Third party role proposed to heal wartime wounds

Pope Francis waves as he gets on his pope-mobile after arriving by helicopter in Campobasso, Italy, Saturday, on July 5. / AP-Yonhap

Pope Francis, actress Jolie asked to play role to end sex slavery dispute

Dennis Halpin, ex-U.S. diplomat

Jay Kronish, a Holocaust educator

By Kang Hyun-kyung

The unrepentant Shinzo Abe administration in Japan continues to deepen the psychological wounds of the women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.

The issue remains unresolved even though seven decades have passed since the end of the world's bloodiest conflict, prompting debate on how to heal the lasting hurt and pain while the surviving "comfort women" are alive.

The average age of the 50 remaining victims in Korea is 88.

Former U.S. diplomat Dennis Halpin suggested that Pope Francis and actress and human rights advocate Angelina Jolie together play a constructive role to end the decades-old dispute.

"As God's referee, so to speak, Pope Francis is in a perfect position to bring closure to historic disputes like the one over the comfort women," Halpin told The Korea Times.

"He has also signaled that ending trafficking of persons is a key focus of his papacy during a conference he hosted in April at the Vatican and his recent meeting with the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury to join forces on an issue he called an open wound on society."

Halpin, now a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C., said that Jolie can also be an ideal third-party to do the demanding job.

"As for Angelina, she can be, if she accepts the role, the yin on the comfort women issue to Pope Francis's yang. She has already publicly pledged to take action against sexual violence."

Jolie, the special envoy of the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, co-hosted with British Foreign Minister William Hague the Global Summit to end Sexual Violence in Conflict in London last month.

"Also due to her close friendship with the late World War II hero Louis Zamperini and her work as the director preparing the upcoming movie ‘Unbroken' about Zamperrini's tremendous suffering as a prisoner-of-war slave laborer in Japanese internment camps, she is aware of the extensive human rights violations that occurred in the Pacific Theater during World War II," Halpin said.

The former U.S. diplomat, who served as the coordinator for the 1995 U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, noted the Pope-Jolie team is perfect to help bring closure to the wartime sex slavery issue.

Pope Francis is scheduled to make a five-day trip to Korea starting from Aug. 14. Several comfort women victims were invited to the Mass that Pope Francis will preside over at Myeongdong Cathedral on Aug. 18.

Also invited to the Mass are the families of the Sewol ferry victims and North Korean defectors who attend Catholic churches.

Of late, the comfort women issue has further strained South Korea-Japan relations following a recent announcement by the Abe government that its investigation into the wartime atrocities found no sufficient evidence that can back the core findings of the Kono Statement.

Under the 1993 statement, the then-Japanese government acknowledged that the military was directly involved in mobilizing comfort women who were forced to serve the Japanese military against their will during the war.

Many of the girls were aged between 14 and 18, and the youngest was found to be 12 years old who was then attending an elementary school when she was taken to a comfort station.

The Abe administration posted the investigation report onto the website of its foreign ministry "to raise people's awareness of the issue."

Regarding the third-party role, some are questioning its effectiveness in healing wounds of the victims.

They say sincere and heartfelt actions from the Japanese side are still necessary to end the decades-old dispute, even if a third-party plays any role.

Apologies accepted

Germany was able to end the wartime atrocities dispute with a set of sincere measures.

Several times, Germany apologized and provided compensation to the victims and relatives of Nazi Germany's annihilation of nearly 6 million Jews during the war.

Jay Kronish, a Holocaust educator and president of the Busan Israel House, said Germany's sincere apologies were accepted by Israelis and helped end the wartime atrocities dispute a long time ago.

"The nation of Germany was humbled by insurmountable guilt and moved to positive action. They were convinced that they had to rectify what their nation had done, not just to Jews, but also to so many others," Kronish told The Korea Times.

"They have implemented educational programs for their people, so that what occurred would never and could never ever happen again. They have shown the Jewish people and the world that they were intent on making amends. They humbled themselves and accepted deep and lasting shame."

The American Jew observed clear differences in the German responses to wartime atrocities from those of Japan after World War II.

"Germany has turned the death camps into sites of remembrance and museums. They have passed laws so that what occurred cannot occur again. They have given hundreds of millions of dollars to Jewish survivors, to their families, and to organizations that serve holocaust survivors and their families."

In December 1970, then West German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial to make what the media described as a silent apology to the war victims.

The photo was published in the Korean media several times as a symbolic gesture, demonstrating the value of Germany's heartfelt apology whenever Japanese leaders turned deaf ears to mounting calls to offer similar sincere apologies to Japan's victims.

An unrepentant Japan, meanwhile, caused East Asian geopolitics to undergo unnecessary confrontations between Japan and its neighbors, South Korea and China.

During a recent summit in Seoul, the leaders of South Korea and China agreed to launch joint research about the comfort women to counter an unrepentant Japan on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of the war.

Balancing act

The Seoul-Beijing joint action against Japan's wartime atrocities is seen as a balancing act against Tokyo.

Halpin hinted that there seems to be a shift in China's stance on the comfort women issue, saying he felt that Beijing was not supportive of the issue in 1995 when the U.N. Conference on Women was held in Beijing.

"History issues were beginning to emerge between China and Japan in August just before the women's conference. At that time I attended as a U.S. diplomat the 50th anniversary commemoration of the end of the Second World War in the Great Hall of the People, where all of the Chinese leadership appeared," he said.

"The Chinese comfort women survivors and women's rights activists from non-governmental organizations were all placed under house arrest for the duration of the U.N. Conference on Women in Huairou where NGO sessions were held, and Beijing where official delegations had meetings. South Korean activists courageously held a demonstration in Huairous to raise the comfort women issue and engage especially their NGO sister representatives from the Philippines, which also had many comfort women. Their demonstration, however, was controlled, roped off by wary Chinese security police."

In Seoul, some experts have voiced concern about possible confrontations between Korea and China on the one side and the United States and Japan on the other that erupted in the midst of a power shift in the region.

They say for South Korea, both the United States and China are equally important as the country heavily relies on the former for its security and defense, and the latter is its No. 1 trading partner.

Thus, pundits say, the current geopolitical landscape doesn't help Seoul.