Korea-Japan Agreement on Comfort Women

If an apology is not followed by contrition and self-reflection, but instead by gloating--“we apologized, so that ought to shut'em up”--does that apology mean anything? That is the core question that the Korean public is facing with respect to the recent agreement regarding Comfort Women between Korea and Japan.

On December 29, 2015, South Korea and Japan reached an agreement under which the Comfort Women issue was considered "finally and irreversibly" resolved. Under the agreement, the Japanese government issued a statement that read:

The issue of comfort women, with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities at that time, was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women, and the Government of Japan is painfully aware of responsibilities from this perspective. 

As Prime Minister of Japan, Prime Minister Abe expresses anew his most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.

In addition to this statement, the Japanese government pledged to contribute one billion yen (~USD 8.3 million), out of the Japanese government's budget, to a foundation established by the Korean government, whose funding will go toward assisting the surviving Comfort Women.

This agreement sounds fairly good on its face. But the Korean public is generally unhappy with it, with many good reasons. First among the reasons is that the actual victims, namely the surviving Comfort Women, were completely shut out from the negotiation of the agreement. The 46 surviving Comfort Women were not even aware that the Korean government is negotiating for this agreement; they did not learn of this agreement until the media reported it. In a cruel irony, the surviving Comfort Women were initially confused by a sudden flood of congratulatory messages from international organizations, which mistakenly believed that the surviving Comfort Women managed to reach an accord with the Japanese government.

Ultimately, the surviving Comfort Women are unhappy with the agreement for the same reason as the Korean public's: the obvious phoniness of the apology. Normally, an apology is a recognition of past wrongdoing, followed by a period of contrition and self-reflection. In this instance, however, neither the Japanese government nor Prime Minister Shinzo Abe showed any self-reflection about how Imperial Japan brutally kidnapped, raped and murdered hundreds of thousands of women under the vile euphemism of "Comfort Women." Instead, Abe followed up the agreement with triumphant gloating, as he stated: "there will be no future reference at all to this issue [the Comfort Women issue]. We will not raise it in the next Japan-Korea summit meeting. This is the end. There will be no more apology."

(Compare Abe's statement to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement in 2013: "Naturally, [Germany has] an everlasting responsibility for the crimes of national-socialism, for the victims of World War II, and above all, for the Holocaust.")

Only an idiot would believe that Shinzo Abe, son of a suspected Class A war criminal in the post-WWII Tokyo Tribunal, would feel sorry about Comfort Women. Yet the length that his administration traveled to display the hollowness of this apology is nonetheless impressive in a twisted way. Even as it was issuing an apology, the Japanese government demanded that Korea remove a Comfort Women memorial statue in front if the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Although this demand was not formalized into an agreement, Japanese officials are already telling the media that the Japanese government would not pay the fund in the agreement unless the memorial statue was removed.

Comfort Women memorial statue, in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.
(source)

Speaking of the payment: the Japanese government strenuously denies that the money is a legal reparation for the damages that the Comfort Women suffered. This is consistent with Japan's position on Comfort Women thus far: that it did not violate any law in conscripting Korean women into forced sex slavery. Because Japan does not think it committed any crime, there is no damage to recompense as far as it is concerned. 

(If you were curious: the surviving Comfort Women receive a pension from the Korean government, and they do not need the money. One of the points that the Comfort Women have consistently made is that any money paid by Japan should be an expression of its legal responsibility.)

So this is what we have: a statement of apology, followed by gloating. An acceptance of responsibility, followed by denial of legal responsibility. A pledge to pay money as an apologia, followed by the demand to erase the crime from the public memory. 

This is another rendition of Japan's playbook with respect to its war crimes. In its heart of hearts, Japan steadfastly believes that it did nothing wrong leading up to and during World War II. Was Imperial Japan wrong to colonize Korea and China? No--Japan was only trying to protect Asia from European powers. Was Imperial Japan wrong to bomb Pearl Harbor? No--the United States forced Japan's hand by setting up a trade embargo. Was Imperial Japan wrong to kidnap hundred of thousands of women--many of whom were no more than 13, 14 years old--and force them into sexual slavery, to be raped by dozens of soldiers every day? No--war is bad for everyone, and at any rate, Comfort Women are lying whores who volunteered to join the war effort. 

