hankyoreh

steering committee chair for Korean American Civic Empowerment (KACE)

“We want to create a ‘121 Caucus’ for members of US Congress with an interest in human rights issues. We‘re hoping to bring about a kind of strategic change in the campaign on the comfort women issue for the eighth anniversary of the House of Representatives passing the comfort women resolution.”

Dongsuk Kim, steering committee chair for Korean American Civic Empowerment (KACE), a non-partisan group representing Korean American voters, offered these remarks to the Hankyoreh after a July 28 ceremony at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington D.C. to mark the eighth anniversary of the adoption of the resolution on the drafting of comfort women as sexual slaves to the Japanese military. “121” was the number of the resolution, which passed the house unanimously on July 30, 2007, and the “121 Caucus” would be an association for lawmakers work to encourage Japan to follow its terms, Kim explained.

The reason KACE has changed its campaign on the comfort women to focus more on building and expanding an organization for members of Congress is its concern that one based solely on calls from the Korean-American community could end up foundering against Japan’s strategy.

“We’ve been too focused on Koreans, and the result of that is that Japan has been framing the comfort women issue in the US as a ‘Korea-Japan’ dispute rather than an issue of history or human rights,” Kim said.

The concern appears to be that if the comfort women issue is turned into a Korea-Japan conflict before the US public fully understands it, opinion leaders could dismiss it as a “can of worms.”

“What allowed us to get the comfort women resolution through the House eight years ago was the fact that we approached it quietly as a women’s rights issue,” Kim said.

The caucus would also be an answer to the “Japan Caucus” from Tokyo.

“Japan’s power in Washington is its ability to carry its arguments through quietly, like water soaking into a sponge,” Kim said.

“Japan has created its own ‘Japan Focus,’ and it’s worked so quietly that they seem to have gotten a number of members of Congress already without us even realizing it,” he added.

The ceremony, which was attended by 87-year-old comfort woman survivor Lee Yong-su along with Representatives Mike Honda, Bill Pascrell, and Adam Schiff, also included the first Washington screening of a ten-minute edit from “Spirits’ Homecoming”, a movie about the comfort women issue.

“[Former Democratic Representative] Dick Lugar told me he developed an interest in Korea after seeing the movie ’Brotherhood of War,” Kim said.

“In that sense, I think Spirits’ Homecoming could play a great role in sharing the comfort women issue with members of Congress and the American public,” he added.

Spirits’ Homecoming took 13 years to film because of difficulties finding investors. It is now reportedly facing trouble finding a distributor to open it in South Korea.

By Yi Yong-in, staff reporter in Washington D.C.

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