SKorean officials relent on new ‘comfort women’ statue

By Alex Jensen

SEOUL

A seemingly benign statue of a young girl is set to be placed outside the Japanese consulate in Busan, South Korea’s second city, after citizens bombarded local officials with complaints online and by telephone.

The Dong District Office announced Friday that it would no longer object to the monument to “comfort women” -- a euphemistic term referring to thousands of victims of sexual slavery at the hands of Japan, which ruled over the peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

“We will not stop the civic group from installing the statue in front of the consulate if they wish to do so,” district head Park Sam-seok was quoted as saying at a briefing by local news agency Yonhap, having seen the Dong government’s website fail to cope with the backlash.

“I would like to give the citizens words of apology.”

Officials had confiscated the one-ton statue on the grounds of obstruction two days earlier, when a civic group tried to erect it next to Japan’s Busan mission amid objections from Tokyo’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga -- who described the activists’ plan as “very regrettable”.

Such a stance from Japan is seen as evidence that last year’s Seoul-Tokyo agreement to compensate ex-comfort women lacked sincerity.

Wednesday marked the anniversary of the deal, under which Japan promised to pay 1 billion yen ($8.5 million) through a foundation to support now elderly Korean sexual slavery victims, just 39 of whom are still alive and registered with the government.

Opposition lawmakers, civic groups and some former comfort women rejected the pact as insufficient and devoid of legal responsibility -- while a separate controversy surrounds a monument across from the Japanese embassy in Seoul due to persistent reports that Tokyo has been pushing to have it removed.

Following weeks of mass protests involving millions of citizens that led to this month’s impeachment of South Korean President Park Geun-hye over an ongoing power abuse scandal, officials appear to be alert to the power of public pressure.

Although Seoul’s parliament has been fractured over the president’s suspension, the South’s rival parties were united Friday in criticizing Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada for visiting Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine Thursday.

Inada -- in the wake of Japan’s Reconstruction Minister Masahiro Imamura the day before -- paid her respects at the shrine which is considered controversial because it honors World War II criminals among many other casualties of conflict.