This sick and disgusting worldview is so deeply rooted into the Japanese consciousness that any Japanese statement to the contrary is no more than a cynical bargaining chip, tossed in order to lower the heat of international outrage directed at the worldview's heinousness. Because Japan (and in particular, Japan's conservatives led by the current prime minister) cannot bring itself to mean what it says, Japan must always follow up its statements with a series of attempts to run away from them as quickly as possible.

Question, then, is: what should Korea and Koreans do about this?

(More after the jump)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Most Koreans are dissatisfied, many angry, with the agreement. TK is also outraged. In addition to everything in the foregoing, TK finds Korean president Park Geun-hye's incompetence in negotiating this agreement particularly aggravating. At the negotiating table, Korea was at an unusually strong position. Japan's crimes were heinous, and their then-position was appalling. The surviving Comfort Women were very old and passing away, which added to the urgency of resolution. Most importantly, the United States--the most important ally for both Japan and Korea--was pushing for a resolution. Park administration pissed away these advantages. It could have extracted so many more concessions from Japan (for example, personal visits of the prime minister to the surviving Comfort Women to hand-deliver letters of apology,) and it simply did not.

So what to do about this? This is the point at which TK parts company with majority of the Korean public. Many Koreans, including Korea's opposition party, are calling for nullifying the agreement. I do not think that is a wise course of action.

What Koreans want--naturally and correctly--is Japan's contrition over these crimes. Koreans want Japan to admit that Japan was wrong to colonize Korea, wrong to begin a global war, and wrong to conscript a million Koreans to serve as slaves for the machinery of war. Koreans want from Japan those admissions with sincere self-reflection about its crimes, minus all the bullshit evasive maneuvers that Japan has taken so far, including in this agreement.

I want the same exact thing. But I do not think that an international agreement would achieve that end--especially not the kind signed by Shinzo Abe.

I believe Koreans would be well served to stare down the unyielding reality, that the agreement is ultimately a political document, and politics is the art of the possible. What Koreans want is moral vindication. Politics can indeed achieve moral vindication. (Post-World War II Germany, for example.) But to achieve the moral vindication, one must keep playing the politics.

It is not practically possible for Korea to re-negotiate. A strong poker hand loses its strength after the round is over. The showdown, unfortunately, came and went; all the advantages that Korea did have previous to this agreement no longer exist. The fact that the Park Geun-hye administration failed to maximize its advantages is rage-inducing, but there is no reason to expect that Korea can do any better in the hypothetical next round.

However unsatisfying, the gains from this agreement are not insignificant. In a number of ways, this agreement is in fact a step forward from Japan's previous statements. Japan did recognize that the Japanese military was involved in the conscription of Comfort Women without the evasive qualification. (Previously, Japan recognized the military's involvement, but also insisted that the military usually did not recruit directly.) The Japanese government did speak of its "responsibility" without qualifiers like "moral responsibility" (notwithstanding Japan's subsequent attempt to characterize its payment as an anything-but-legal-reparations.) The agreement stated that Abe was speaking as the representative of the Japanese nation, not as a mere individual. Japan is paying money out of its government budget, not through private citizens' donations.

These gains are not nothing. Although they are inadequate standing alone, skillful politicking can capitalize them into serving the true end of justice. Although the Japanese government is attempting to wiggle away from its apology as soon as it is written down, the words of the apology have independent strength. Against the backdrop of the words like "with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities" and Japan's "responsibilities," Japan's further attempts of evasion can only become more technical, tendentious and petty.

The thing to do, then, is not to demand a new round of governmental apology from Japan; it is to simply hold Japan to the words onto which it just signed. There is enough in those words to compel Japan to recognize the wrong that it had committed. Specifically, Japan must be made to answer these basic questions regarding Comfort Women:

Is it true that the Japanese military operated rape centers, euphemistically called Comfort Stations, for the pleasure of its soldiers?
Is it true that the Japanese military staffed these rape centers with hundreds of thousands young women, some as young as 13 or 14 years old, who were kidnapped from Korea?
Was it wrong for Japan to operate these rape centers, where hundreds of thousands of Korean women were raped dozens of times, every day for years?

These questions should be asked over and over again, until there is an unqualified "yes" to all of these questions from every meaningful level of the Japanese society--including the government, the universities, the media, conservatives, liberals, everyone. And if anyone answers "no" to any one of the questions above, there is now a ready retort: why did the Japanese government sign a statement saying otherwise?

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

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