Ex-WW2 Comfort Women Petition Korea

“I was sleeping in my room when I was kidnapped by the Japanese army to Taiwan. It was 1942, and I was 15 years old at that time. After that, my life and my body slipped into a miserable condition. However, the Korean government has done nothing for me. Does it think that we are invisible? Not even the citizens of Korea?”

Lee Young-su, 79, who was a comfort woman for the Japanese army, wept in front of the Constitutional Court in Seoul. She came to the court to file a constitutional petition.

This day, 109 victims of the Japanese army filed a constitutional petition against the Ministry of Foreign affairs and Trade, saying they are deprived of their right to be protected by the government, their property right and right to pursue one’s happiness because of the government’s irresponsible negotiations with Japan. The Korean government gave in the compensation claims of Korean individuals for wartime atrocities of the imperialist Japan for a few hundreds million dollars worth of economic aid in the 1960s.

They said, “After the treaty documents between Korea and Japan was revealed last year, the government acknowledged that ‘Japan will have to take some responsibility.’ However, the government has not urged Japan to do something until now. This is nothing different from totally ignoring the efforts of the comfort women, who struggled to solve this issue, and waiting for them to die.”

Twenty-three lawyers, including 15 members of the “Lawyers for a Democratic Society,” will take on this case.

An official of The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan said, “Unlike the UN Human Rights Committee and other international bodies pressuring on Japan to solve the issue, the Korean government didn’t show any diplomatic efforts. We hope to see the Constitutional Court to play its role as a human right protector in order to retrieve their violated basic rights.”

zeitung@donga.com