Weekly protests in Seoul to recognize Japanese military's sexual crimes during World War II

For 34 years, Seoul has been the scene of the same ritual every week. Every Wednesday, demonstrators gather in the South Korean capital to protest in front of the Japanese embassy. They demand recognition of Tokyo's responsibility in the sexual slavery perpetrated by soldiers of the Japanese army on South Korean women.

Forced prostitution organized from 1932, during Japanese colonization in Korea, until the end of the Second World War. With the very low number of survivors – only five of these women are still alive – the mobilization is now led by the Korean Council association which campaigns for their memory with the support of students or human rights activists.

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A 50-year omerta

According to Amnesty International data, around 200,000 Korean women, nicknamed “comfort women”, were abused during World War II. Generally from a working class background, the victims were taken against their will to brothels to suffer sexual abuse inflicted by Japanese soldiers.

For half a century, these acts remained silent before the silence was broken, in 1991, with the testimony of Kim Hak-sun. “I’m still alive and standing. It is absurd that Japan denies forcibly conscripting comfort women. I suffered as a comfort woman, I am living proof,” she said in comments quoted by the media The Dong-A Ilbo. The Japanese government initially denied being directly responsible for these abuses.

To protest, a solidarity movement is organized around these thousands of victims. The first in a very long series of demonstrations was launched on January 8, 1992, the day of the visit of Kiichi Miyazawa, Japanese Prime Minister at the time. Since that day, demonstrators have met weekly to demand an official apology from the Japanese government.

A movement entered in the Book of Records

Over the years, the Land of the Rising Sun has tried to make amends. A year after the first mobilization, he recognized for the first time the involvement of his army in the management of “comfort stations”. An approach deemed insufficient in the face of the desire for legal recognition of Japanese responsibility.

Since 2007, several countries such as the United States, Canada, the Netherlands and Taiwan, as well as the European Parliament, on behalf of the 27 member states of the European Union, have adopted resolutions calling on the Japanese government to recognize its responsibility for the crimes committed against these women and to apologize to them.

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In 2015, an agreement, presented as a “final and irreversible” settlement, was signed by the two governments. Tokyo would pay 1 billion yen, or around 7.5 million euros, to a foundation to help surviving South Korean survivors. Here again, the act is not considered sufficient for the movement to put an end to this duty of commemoration. Many survivors found the agreement humiliating, particularly because Japan took no formal legal responsibility for it.