South Korea, Japan strike deal on 'comfort women'

MilesMorales1

SEOUL, Dec. 28 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and Japan reached a landmark deal on Monday to resolve the issue of Korean women forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, announced the agreement after talks at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, which centered on Japan's admission of responsibility for the wartime crime and plans to pay reparations to the victims.

"The comfort women issue is an issue whereby many women under the then military's involvement bore deep scars to their honor and dignity, and from this perspective, the Japanese government acutely feels responsible," Kishida said in a joint press conference with Yun at the ministry.

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2015/12/28/0200000000AEN20151228002251315.html


The big deal isn't the amount of cash, since its not that much, and its not the first time reparations have been paid I believe, but Japans admission of at least some of its wartime guilt for such things, since its often dismissed or brushed under the carpet in Japan since the war, and specially by far right groups/politicans, so this could hopefully be the start of more admissions/reparations, and better relations between Japan and its neighbours.

BoJack Horseman

MilesMorales1 wrote: »

this could hopefully be the start of more admissions/reparations, and better relations between Japan and its neighbours.

I think a log of people assume that because both are US allies that they are also allies..... But it's far from so, there is still a lot of enmity between Japan & Korea.

Hopefully relations will continue to improve.

biko

Japan has done a lot of terrible things during their wars with the neighbours. I'm glad at least this part-issue is now being addressed.

PirateShampoo

Soul chilling stuff some of the things the Japanese got up to during the War.

'Comfort women'. It's a harmless sounding term compared to the atrocity it actually was.

suicide_circus

I wonder will the allies ever pay for their war crimes?

pickarooney

Candie wrote: »

'Comfort women'. It's a harmless sounding term compared to the atrocity it actually was.

It was a originally a Yorkshire phrase I believe. "They come for t'women an' tek 'em away"

The_Valeyard

Some of the things carried out by The Japanese Imperial army makes the Nazis look like kittens.

MRnotlob606

suicide_circus wrote: »

I wonder will the allies ever pay for their war crimes?

Which ones?

Nodin

MilesMorales1 wrote: »

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2015/12/28/0200000000AEN20151228002251315.html


The big deal isn't the amount of cash, since its not that much, and its not the first time reparations have been paid I believe, but Japans admission of at least some of its wartime guilt for such things, since its often dismissed or brushed under the carpet in Japan since the war, and specially by far right groups/politicans, so this could hopefully be the start of more admissions/reparations, and better relations between Japan and its neighbours.

Surprised that this hopped up now. They've a long way to go though.

fatknacker

Japan is such a great country with great people, it's hard to imagine they were complete and utter scumbags not so long ago.

suicide_circus

MRnotlob606 wrote: »

Which ones?

Well, mainly the Soviets...Katyn massecre, champaign of rape in any country they liberated, mass deportation to death camps/Gulags

Guy:Incognito

MRnotlob606 wrote: »

Which ones?

Sure they hounded that poor little German man with the Charlie Chaplin moustache to take his own life.

Timberrrrrrrr

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Sure they hounded that poor little German man with the Charlie Chaplin moustache to take his own life.

Made me laugh way to much

MilesMorales1

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Sure they hounded that poor little German man with the Charlie Chaplin moustache to take his own life.

Made me giggle. Although the term comfort women in this context is gross of course.

timthumbni

The Japanese are a strange lot indeed. So excruciating polite and embarrassed to offend it's hard to believe what they were like in ww2. Their treatment of the allied POWs is another point in question to their morals.

purplepanda

MRnotlob606 wrote: »

Which ones?

Plenty of accounts regarding Eisenhower's prison camps for German army soldiers who were designated as "disarmed enemy forces" instead of being treated as POW's as per the Geneva convention.

Allegations of hundreds of thousands of deaths happening in these camps with prisoners being held in open fields without shelter & sanitation for months after the war ended.

Books have been published such as Other Losses by James Barque as well as plenty of discussion online. Some prominent US military historians have said the claims are accurate but others disagree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Losses

Since the Soviets deny the alleged atrocities by their troops at the end of WW2 it's hardy surprising that the US does the same. But such events happen in wars & are usually denied afterwards.

Capt'n Midnight

the background is that Japan took over Korea from 1910 to 1945. The treatment by the Japanese of people under their control was horrific. The worst would have been in China which included cannibalism. This is a tiny step by Japan, almost too little and almost too late since almost all the women have died .

Unlike Germany where there was acknowledgement and some atonement and Ostpolitik, Japan still doesn't teach school kids about what happened. Imagine a funeral in a German cathedral with full Nazi Uniforms. The equivalent still goes on in Japan.

And the amount being handed over is peanuts compared to the $11.2Bn being spent on their latest Helicopter Destroyer. , it's 27,000 tonnes of not an aircraft carrier. And they've three more.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35188135

Japan has apologised and will pay 1bn yen ($8.3m, £5.6m) - the amount South Korea asked for - to fund victims.
...
It is estimated that up to 200,000 women were forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during WW2, many of them Korean. Other women came from China, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan.

Capt'n Midnight

purplepanda wrote: »

Books have been published such as Other Losses by James Barque as well as plenty of discussion online. Some prominent US military historians have said the claims are accurate but others disagree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Losses

Since the Soviets deny the alleged atrocities by their troops at the end of WW2 it's hardy surprising that the US does the same. But such events happen in wars & are usually denied afterwards.

The soviet figures have been out there for ages. 300,000 surrounded at Stalingrad. 90,000 survived to surrender. About 5,000 returned to Germany after a stay in the gulags. Most died shortly after the surrender from disease or starvation and a lot of that was because of the effects of the previous siege. Then again the death rate of Russian PoW's in the first winter of Barbraossa was truly appalling. Worse than the holocaust.


The Brits fed their prisoners the same rations as the folks back home. The French treated theirs worse to the extent that they weren't able to use them for slave labour.

The French point to Oradour-sur-Glane which was wiped out when 642 people were massacred. In Belarus this happened to 618 villages. There's a graveyard in Khatyn where each gravestone represents the 186 that were never rebuilt. What was done China was ever worse if possible.

jam_mac_jam

A move in the right direction, but sad that this has taken so long and so many of the women are dead.

jam_mac_jam

suicide_circus wrote: »

I wonder will the allies ever pay for their war crimes?

You could argue that through the Marshall plan they have to a certain extent. The degree to which war crimes was perpetrated by the Japanese towards other Asian countries is much higher in scale, there was an estimated 90 thousand killed in Thailand building the death railway alone,300k in Nanking.

So while there was war crimes on both sides,there is a difference in scale and cruelty.

R.D. aka MR.D

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Unlike Germany where there was acknowledgement and some atonement and Ostpolitik, Japan still doesn't teach school kids about what happened. Imagine a funeral in a German cathedral with full Nazi Uniforms. The equivalent still goes on in Japan.

This is really important. The attitude to the war in Japan is disgusting. They also deny a lot of it, too.

It's the total opposite to how it's dealt with by the Germans.

I think the apology and everything else is very insincere.

Adorable

I don't understand why some people are acting as if this is the first Japan is apologising to Korea.

Mesrine65

timthumbni wrote: »

The Japanese are a strange lot indeed. So excruciating polite and embarrassed to offend it's hard to believe what they were like in ww2. Their treatment of the allied POWs is another point in question to their morals.

Only in the ha'penny place...

Ever hear of Unit 731?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

http://www.unit731.org/

SEPT 23 1989

Joy Division