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The comfort women statue demonstration across from the Japanese embassy in Seoul‘s Jongno district is covered in rain on Aug. 31

On Oct. 3, Oh Joon, South Korean ambassador to the UN, said that while the agreement about the comfort women reached by Seoul and Tokyo on Dec. 28, 2015, and meant that the comfort women were no longer a bilateral issue for the two countries, this did not bring closure to the comfort women issue on the international stage.

During a parliamentary audit by the Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee of South Korea’s National Assembly that was held at South Korea’s delegation to the UN in New York on Oct. 3, Oh made these remarks after Minjoo Party lawmaker Seol Hoon, criticized last year’s agreement and slammed the negotiations for having ignored the position of the victims.

“The comfort women issue has ceased to be a pending diplomatic issue between South Korea and Japan. But the comfort women and sexual violence against women in wartime did not stop being international and multilateral issues with the Dec. 28 agreement,” Oh said.

But Oh’s diplomatic language does not appear to mean that the South Korean government means to make an issue of the comfort women on the stage of international or multilateral diplomacy. If South Korea did so, Japan would be very likely to accuse it of violating the agreement.

In that agreement, South Korea and Japan agreed to refrain from criticism or recriminations about the comfort women issue on the international stage, including the UN. When South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se delivered a speech at a high-level meeting of the UN Human Rights Council that was held in Geneva, Switzerland, on Mar. 2, he made no mention of the comfort women issue.

“The issue of the comfort women for the Japanese army [can be viewed in several ways]: first, as a pending bilateral diplomatic issue between South Korea and Japan; second, as a global issue of universal human rights; third, as a historical lesson that we must remember; and fourth, as a complicated problem involving the restoration of the dignity and reputations of the individual victims. Among these various aspects, the one that was resolved through the Dec. 28 agreement was the matter of the comfort women as a pending bilateral diplomatic issue between South Korea and Japan, and it is in this context that Oh Joon’s remarks should be understood,” said Cho June-hyuk, spokesperson for South Korea’s Foreign Ministry, during a press briefing on Oct. 4.

“This means that, provided that the agreement is faithfully implemented, the South Korean and Japanese governments will not make a diplomatic issue of the comfort women. Efforts will continue in other regards, including participating in discussions in the international community in order to protect women’s rights and human rights, since these are universal values, and to address sexual violence against women in wartime,” Cho said.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent and Lee Je-hun, staff reporter

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