Japan, South Korea Agree to Aid for ‘Comfort Women’
Deal will include support services using Japanese government funds
reported by
Updated Dec. 28, 2015 1:45 p.m. ET
South Korea and Japan reached an agreement that aims to resolve a decades-old dispute over Korean women who were used as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers during World War II, a festering wound that has inflamed tensions between the U.S.’s two most important allies in Asia.
Under the accord, Japan will supply ¥1 billion ($8.3 million) in government funds to support the so-called comfort women. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also apologized for the women’s treatment, something he had been reluctant to do previously.
The wartime issue has long strained ties between the two neighbors and caused concern in Washington. “We must not let this problem drag on into the next generation,” Mr. Abe said in Tokyo after the agreement was announced in Seoul.
The U.S., which sees better relations between the two countries as key to checking China in the region, welcomed the deal. “We applaud the leaders of Japan and the Republic of Korea for having the courage and vision to reach this agreement, and we call on the international community to support it,” said Secretary of State John Kerry.
The agreement involved concessions by both sides. Japan has previously maintained that all issues of compensation to South Koreans for the war were resolved when it restored diplomatic relations with Seoul in 1965. In the current deal it edged away from that position by agreeing to fund a South Korean foundation to aid the women forced into servitude, while also insisting the money didn’t represent direct compensation for wrongdoing.
By apologizing, Mr. Abe also went further than his government has previously. The prime minister made a direct apology, expressed both in a statement by his foreign minister and in a telephone call with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
“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,” the statement said.
The statement also acknowledged Japanese government involvement in the comfort women program, a point Mr. Abe and conservatives in his ruling party have frequently questioned.
Still, some in Korea called Mr. Abe’s statement inadequate. The Korean Council for Women Forced Into Sexual Slavery, which represents some former sex slaves, said the agreement didn’t make clear enough that the recruitment of the women “was a crime done by the Japanese government and military systematically.” It said Japan should directly compensate the women instead of creating a fund to do so.
The council also objected to Seoul’s promise that it would consider removing a statue of a girl in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul that commemorates the women’s suffering. Tokyo has called the statue an affront.
The group called the deal “humiliating” and said Seoul “gave a bushel and only got a peck [of returns in the agreement].” Some comfort women told Korean media they would accept the compromise.
Ms. Park and Mr. Abe spoke by phone for about 15 minutes after the deal. Ms. Park said she hoped the accord would turn into “a precious opportunity to restore the honor and dignity of the victims” and “build trust to bring in a new relationship” between the two countries.
Mr. Abe took office in December 2012 and Ms. Park two months later. Since then, the two sides have engaged in almost continuous squabbling on the international stage, devoting considerable diplomatic effort to seemingly minor battles such as whether textbooks in the state of Virginia should refer to the body of water between them as the Sea of Japan or the East Sea.
Monday’s deal includes a promise by both sides to stop criticizing each other in such forums and says the comfort-women issue has been “finally and irreversibly” resolved.
The agreement represents a relief for U.S. diplomats who have wrung their hands over the dispute between the two U.S. allies. President Barack Obama brought Ms. Park and Mr. Abe together for a three-way meeting in Europe in March 2014, but the two Asian leaders barely looked at other.
The State Department’s top official for East Asia, Daniel Russel, said in May that “tension between those two friends constitutes a strategic liability to all of us”—one of many occasions, both public and private, in which U.S. diplomats urged Japan and South Korea to reach an agreement like the one announced Monday.
The U.S. wasn’t a formal party to the talks, although Mr. Obama, Vice President Joe Biden,Mr. Kerry and other senior officials advised and supported both sides in reaching agreement in bilateral and trilateral meetings. “We’ve worked quietly, where possible, to prevent or resolve misunderstandings between the two,” a senior State Department official said.
The official said the U.S. sees the accord as being “as strategically consequential” as the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal agreement reached in October, adding it would promote “a stable, prosperous and happy East Asia.”
The U.S. and Mr. Abe both want to form a stronger front against China, which has territorial ambitions in the region and has been building artificial islands to reinforce its claims in the South China Sea. Ms. Park has shown more sympathy to Beijing, appearing with Chinese President Xi Jinping at events denouncing Japan’s view of history.
The first major sign of progress came in November, when Mr. Abe and Ms. Park met in Seoul and agreed to seek an early resolution. Both sides had hoped for a deal in 2015, the 50th anniversary of the resumption of diplomatic ties.
Concern about business ties may have helped prompt Monday’s reconciliation. Between 2012 and 2014, two-way trade fell 17% and the number of Japanese travelers to Korea dropped 35%.
“Japanese companies have become reluctant to talk about their business in South Korea,” said Hidehiko Mukoyama, an analyst at Japan Research Institute. “They want to locate where they can operate most efficiently. But the disputes have made it difficult to do so.”
There are 46 elderly Korean “comfort women” known to be alive. No reliable records are known to exist on how many women were involved, but mainstream historians’ estimates range from 20,000 to 200,000. Former comfort women have consistently said females as young as teenagers were coerced or tricked into joining brothels serving Japanese soldiers.
The agreement marks a significant step, but it is too early to assess its impact, said Robert Kelly, a professor of political science at Pusan National University in South Korea.
“Historical grievances, particularly over the comfort women, are deeply ingrained in South Korea,” he said. “There will be a lot of people who won’t accept the deal.”
Disputes over other legacies of Japan’s 35-year colonization of the Korean Peninsula also hamper ties, including ongoing legal action by Koreans used as forced laborers by Tokyo, as well as descriptions in school textbooks in both countries of the colonial period, which ended in 1945.
Elements of Monday’s deal echo Japanese actions two decades ago. In 1993, Japan issued a statement extending its “sincere apologies and remorse” to the women, and later in the decade it established a fund to help the women. However, that fund used private donations.
—Felicia Schwartz in Washington contributed to this article.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-south-korea-reach-comfort-women-agreement-1451286347
Structure of the Lead:
Who: sex slavesWhy: a festering wound that has inflamed tensions between the U.S.’s two most important allies in Asia.
What: South Korea and Japan reached an agreement that aims to resolve a decades-old dispute over Korean women who were used as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers during World War II,
How: Under the accord, Japan will supply ¥1 billion ($8.3 million) in government funds to support the so-called comfort women. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also apologized for the women’s treatment, something he had been reluctant to do previously.
When: Dec. 28, 2015
Key Words:
1. inflamed:發炎的
2.denouncing: 譴責
3.reluctant:不情願
4.consistently: 始終如一
5.grievances: 委屈
6.resumption : 復牌
7.coerced:裹夾
8.squabbling: 爭吵
9.diplomatic:外交
10.reconciliation:和解
