(EDITORIAL from the Korea Times on Jan. 15)

Promoting Historical Amnesia
Without Reflecting on Past, Tokyo Can't Plan Future

Several victims of wartime sexual slavery and their supporters held a rally in
front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul two days ago. It was the 900th such
gathering by the former ``comfort women," who have met there every Wednesday for
18 years to demand the Japanese government's acknowledgement and apology.
Sadly, no Japanese officials have bothered to come out of the embassy gate to
meet them, or even watch them. Tokyo's ``total neglect" tactic is in line with
its snubbing of resolutions on the matter adopted by the legislatures of the
United States, EU, Canada and the Netherlands.
No government with a minimal sense of shame would behave like this. Tokyo alleges
its imperial army ??? in other words, its government ??? was not involved in the
recruitment and management of the sex slaves, which it says was done by private
contractors. Even if this is right by any chance, could it be possible for
private firms to operate military brothels without the government's permission
during the days of wartime mobilization?
Historical records and, above all, the testimonies of the victims themselves
suggest otherwise, indicating they were either coerced or seduced into the
hellish situation by promises of making big money. Even Tokyo admitted this in
1993, but the revival of Japanese nationalism and a succession of right-wing
Cabinets have reversed the tide toward denying governmental responsibility. This
explains why expectations soared here when the opposition Democratic Party of
Japan (DPJ) took power last year.
But the prospects are not very bright even under the Cabinet of liberal Prime
Minister Yukio Hatoyama, given Tokyo's recent payment of $1 to former forced
laborers who filed suits to retrieve their pensions.
Equally regrettably, the DPJ, which had pushed for the enactment of a special law
on comfort women when it was a minor opposition party, watered down the pledge in
the last general elections. Little wonder that 82-year-old Lee Young-soo, one of
the surviving victims, is worried that the Japanese leader has forgotten the
promise he made to her in 1998 as the secretary general of the newly-born DPJ,
that he and his party would do their best on this issue.
The silver lining is the campaigns staged by some Japanese civic groups that call
for the Hatoyama Cabinet to include the special legislation in its campaign
manifesto for the Upper House elections in July. Likewise, about 15 Japanese
local councils have issued statements demanding the central government's apology
and compensation. In response, Korean civic groups will also launch a campaign to
collect 500,000 signatures, vowing to make 2010, the centennial of Japanese
colonization of Korea, as the starting point for settling this problem
permanently.
All this forces one to ask what Korea's central and local governments are doing.
The ``practical" Lee Myung-bak administration appears set not to make much noise
in this historically important year, to forge a future-oriented relationship with
Japan. The experiences of Europe, however, show that without settling historical
scores, a genuine restart is not possible.
Out of the 234 former comfort women who came out, 147 have already passed away
with the remaining 87 rapidly weakening. Tokyo may be thinking that another
decade or so of negligence will bury this issue along with the victims.
If things turn out the way the Japanese government wants them to, however, then
it will throw away the opportunity forever to regain its lost reputation as a
responsible, conscionable state.
(END)

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