hankyoreh

Cho Joon-hyuk

In April, the South Korean government reportedly submitted to a court its position that the comfort women agreement reached by Seoul and Tokyo on Dec. 28, 2015, had no impact on the right of the former comfort women to claim damages. Considering that the two governments declared at the time that the deal was a “final and irreversible” agreement about the comfort women, the question is why the government would have taken this position.

“In April, we communicated to the court our position that the comfort women agreement does not affect the former comfort women‘s right as individuals to claim damages,” an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on June 13.

“The South Korean government continues to hold the position that the comfort women issue was not resolved by the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations that settled claims between South Korea and Japan,” said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Cho Joon-hyuk during the regular press briefing. In 2005, Seoul concluded that the Japanese government was still legally responsible for the comfort women issue. But the immediate reason the Foreign Ministry adopted this position is reportedly because it concluded that the Dec. 28 agreement cannot serve as grounds for restricting individuals’ legal rights because it is not legally binding.

Former comfort women have reportedly responded by saying that if the government has acknowledged the rights of individual victims to make claims, it should make clear how it means to help them do so.

The Foreign Ministry submitted this position to the court before Moon Jae-in became president, under the Park Geun-hye administration (2013-16), which was adhering to the position that the Dec. 28 agreement must be faithfully implemented. So even if the government acknowledged the right of individuals to make claims, this did not imply a role for the government. Since the Moon administration has yet to adopt a clear stance on the Dec. 28 agreement, the Foreign Ministry will probably not be able to specify its position for the time being.

In Aug. 2016, Kang Il-chul and 11 other former comfort women sued the South Korean government for damages, claiming that the state had “caused psychological and physical harm to its own citizens by reaching the comfort women agreement during the meeting between the foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan on Dec. 28, 2015.”

By Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter

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