Continued Debate & Activism Today

Part of the reason why the history of the comfort women system has been kept hidden below the surface for so long was because the Japanese government destroyed nearly all related records and official documents and withholds the remaining records (Kowner). Few photographs and video footage exist or have been released to the public, and of the already few former comfort women who survived the ordeal, most have since passed away, and those who have shared their stories now could not before due to the persistence of patriarchy and shame around the issue.

Previously, Japan has cited the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea in response to demands for compensation, which essentially established a diplomatic relationship between the two nations post-World War II and post-colonization, and in which the South Korean government agreed to no longer ask for reparations (Ching). The Japanese government has continued to deny its role, claiming comfort women were paid prostitutes and agreed to serve in those positions. While some “apologies” have been made in the past, survivors have called their previous apologies as disingenuous and insincere, as most are followed quite swiftly by more denial (Sonen). In 2015, Japan’s Prime Minister and the South Korean government came to an agreement about apologies and a payment of about $8.8 million for the care of comfort women, but survivors and their supporters have dismissed the agreement because their input or consultation were not taken into account (Jun). 

However, the movement for justice for comfort women has gained momentum in the past few decades. On November 16, 1990, the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan was founded, with the purpose of publicizing the issue of comfort women and demanding the following of the Japanese government:

  • open evidence to the public, investigate the real situation, and fully disclose the facts
  • admit and acknowledge the crimes
  • provide an official apology
  • give legal reparations
  • erect memorial tablets and build a historic museum
  • record the issue accurately in history textbooks and teach it in schools
  • punishment of the perpetrators (Jonsson)

On August 14, 1991, Kim Hak-soon became the first survivor of the comfort women system to publicly testify and break the silence about the horrors she experienced forty years earlier (Ching). Her courage to share her experience on public television contributed heavily to the beginnings of the movement for justice, and 2021 actually marks the 30th anniversary of her testimony; hundreds of survivors have come forward since her testimony. A number of global organizations and other national governments have called on Japan for reconciliation and official apologies, including the United Nations, the Parliament of the European Union, and the U.S. House of Representatives (Jun), and statues and memorials in honor of the hundreds of thousands of comfort women have been erected around the world. Today, survivors and women’s rights groups have continued to sue the Japanese government and hold regular protests since the early 1990s. Since 1992, the Korean Council has held weekly protests, attended by victims and their supporters, at noon in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Called the “Wednesday demonstrations,” the protestors demand a sincere, formal apology from the Japanese government, as well as fulfillment of the official demands of the Korean Council (Kowner). 

For further reading about the ongoing movement for justice for survivors and genuine  acknowledgement and apology by the Japanese government, here are a few recent articles:

Continued Debate & Activism Today