hankyoreh

Oh Tai-gyu

A South Korean government task force report reviewing the comfort women agreement reached by the South Korean and Japanese governments on Dec. 28, 2015, is slated to be released on Dec. 27. This report is expected to conclude that the Dec. 28 agreement did not focus on the former comfort women themselves and that those women were left out of the agreement process.

The task force, which was launched at the end of July and reports directly to Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, has been verifying the facts about the process and content of the Dec. 28 agreement by reviewing related diplomatic documents and by interviewing officials who were involved. The report, which will cover the facts confirmed and an assessment of those facts, is expected to focus on the issue that the opinions of the former comfort women were not adequately consulted during the process of making the agreement.

In that is determined to be the case, the agreement cannot be judged to have approached the comfort women issue from a victim-centered perspective, which is the international standard for human rights issues. The report is also expected to examine why the agreement declared the “final and irreversible solution” of the comfort women issue (presuming that Japan implemented the agreement) and to judge whether it was appropriate to include such language.

The report is also predicted to address the nature of the 1 billion yen (US$8.85 million) that Japan donated to the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation as part of implementing the agreement, as well as the question of who proposed that this money be donated.

“The report is likely to say that the former comfort women were not consulted [about the agreement], that the agreement was reached behind closed doors, and that the inclusion of the phrase ‘irreversible’ limited South Korea’s sovereignty,” said one diplomatic source.

While the tasks force will release the results of its review on Dec. 27, the South Korean government is not likely to declare its position on the Dec. 28 agreement right away. “Once the task force publishes its results, there will be a process of soliciting public comment, and that process will probably take quite a while, too,” said a senior official at the Foreign Ministry who is familiar with these matters. Given Seoul’s position that the task force results will not immediately lead to policy and its “two track” approach of dealing with historical issues separately from other matters, Seoul is likely to maintain its efforts to improve relations with Japan.

Sources connected with the Foreign Ministry think it is likely that government measures related to the Dec. 28 agreement are likely to be delayed until after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in Feb. 2018. Since the Japanese government has declared that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will not attend the Olympics if the task force has negative ramifications, it would be politically costly for Seoul to take measures prior to that.

“Since the local elections will be held immediately after the Pyeongchang Olympics, the government might not declare its position on the Dec. 28 agreement until June,” said another diplomatic source.

By Kim Jin-eun, staff reporter

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