A 2-year-old accord between Seoul and Tokyo, meant to settle the dispute over “comfort women” forced to work in Japanese wartime brothels, appears to be breaking down, fueling tensions between two important American allies.
The pain behind the euphemism ianfu, or “comfort women,” has reverberated for more than 70 years. Forced servitude in Japanese wartime brothels ensnared as many as 200,000 women from across a wide swath of Asia, and although the surviving cohort is dwindling down to dozens, the historic wound refuses to heal.
An agreement two years ago was intended to formally settle the dispute between the governments of Japan and South Korea, where the bulk of the “comfort women” came from. But South Korea this week deemed the accord seriously flawed, while Japan insists that any attempt to revise the pact would be unacceptable.
Systematic sexual enslavement and abuse of women in times of conflict has many modern-day echoes: African girls seized by Boko Haram, Yazidis held captive by Islamic State, the widespread rape of fleeing Rohingya women by the Myanmar military. But the “comfort women” issue takes on different dimensions because of the still-contested question of the Japanese government’s role, and the issue’s potential to inflame ties between two important U. S. allies at a time of high tensions over North Korea.
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Here is some background on the decades-long legal, political and moral struggle surrounding the women:
Tracing a trajectory of Japanese military aggression against its Asian neighbors, a vast network of brothels to serve troops and contractors operated from 1932 to 1945, when World War II ended. Most of the women were procured from Korea, which was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945, but others came from China, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere, including small numbers of Japanese and European women. Their precise numbers are not fully agreed upon; advocates and many historians place the figure at 200,000, but some estimates are lower.
In what was hailed at the time as a landmark pact, Japan agreed to set up a fund of 1 billion yen, nearly $9 million, to benefit the elderly South Korean survivors. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed remorse and acknowledged the “immeasurable pain” suffered by the women. South Korea, for its part, agreed to refrain from public criticism of Japan over the issue, and to take steps toward removing statues commemorating the victims, most notably one that was placed in front of the Japanese Embassy in the heart of Seoul.
