The 'comfort women' of South Korea: pawns in a political game?

For three decades, South Korea's Lee Yong-soo campaigned for Japan to atone for its imperial past. One of thousands of "comfort women" coerced into working in brothels for Japanese soldiers during World War II, Lee, 91, joined a rally every Wednesday outside Tokyo's embassy in Seoul, come rain or shine, to demand a sincere apology and compensation from Japan.

Then, in an ironic twist, the veteran campaigner levelled accusations of exploitation at figures much closer to home: the leadership of South Korea's largest advocacy group established to ensure the welfare of surviving comfort women and seek restitution from Japan, which colonised the Korean peninsula from 1910-1945.

At a shock press conference this month, Lee accused the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Korean Council) of misappropriating public donations and exploiting the surviving women for political ends.

Lee announced she would no longer attend the weekly rallies, which typically draw large numbers of supporters, particularly students, as they taught the younger generations "hatred" when South Koreans and Japanese should befriend each other and resolve outstanding issues together.

"Wednesday demonstrations must be put to an end," Lee said at the May 7 press conference, according to a report in the Joongang newspaper, while stressing she would continue to press Japan for a sincere apology. "It helps no one. You don't even know where the contributions of the participants are being spent."

Lee Yong-soo next to a statue of Haksoon Kim in San Francisco. Haksoon Kim was the first to break the silence about comfort women in 1991. Photo: AP alt=Lee Yong-soo next to a statue of Haksoon Kim in San Francisco. Haksoon Kim was the first to break the silence about comfort women in 1991. Photo: AP

The Korean Council and its former chief, ruling party lawmaker-elect Yoon Mee-hyang, have strongly denied any wrongdoing, insisting all donations have been spent supporting victims and advocacy and the group's finances are transparent and audited regularly. Amid a flurry of subsequent reports in conservative media about her financial dealings and facing investigation by prosecutors, Yoon, who is affiliated with President Moon Jae-in's centre-left Democratic Party, has claimed to be a victim of a "political offensive". Yoon and the Korean Council did not respond to requests for comment.

On Tuesday, the House of Sharing, another organisation for former comfort women, came under scrutiny after a group of employees accused the shelter of mishandling donations and failing to live up to its mission by forcing survivors to cover their own medical fees and other expenses.

The rare public discord over the handling of South Korea's most sensitive grievance with Japan has accentuated concerns " often whispered until now " that comfort women have been used as pawns in support of a nationalistic and politically convenient narrative upheld with ferocious social pressure and even legal sanction.

"In Korea we have the anti-communist right and the anti-colonial left, and both factions use testimonies from socially weak groups to demonise their enemies," said Joseph Yi, an associate professor of political science at Hanyang University in Seoul.

"They target socially weak groups who are kind of rejected by South Korean society and they pick a few members of these groups and they publicise the most dramatic stories against their enemy, whether it is North Korea or Japan."

South Koreans hold bitter memories of Japanese colonisation, often expressing more favourable attitudes toward nuclear-armed, dictatorial North Korea than Japan in opinion surveys.

More than any other issue, Tokyo's perceived failure to properly atone for forcing Korean women into sexual servitude has strained relations between the East Asian neighbours.

US President Donald Trump with Lee Yong-soo. Photo: EPA alt=US President Donald Trump with Lee Yong-soo. Photo: EPA

Although estimates vary wildly and the extent of the Japanese government's involvement is disputed, some historians believe up to 200,000 Korean women were forced into prostitution during the war, often under the pretext of being offered employment.

The issue is especially emotionally fraught due to the lack of time for a resolution, with only 19 of the 240 women who originally registered as victims of Japan's wartime prostitution still left alive.

Against this backdrop, both South Korea and Japan had often exploited nationalistic fervour at home for "the sake of domestic politics", said a former South Korean diplomat who spent several years stationed in Tokyo.

"In Korea, the issues of history closely linked to national identity are easy targets to gain a rallying effect, while the anti-Korean sentiment has had the effect of drawing the support of radical right-wingers in Japan," said the former diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "I do think that both Korea and Japan are equally responsible for the current soured relationship."

Moon, whose side of the aisle has traditionally been more wary of Japan, has often criticised Tokyo for not resolving the comfort women issue and pressed it to find a "genuine resolution".

Tokyo has insisted that it has repeatedly apologised and offered restitution and that all claims arising from its colonial rule were settled anyway with a 1965 normalisation treaty under which Seoul received some US$500 million in grants and loans.

Japan's past efforts to settle the issue exposed latent divisions among activists and survivors much as Lee's allegations are doing now.

In 2015, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former South Korean president Park Geun-hye signed a landmark deal under which the Japanese leader offered his "sincere apologies and remorse" and pledged 1 billion yen (US$9.2 million) in state funds to a South Korean-administered fund for survivors.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Photo: Kyodo alt=Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Photo: Kyodo

Although 34 of 47 surviving women accepted payments at the time, the deal faced a backlash from some victims and activists for taking place in secret and not including the women in the process. Moon dissolved the fund last year, after calling the deal flawed and a "political agreement that excludes victims and the public".

In the 1990s, the Korean Council campaigned against the Asian Women's Fund (AWF), established by Tokyo to provide compensation and a signed apology to survivors, on the grounds it evaded the government's legal responsibility, although more than 60 former comfort women decided to accept the restitution.

After campaigning by the Korean Council, the South Korean government offered compensation payments to survivors on the condition they did not accept money from the Japanese fund. In 2004, 33 former comfort women issued a statement publicly accusing the Korean Council of shaming and humiliating women who had accepted money from the AFW and disavowing its hardline stance on Japan.

"In the past two decades, many former comfort women and some academics have criticised the Korean Council and the dominant, anti-Japan paradigm in South Korea," said Yi. "However, most mainstream media and civic organisations either ignore such alternative voices or demand that they be punished."

Lee Yong-soo, pictured when she was 70, mourns at the funeral of her friend and fellow comfort woman Kang Duk-kyong. Photo: Reuters alt=Lee Yong-soo, pictured when she was 70, mourns at the funeral of her friend and fellow comfort woman Kang Duk-kyong. Photo: Reuters

In 2017, Park Yu-ha, a professor at Sejong University, was fined 10 million won (US$8,000) after a Seoul court ruled she had inflicted "mental stress" on surviving comfort women through her book Comfort Women of the Empire . The book argued that while women had been beaten and abused, Korean as well as Japanese private recruiters had lured many of them to the brothels and some had enjoyed loving relationships with Japanese soldiers.

"Generally speaking, any criticism of so-called anti-Japan activists has been politically taboo in South Korea and thus their organisations have been sanctuarised," said An Junseong, a visiting professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. "In that context, Lee's press conference was a big surprise."

Kang Sung-hyun, a scholar on the comfort women at Sungkonghoe University, said Lee's allegations had shocked South Koreans, but were now being used as political fodder by conservative critics of Yoon and groups like the Korean Council.

"Nobody can really know yet what grandmother Lee Yong-soo really intended or meant with her remarks at the press conference," said Kang.

"The victims and the people around them are conscious that they are leaving us one by one and don't have much time. Lee Yong-soo is healthy but she is over 90 years old. How must she feel about the Abe government's adherence to a hardline stance and revisionist history and the Moon government's ultimately hollow words?"

Kang stressed that the movement to get justice for the comfort women should not be seen through a narrow political lens.

Since her press conference sent shock waves through political activist circles, Lee, who could not be reached for comment, has shown no signs of wavering in her campaign against her one-time allies. In an interview with the Joongang newspaper last week, the veteran activist was unapologetic: "I said what I had to say, and I will no longer be used."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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