hankyoreh

By Um Ji-won, staff reporter

Japanese right-wingers struck again with another symbolic act against comfort women survivors on South Korean territory involving a wooden stake.

This comes amid a string of efforts by the country’s right to stir up conflict with South Korea, including claims by Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, a prominent political figure, that there was “no evidence of comfort women being forced” into serving as sex slaves to the Japanese military.

Mapo Police Station in Seoul reported launched an investigation on August 22 into a wooden stake found that morning at the entrance of the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum in the city’s Seongsan neighborhood. It is believed to have been placed there by a Japanese activist.

The museum exhibits documents and records on comfort women, and is also home to the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (KCWDMSSJ).

According to police, the words “Takeshima [the Japanese name for Dokdo] is Japanese land” were written on the stake in Korean and Japanese. A poster was also found posted on the entrance and walls of the museum’s parking lot, with messages such as “Stop lying that comfort women were sexual playthings” and “Dokdo is Japanese territory.”

Museum personnel immediately reported the discovery. Police are now working to identify two men spotted by a nearby closed circuit camera. The men, one apparently in his twenties and the other in his fifties, are believed to be Japanese.

The museum experienced a similar incident in June when Japanese far-right activist Nobuyuki Suzuki, 47, put up a stake reading “Takeshima is Japanese land.” Suzuki also posted a video to his blog showing him tying an identical stake to the leg of the comfort woman statue in the Junghak neighborhood of Seoul’s Jongno district. The statue, which shows a young girl, is located directly in front of the Japanese embassy.

Ten comfort woman survivors at the House of Sharing in Gwangju, Gyeonggi province, responded in July by filing a suit against Suzuki in Seoul Central District Court for defamation.

Mapo Police Station said that the older man on the closed circuit footage did not appear to be Suzuki, and that they were aware of a group spearheading similar efforts.

“If the KCWDMSSJ makes a complaint, we will consider charging the culprits with criminal contempt or defamation,” the official said.

The KCWDMSSJ declined to make an official statement, saying, “If we respond emotionally and make an issue of this, we are playing into the hands of Japan’s far right.”

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