By Doh See-hwan
Korea this year celebrated the 73rd anniversary of liberation from 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule. The celebration was all the more significant because it highlighted the human rights issues surrounding the victims of colonialism and militarism.
More than anything else, the country marked the inaugural "Comfort Women Day" on Aug. 14, a day before National Liberation Day, to commemorate the first public testimony made 27 years ago by Kim Hak-sun, who was forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II.
The year was more noticeable in that the nation observed the 108th anniversary of the illegal and forced annexation of the Korean Peninsula by Japan on Aug. 22. With the annexation, Japanese imperialists and colonialists began to trample not only on Korea's sovereignty, but also Koreans' human rights.
However, the Japanese government has continued to assert that the forced annexation treaty was legal, and that the issue of compensation for damages inflicted on Koreans during the colonial period was all settled by the 1965 Basic Treaty, which normalized diplomatic relations between Seoul and Tokyo.
The Japanese assertion runs counter to general consensus among many scholars and international law experts that Japanese colonial rule of Korea was illegitimate. It is also not in line with recent rulings by the Supreme Court of Korea that two Japanese firms should pay compensation for the victims of wartime forced labor because individual rights to reparations were not terminated by the 1965 treaty.
Many documents and much testimony have proved that the Imperial Japanese Army forcefully mobilized Korean women to serve as sexual slaves, who were euphemistically called "comfort women," for Japanese troops during World War II.
The comfort women issue has yet to be resolved due to Japan's lack of a sincere apology and compensation for the crime against humanity. The situation has been raising tension between Korea and Japan. The situation has also emerged as an international human rights issue that calls for a resolution by laying bare the truth and letting Japan take legal responsibility for its misdeeds.
Marking the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender in August 2015, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave a speech denying responsibility for colonial rule and the wars of aggression. He thus invited criticism for turning a blind eye to the victims of sexual slavery.
His denial seems to stem from Japan's tilting toward the right and its attempts to revive militarism, boosted by historical revisionism.
Following an agreement reached by the foreign ministers of Korea and Japan on Dec. 28, 2015, Japan has publicly denied that it forcefully took women into sexual slavery. The country has made the same denial international human rights organizations, including the U.N. Commission on Human Rights even though what Japan's actions undoubtedly constituted a crime against humanity.
One of the striking illustrations of this is the statement of Masato Otaka, Japanese ambassador to the U.N., saying, "The issue of the comfort women was resolved with the 2015 agreement between Korea and Japan."
This statement was made at the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination held in Geneva on Aug. 16 in order to deflect criticism from human rights advocates. These included U.N. Special Rapporteur Gay McDougall, who wrote the 1998 report stating that an agreement between governments without apologies to victims cannot resolve human rights issues.
The Supreme Court of Korea ruled on Oct. 30 this year that the victims of forced labor should get compensation, which reconfirmed a historic ruling made on May 24, 2012, that set a milestone in international human rights law.
Additionally, in a report released on Nov. 19 the U.N. Committee on Enforced Disappearances expressed deep regret about the 2015 Korea-Japan agreement that calls for the two nations to resolve the sex slavery issue "finally and irreversibly."
The report stated that there was a lack of adequate reparations for the victims of sexual slavery. It even recommended that the truth should be uncovered and the perpetrators be held accountable. This demonstrates a contradiction between the Japanese assertion and international human rights organizations.
The international community needs to be more active in discussing such issues as "comfort women," forced laborers and other victims of human rights violations committed by Japan during the colonial period. Such discussions could lay the groundwork for reparations for those victims.
Most of all, legal principles should be established to better protect human rights and renounce the militarism and imperialism that were used to justify Japan's colonial rule of Korea and Japan's aggressions.
Japan's coercion of young Korean women into sex slavery for its frontline troops was a grave violation of human rights. It cannot be resolved by distorting the historical facts and describing those victims as prostitutes bent on making money.
Now is the time for the Japanese government to make a sincere and genuine effort to resolve the "comfort women" issue. It should respond to the call of the international community for "irreversible historical reconciliation" to heal the victims' scars.
Doh See-hwan is director of the Research Center for Japanese Military Comfort Women.
