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Gyeonggi Province on Sept. 11. (Yonhap News)

“It’s a huge shame that Japan hasn’t found the courage [to apologize] for the violent acts it has perpetrated in the past. I know that the people here don’t have feelings of revenge or hatred [toward Japan] but fervently want Japan to acknowledge and apologize for its past [misdeeds],” said former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

At 3 pm on Sept. 11, Schroeder, who is 73 years old, visited the House of Sharing, a group home for former comfort women for the Japanese Imperial Army located in Toechon Township, Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province. Schroeder has consistently criticized Japan for its failure to express contrition for the past. This is the first time that a former or current foreign head of state has visited the House of Sharing. Schroeder served as the Chancellor of Germany from Oct. 1998 until Nov. 2005.

“I visited a truly heartbreaking place. The people who are here shouldn’t be called ‘comfort women.’ ‘Comfort’ carries the connotation of voluntary will. These women did not provide comfort; they were cruelly injured by the violence of war,” Schroeder told reporters on Sept. 11. “The cruel violence of war cannot be undone. I actively approve and support the idea of these victims of Japan’s wartime violence being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

After touching the statue of the young girl that stands at the entrance to the House of Sharing, Schroeder paid a visit to a nearby repository and memorial stone to the victims, where he laid a wreath and took a moment of silence. After visiting a museum describing the history of the comfort women, he met a number of the former comfort women – including Park Ok-seon, 94; Lee Yong-su, 90; Lee Ok-seon, 91; and Ha Jeom-yeon, 96 – to comfort them and share their pain.

“The sacrifice and pain personally suffered by these individuals is no different from the Holocaust,” Schroeder said. “The world needs to know about the women who were sacrificed to war. These women are writing the history not of the past but of the future.”

“Thank you for coming so far. Please help us get an apology from Japan before we die,” Lee Yong-su said. Lee Ok-seon removed a “remember” bracelet (designed to remind the wearer of the comfort women) from her wrist and put it on Schroeder’s wrist.

Schroeder gave the women a photograph of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who died in a Nazi concentration camp, and donated 10 million won to the group to use on behalf of women’s rights. As a gesture of appreciation, the House of Sharing gave the former chancellor a miniature of the comfort woman statue and the painting “Being Dragged Away” by the late Kim Sun-deok, a former comfort women.

“Thinking of how much pain these women suffered makes me cry,” Schroeder wrote in the visitors’ log at the House of Sharing. He had agreed to give reporters an interview before leaving the House of Sharing at 4 pm, but he later changed his mind and respectfully excused himself. “It’s hard to even stand in a place where pain is being shared. I don’t think this is an appropriate place for a press conference. My heart is so heavy that I don’t think I can speak,” he said.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder with the comfort woman statue at the House of Sharing in Gwangju

By Kim Gi-seong, South Gyegonggi correspondent

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