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Cho June-hyuk

Amid an ongoing debate about relocating the statue of a young girl that symbolizes the comfort women - women forced to serve as sex slaves for the Imperial Japanese Army - from in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, there are indications that the South Korean government is shifting to a stricter legal stance on the issue.

This appears to be motivated by concerns about criticism from the South Korean public, which has been increasing since the governments of South Korea and Japan reached an agreement about the comfort women on Dec. 28, as well as by a string of remarks by Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs Fumio Kishida that treat the removal of the statue as an established fact. This is likely to provoke further conflict between the governments of South Korea and Japan.

“Let me make this clear: The statue of the young girl was set up by private citizens, and there is nothing that the government can do about it,” South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Cho June-hyuk told domestic reporters and foreign correspondents at the regular press briefing on the afternoon of Jan. 5.

This was the first time for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ spokesperson to state the government’s position on the statue since the two countries reached an agreement on Dec. 28.

Previously, after Kishida had responded to questions from reporters immediately after the cabinet meeting on Jan. 4 by saying that the Japanese government still expects the statue to be relocated to an appropriate location, a South Korean Ministry official refuted this statement in a manner similar to Cho.

Despite the controversy simmering about the relocation of the statue both in South Korea and overseas following the agreement on Dec. 28, the South Korean government had done its best to keep silent. It did not even make an official response when Kishida told the Japanese media on the day of the agreement that the Japanese government expected the statue to be relocated.

Given these circumstances, the government was repeatedly accused of having secretly promised Japan to remove the statue. These accusations centered on a phrase in the Dec. 28 agreement that says, “The South Korean government will work toward an appropriate resolution of the issue through deliberation with the organizations in question.”

Despite a series of reports in the Japanese press claiming that the relocation of the statue was a precondition for the Japanese government’s donation of 1 billion yen from its budget [to a foundation for the former comfort women], all the government did was dismiss the claim as “completely unfounded” and an “absurd fabrication.” At this point, it did not clearly express its position on the issue of the statue.

But after Kishida’s public comments on Jan. 4, the government swung back around to the legal position it had held before the agreement, namely that the issue of the statue does not fall under the jurisdiction of the government.

“We expect that this will lead to a backlash from the Japanese, but the debate about the statue had reached a point where it could no longer be left alone. That’s why we’ve decided to take a strict interpretation of the law,” a senior government official said.

The government announced that the strict legal approach it is taking with the statue will also apply to two other controversial issues - its registration of records related to the comfort women with the UNESCO Memory of the World and its publication of a white paper about the comfort women.

“What I’ve heard is that the white paper on the comfort women that the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is working on will be published as planned since it is unrelated to the agreement with Japan,” Cho said on Jan. 5.

“That said, the relevant agencies are currently discussing the method of its publication,” Cho added, touching on the question of whether the white paper would also be distributed overseas.

“As for the registration of records about the comfort women with UNESCO’s Memory of the World, that’s a civilian-led initiative in which the government can’t get involved. That’s a position that Minister of Foreign Affairs Yun Byung-se made clear in his meeting with the Japanese foreign minister,” an official with South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Jan. 4.

This countered remarks by Kishida, who said that the Japanese government was under the impression that the South Korean government could not get involved in applying to register the documentary heritage with UNESCO.

By Lee Je-hun, staff reporter, and Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent

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