Japan and Korea’s ‘comfort women’ agreement
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Whether the agreement reached by Japan and South Korea this week resolves the wartime “comfort women” issue “finally and irreversibly” will depend not only on the two governments, but also on the willingness of the citizens to move relations forward.
They need to overcome differences and put an end to the vicious cycle that prevents the two East Asian neighbours from moving toward “future-oriented” ties that their leaders have advocated for decades.
It is a compromise that may not satisfy all the concerned parties, particularly the surviving Korean women who were sent to frontline brothels for Japanese troops before and during World War II. Since many of the basic differences over the sensitive issue were put aside for the sake of an agreement, public reactions in both countries may be hard to predict, depending on how the accord will be implemented.
However, we should welcome the deal if it contributes to ending the distrust between the two neighbours, whose relations, despite the close economic ties and exchange of people, have so frequently been marred by issues deriving from Japan’s colonial rule and territorial disputes.
Japan colonised the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and rows have erupted over the Takeshima islets in the Sea of Japan.
The agreement stated that the issue of comfort women “with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities” during the wartime was “a grave affront to the honour and dignity of large numbers of women” taken to the frontline and that “Japan is painfully aware of responsibilities from this perspective”. It also featured Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “most sincere apologies and remorse” to the women.
Japan will contribute ¥1 billion out of its government budget to a foundation to be set up by Seoul to provide support for former comfort women.
