News Japan recalls diplomats from South Korea over 'comfort woman' statue

Japan has recalled two top diplomats from South Korea over a controversial statue erected outside its consulate in the South Korean city of Busan a week ago.
Tokyo will also halt talks with South Korea on a planned currency swap and delay high-level economic dialogue as part of its "initial" response to the statue, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press briefing Friday.
The statue was erected by a civil group in December and represents "comfort women," women who were forced to work as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Japan recalls diplomats from South Korea over 'comfort woman' statue - CNN.com

Japan agreed to give 1 billion yen ($8.6 million) to a fund to help survivors. South Korea's foreign minister at the time said as long as Tokyo sticks to its side of the deal, Seoul will consider the issue "irreversibly resolved."

As I read this, I wonder if the US will compensate the Vietnamese for the Agent Orange damage that it's done to the people there. My thoughts are, maybe one day.

musicisgood said:

As I read this, I wonder if the US will compensate the Vietnamese for the Agent Orange damage that it's done to the people there. My thoughts are, maybe one day.

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You're much more optimistic than I am.

Who was that professor there who published something contrary to (out of ideological alignment with) the populist Korean POV on the 'comfort women'?

johnnyG said:

Who was that professor there who published something contrary to (out of ideological alignment with) the populist Korean POV on the 'comfort women'?

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Park Yu-ha - Wikipedia

Rightists distort author Park Yu-ha's views on 'comfort women' | The Japan Times

Yes, @thomas that's right.

And I'm not saying that you agree with this, but I have three experiences in Korea, and Pak Yu-Ha's POV just rings sooo true. The first, military, calendar '72, overlapping into '71 and '73 a little; the second, '74 to early '76, Peace Corps; and the third, maybe calendar '83, teaching at a uni in Seoul.

Women never had it very well there, and tho their status has improved, during my first two visits things were quite different from today. And, I can only imagine what a woman's status was in the '40s, the '30s, and before, might have been.

A daughter was a throwaway, to be kicked out or effectively sold, and, in a role often minimized for political ends, there were Korean middlemen who very much facilitated Japan's acquisition of comfort women, let alone the individual families (fathers/parents) who let their daughters leave for, or gave them up to, that system.

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I'm always puzzled at how serious a grudge China and Korea hold against Japan, while Taiwan, the Philippines and other SE asian countries seem to have moved on, or not to have cared at all. And modern China seems to have forgotten that before Japan, European countries and even the US had "concessions" and extra-territoriality rights in China that weren't exactly fair.


blah, blah, blah...