Lee Yong-soo, a Korean sex slavery survivor who demanded that the Japanese government fully accept the offense and issue a definitive apology, wiped away tears in a Interview in Seoul, South Korea, on March 16, 2022.
Lee Jin-man / AP
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Lee Yong-soo, a Korean sex slavery survivor who demanded that the Japanese government fully accept the offense and issue a definitive apology, wiped away tears in a Interview in Seoul, South Korea, on March 16, 2022.
Lee Jin-man / AP
SEOUL, South Korea – Thirty years after going public with her story of being kidnapped, raped, and forced into prostitution by Japan’s wartime military, Lee Yong-soo fears that she doesn’t have time to complete her ordeal. me.
The 93-year-old is the face of a growing group of Korean sex slavery survivors who have demanded since the early 1990s that the Japanese government fully accept plead guilty and offer a definitive apology.
Her latest – and possibly final – push is to convince the South Korean and Japanese governments to resolve their decades-long stalemate over sex slavery by seeking UN judgment. country.
Lee leads an international team of sex slavery survivors and advocates – including those from the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Australia and East Timor – who filed a petition with UN human rights investigators last week called on Seoul and Tokyo to jointly bring the matter to the United Nations International Court of Justice. The group wants Seoul to start arbitration proceedings against Japan with a United Nations panel on torture if Tokyo does not agree to bring the case to the ICJ.
It is not clear whether South Korea, which will be sworn in in a new government in May, will consider taking the matter to the UN when it is confronted. pressure to improve relations with Japan in the midst of a tumultuous time in global affairs. The country has never fought a case under such a proceeding, and anything less than a failed victory could be considered a home defeat.
It was hard for Lee to be patient as the other survivors continued to die.
She worries about their plight being forgotten or distorted by Japan’s apparent efforts to downplay the forced and violent nature of World War II sex slavery and eliminate it. from the textbook.
She cried as she described how she was dragged out of her home at the age of 16 into sex slaves for the Imperial Japanese Army, and the harsh treatment she endured at a military brothel. Japan’s involvement in Taiwan until the end of the war – a story she first told the world in 1992.
“Both Korea and Japan continue to wait for us to die, but I will fight until the last minute,” Lee said in a recent interview at the Associated Press office in Seoul, opposite the Ambassador. Japanese restaurant. She said her campaign is to pressure Japan to take full responsibility and acknowledge past military sex slavery as a war crime and to educate the public about the abuses. through textbooks and memorials.
“I think time has waited for me so far so I can try and do everything I can to work this out,” Lee said.
FILE – Lee Yong-soo, a Korean sex slavery survivor who has demanded since the early 1990s that the Japanese government fully accept the offense and issue a definitive apology decisively, taking part in a protest outside the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass., where then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke on April 27, 2015.
Michael Dwyer / AP
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Michael Dwyer / AP
FILE – Lee Yong-soo, a Korean sex slavery survivor who has demanded since the early 1990s that the Japanese government fully accept the offense and issue a definitive apology decisively, taking part in a protest outside the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass., where then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke on April 27, 2015.
Michael Dwyer / AP
Grievances over sex slavery, forced labor, and other ill-treatment stemming from Japan’s brutal colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula before the end of World War II have led to Seoul-Tokyo relations have become strained in recent years as hostilities spill over into issues of trade and military cooperation. The disputes have frustrated Washington, which wants stronger trilateral cooperation with its Asian allies to confront the challenges posed by North Korea and China.
The impending change of government in Seoul has stoked cautious hopes in Japan for improved relations. After winning elections earlier this month, conservative South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol announced a “future-focused” partnership with Japan.
However, it can be difficult for countries to focus on the future if they cannot narrow past disagreements.
Lee, who in 2007 testified in the US House of Representatives before passing a landmark resolution urging Japan to acknowledge wartime sex slavery, no longer believes that Seoul and Tokyo can settle their historical dispute without the United Nations process.
Years of bilateral diplomatic negotiations have produced little or no results. A chaotic settlement reached between foreign ministers in 2015 – including Fumio Kishida, Japan’s current prime minister – never achieved its goal of “finally” resolving the issue. and irreversible”.
Lee and other survivors said Seoul officials did not consult them before making the deal, under which Japan agreed to contribute 1 billion yen ($8 million) to South Korea’s fund to support victims. They questioned the sincerity of the Japanese government – then led by right-wing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has long been accused by South Korea of concealing Japan’s war crimes – because of its officials. Japan insists that the payments should not be considered compensation.
Korean court rulings in recent years calling for the Japanese government and companies to compensate victims of sex slavery and forced labor have been angrily rejected by Tokyo, which affirms that all wartime reparations issues have been settled under the 1965 treaty normalizing relations between the two nations.
Historians say tens of thousands of women mainly from across Asia, many of them Korean, were sent to outpost military brothels to provide sex for Japanese soldiers. At the time of the 2015 settlement, 46 of the 239 women registered with the Seoul government as victims were still living in South Korea, but now only 12 remain.
Japan has repeatedly expressed regret over its wartime actions. It conducted a study of the practice and established a private donation fund in 1995 to compensate victims in the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan before it expired in 2007.
Many South Koreans believe that Tokyo’s previous comments and actions lack sincerity and lack of legitimate compensation before they are further undermined by conservatives who continue to downplay or question the past. Wartime Japan. There is also frustration about the view that Japanese textbooks have been covered in sugar in the past.
A United Nations report from 1996 concluded that sex slaves were captured through “outright violence and coercion.” A statement from Japan in 1993 admitted that women were taken “against their will, by coercion, coercion,” but national leaders later denied it.
The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs now says Its government has not found the document shows the use of coercion in recruiting so-called “comfort women” and refuses to describe the system as sex slavery. Tokyo has urged Seoul to abide by the 2015 agreement and described recent lawsuits by Korean sex slave victims seeking compensation as “extremely regrettable and completely unacceptable.”
Lee began campaigning last year for Seoul and Tokyo to jointly refer their sex-slavery disputes to the ICJ in The Hague, the UN’s highest court. Following silent responses from both governments, Lee is now asking South Korea to call for a United Nations panel to review whether Tokyo is not meeting its obligations under the 1984 Convention Against Torture. or not by denying or downplaying their past atrocities.
Ethan Hee-Seok Shin, an international law expert who is helping Lee, said South Korea can file a complaint against Japan with the convention’s anti-torture committee or sue Japan at the ICJ for alleged misconduct. violate the convention. In the handling of disputes between states, the convention allows any party to refer the matter to the ICJ if the states cannot agree within six months in an arbitration panel. The decisions of the ICJ are binding on the member states of the United Nations.
“This problem doesn’t die with survivors,” Lee said. “If I can’t take care of it, the problems will be passed on to our next generation.” __ Tokyo AP writer Yuri Kageyama contributed to this report.
