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Former comfort woman Kim Bok-dong engages in a one-person demonstration calling for the disbandment of the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Seoul on Sept. 3. (Kim Seong-gwang

During a sudden rain shower around 9 am on Sept. 3, Kim Bok-dong – a former comfort woman, or sex slave for the Japanese imperial army, and a women’s rights activist – headed toward the building of South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, located in Seoul’s Jongno District. Sitting in a wheelchair and wearing a white raincoat, the elderly woman held a placard that said, “The Reconciliation and Healing Foundation should be disbanded immediately.”

In a voice that came so strong and clear it was hard to believe she’s fighting a battle with cancer, she said, “We’ll handle the fight with Japan, so the government should dismantle the reconciliation foundation or whatever it’s called.”

Because of the cancer growing in her abdomen, 92-year-old Kim had a laparoscopic operation at Yonsei University’s Severance Hospital in Seoul on Aug. 27, just a week before. “It’s just been five days since the operation, but I got so upset just lying down in my room and felt like I had to say something, so I came out,” Kim said.

“Given her serious medical condition, I tried to stop her from doing a one-person demonstration, but in the end her stubbornness won out,” said Han Gyeong-hui, secretary general of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance.

“[People] are saying that we agreed to have the comfort women statue removed after receiving reparations, but they need to stop that crazy talk. Do they think we’ve been fighting this long just to receive reparations? We wouldn’t take the reparations if they gave us a hundred billion won [roughly US$90 million],” Kim told reporters in the pouring rain as she criticized the government for dithering about dissolving the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation.

“We’ve been staying quiet because of the issue of inter-Korean relations, but [the government] hasn’t lifted a finger. If they cared about the Korean people and not just themselves, they’d hurry up and shut down the foundation and pave the way to peace.”

After more than five minutes of remarks calling for the foundation’s dissolution, Kim was about to get into her car when she suddenly asked if there were any Japanese reporters present. When Hazimu Takeda, the foreign correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun who was covering the event, took a seat next to Kim, she began to make her appeal. “We’re not asking for some kind of big apology. If you [Japan] would just own up to it and get some reporters together and ask for our forgiveness, [then] we would be willing to forgive you,” she said.

Kim begged Takeda to convey her words to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Takeda told her that he would try.

staff photographer)

The Reconciliation and Healing Foundation was officially launched on July 28, 2016, about seven months after South Korea and Japan reached an agreement on the comfort women on Dec. 28, 2015. The foundation was supposed to disburse the 1 billion yen [roughly US$9 million] received from the Japanese government as part of the agreement, but a number of problems occurred, including the fact that the money that was supposed to be spent on the surviving comfort women went to cover the foundation’s operating expenses. At the end of last year, all the directors on the foundation’s board resigned, rendering the foundation basically unable to perform its function.

The South Korean government is still dragging its feet on the decision to disband the foundation.

“Our goal is to liquidate the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation within the year,” Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon told the National Assembly last month, and the cabinet passed a motion to use the government’s reserve fund to replace Japan’s contribution of 1 billion yen, but that’s about it so far.

But the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance has been criticizing the government for “not shutting down the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation and deceiving the former comfort women by rerouting the 1 billion yen in reparations from Japan through the budget.”

The Reconciliation and Healing Foundation was established according to the comfort women agreement that Seoul and Tokyo announced on Dec. 28, 2015. The Japanese government wired 1 billion yen (10.8 billion won) to the foundation, which used that money to pay 34 of the 46 surviving comfort women (as of Dec. 28, 2015) and the relatives of 58 of the 199 deceased 100 million won and 20 million won (US$89,790 and 17,958), respectively.

The foundation’s operations ground to a halt at the end of last year, when a government task force charged with reviewing the 2015 comfort women agreement released its findings. The day before the task force’s announcements, five of the 11 directors of the foundation announced their resignation. Kim Tae-hyeon, chairman of the board of directors and two other directors had already resigned. That only left three directors representing the government, rendering it impossible for the foundation to go about its business. At that point, the foundation still had 6.1 billion won (US$5.5 million) of the Japanese government’s original contribution.

In July, the government allocated 10.3 billion won (US$9.25 million) from its reserve budget to cover the Japanese government’s entire 1 billion yen contribution to the foundation. Since the 1 billion yen sum was one of the central components of the Dec. 28 agreement, the government’s plan to cover this with its own money appears to be aimed at effectively neutralizing the agreement while avoiding a direct conflict with the Japanese government.

Since then, the administration of Moon Jae-in has taken a number of actions related to the comfort women issue, establishing a related research institute and organizing an event on the first Memorial Day for Japanese Forces' Comfort Women Victims. Moon’s remarks on Aug. 14 that the comfort women issue is not amenable to a diplomatic solution and that the issue of sexual violence against women in wartime is a universal issue of women’s rights appear to follow suit.

Instead of provoking Japan by taking issue with the Dec. 28 agreement, the Moon administration seems to be taking steps to honor the former comfort women on the domestic level while launching a long-term struggle of continuing to pressure Japan indirectly on the international stage. Kim Bok-dong and the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance’s “second national campaign” appears to be an attempt to push back and demand that the government explicitly withdraw from the Dec. 28 agreement by shutting down the foundation.

Seoul has refrained from making specific comments about the use of the portion of the Japanese contribution remaining at the foundation and the 10.3 billion won newly appropriated by the government, only saying that “deliberations are underway.” In regard to the disposal of the foundation, Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon said during a plenary session of the Special Committee on Budget and Accounts on Aug. 21 that “our goal is [to dismantle the foundation] within the year.”

“Government ministries are deliberating about shutting down [the foundation] within the year,” a senior government official said on Sept. 3.

“The decision about which way to go will depend on the status of the South Korea-Japan summit in October,” another government official said.

But the responsible government agencies – the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – are expressing more equivocation.

“Our goal is to make the decision within the year, and we’re in consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” an official with the Ministry of Gender Equality said on Monday when asked about what would happen to the foundation.

Beginning with Kim’s one-person protest on Monday, the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance is launching a “second national campaign” for one month, positioning protesters in front of the Foreign Ministry and the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation, located in Seoul’s Jung neighborhood, to call for the foundation’s immediately dissolution.

“We’re urging the Foreign Ministry to rethink all its talk about diplomatic agreements between states. If we don’t see any tangible steps by the government in September, we’ll consider resorting to other methods after that,” said Han Gyeong-hui.

By Jang Soo-kyung, Kim Ji-eun and Noh Ji-won, staff reporters

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