is an emotive one that ignites passions in both countries. Many of these women have already passed away. Only 55 of those registered with the South Korean government are still alive.
A small, but vocal voice within the Japanese opposition has been calling for a revision of the Kono statement made in 1993 — a statement made by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono that accepted Japan’s responsibility for recruiting “comfort women” and extended “its sincere apologies and remorse.”
It is this statement Hiroshi Yamada of the Japan Restoration Party wants changed.
“We are not saying the Kono statement should be nullified because we dislike it or it is irritating to the Japanese people,” he said. “Japan had state-run prostitution just like other countries in the world around World War II and we admit that there were unfortunately women working there.”
Source: CNN