hankyoreh

Kim Hyun-jung

By Kim Hyun-jung, executive director of Comfort Women Action for Redress & Education

When we were struck on the left cheek, we offered our right cheek — only to be smacked in the back of the head.

From its conception, South Korea and Japan's comfort women agreement concluded in 2015 wasn't salvageable. After all, the comfort women issue is a serious issue of global human rights and women's rights, as well as a crime against humanity that all should long remember of us, so we can ensure it's not repeated.

It's hard to imagine Germany proposing that Israel stop talking about the Holocaust because the issue had been "finally and irreversibly resolved" or calling for the removal of a memorial to the Holocaust victims. And what if, when the ink on the agreement was barely dry, the German chancellor were to say she didn't have "the slightest intention" of offering a personal apology?

Since the beginning of his presidency, South Korean President Moon Jae-in has repeatedly emphasized the need for a "victim-oriented solution" and "a solution that will be acceptable to the grandmothers," as the comfort women survivors are often called.

But then, early this year, Moon made the shocking declaration that he was accepting the 2015 agreement in order to improve relations with Japan. He also said he'd been "puzzled" by a ruling on Jan. 8 in which the Seoul Central District Court ordered Japan to compensate the former comfort women.

But Japan has held to its high-handed demand that South Korea make a solution while completely ignoring the court's historic recognition of the comfort women survivors' individual right to claim compensation. While they prevailed in the courtroom, the court order is unlikely to be carried out anytime soon. So, in the end, the comfort women survivors haven't gained anything.

And now Japan has gone even further with its textbooks. According to reporting in the Hankyoreh on Tuesday, Japan's responsibility for war crimes has been downplayed or deleted from all the "integrated history" textbooks that will be used in Japanese high schools next year. Some of the textbooks reportedly say that Dokdo belongs to Japan but is being illegally occupied by South Korea and justify Japan's wars of aggression under the propaganda slogan of the "Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

So that's a slap on both cheeks, and a blow to the back of the head for good measure. Meanwhile, the Japanese government has been biding its time, waiting for all the comfort women survivors' death, while spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year bankrolling the historical revisionist claim that the comfort women weren't sex slaves.

The controversial research paper by Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Japanese government's thoroughgoing historical campaign.

The truly worrying thing is that the agreement's ramifications rushed through back in 2015 are still reverberating today, on an even larger scale. Trying to resolve the comfort women based on that agreement is akin to erecting a building atop a huge sinkhole.

That's because the essence of the comfort women issue isn't money, but a sincere and clear apology based on the Japanese government's acknowledgment of the crimes committed — in other words, restoring the dignity of the victims.

The Japanese government's unending denials and distortions of history are revictimizing the comfort women survivors over and over again.

Here's what Lee Yong-soo, comfort woman survivor, had to say. "Over the past 30 years, I've done everything that could be done. The only option left is revealing Japan's crimes at the International Court of Justice. Please help us get satisfaction."

And here are the words of the late Kim Bok-dong, another comfort woman survivor. "Handing over the entire country of Japan wouldn't be a solution, but if they were to make a sincere apology, I might be able to forgive them."

In the past, Japan deleted the Kono Statement from the website of its own Ministry of Foreign Affairs and described the comfort women as prostitutes, and it's currently adding more historical distortions to its textbooks. In the future, the removal of comfort women statues in Berlin and Glendale could become a reality.

The UN and the international society long ago concluded that the 2015 agreement represents a "bad precedent" for state-led attempts to resolve large-scale human rights issues.

The choice is up to the government. It's not too late to return to the principle of a "victim-centered" solution. Seoul should suggest to Tokyo that they bring the comfort women issue before the International Court of Justice.

We shouldn't worry about whether Japan will accept or reject that proposal. We don't have time for that. If we don't take this chance, we won't have another one.

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]