The installation of a comfort woman statue at Salisbury University in
Maryland has been indefinitely postponed from its scheduled date on Oct. 19. Despite the postponement, comfort woman survivor Gil Won-ok, 90, plans to visit the university the same day to deliver a talk to students and members of the public on the comfort women’s painful experiences.
Speaking at a press conference held on Oct. 17 in the offices of the Korean American Association of Washington Metropolitan Area (KAAWMA) in Annandale, Virginia, and attended by Gil, Secretary-General Jae-su Lee of the Washington Comfort Women Statue Committee announced that he had received word from the university about the indefinite postponement late last month. The Salisbury statue’s installment had been pursued in secrecy, out of concerns that its symbolic value as the first such statue in the Washington metropolitan area might invite outside interference.
“Even the university president promised in the middle of last month that a comfort woman statue would be installed on campus,” Lee said.
“I suspect there may have been pressure that the school could not ignore,” he added.
While he said that “nothing has been confirmed,” Lee explained, “Given a
similar situation that occurred last year in Sydney, Australia, we suspect
there may have been pressure from Japan.”
Lee also said the association would “continue working with the faculty
members who have pursued the raising of a statue on campus.”
Gil stressed that she “would like to see [the statue] quickly installed and becoming a part of history, rather than [Japan] working so hard to get rid of it.”
“It would be nice if [Japan] realized, ‘This is not the way for people to live,’” she added.
“History is not something that gets erased simply because they would like to see it erased or built because they would like to build it,” Gil continued.
“The truth will certainly come out,” she stressed.
Gil also said, “While I always had negative feelings about Japan personally, the way they are trying to get in way of the things South Korea is doing is not pretty - it’s ugly.”
She went on to describe the installment of statues as being “like hope.”
“I’d like for you to install [the statue] in good places,” she said.
“A statue [at Salisbury University] would be one that I would have to see, and I will come to see it. I have to go everywhere [the statues] are being installed.”
Gil previously arrived in Los Angeles on Oct. 14 to attend a peace concert and screening of “The Apology,” a film about the comfort women issue. While in the DC area, she related her experiences as a survivor through talks at George Washington University on Oct. 18 and Salisbury University on Oct. 19.
By Yi Yongi-in, Washington correspondent
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