Press Release
19 December 2016
Why do Korean children bully Japanese children?
Some journalists asked me if I would agree that the comfort woman statue itself could cause no harm. Unfortunately the innocent looking girl is designed to be the symbol of Korean anti-Japan sentiment. Her extremely young appearance is to suggest that such a young child was used as a sex slave by the Japanese military. Korean teachers take their young students to the statue and teach them their version of the history.
As a result of the anti-Japan education, not only in South Korea but also in other countries, young Korean children grow up believing the comfort woman abduction story, and their anti-Japan behaviour is often encouraged and praised by their teachers and parents as you can see in this picture taken at a train station in South Korea.
Here is another example of such children. They created a YouTube movie which includes a scene of a Japanese soldier, acted by a Korean student, killing a comfort woman, acted by another Korean student, by stabbing followed by a close shot of a hand with pouring blood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uicdRsUoD6s
Sydney Lee (리나), Jino Chung (진오), Simone Willets (앵두), Noah Wise (다현), Sebastian Chai (세비), Devin Dunnigan (데빈)
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This kind of story is no longer believed in Japan as the Asahi Newspaper, which disseminated the fabricated abduction story originally, admitted it was a fictitious story created by a con man called Seiji Yoshida. But the story remains in Korean children's mind due to the anti-Japan education prevailing in Korean societies and they instinctively spit at Japanese counterparts and demand them to apologize. Now Japanese people have begun experiencing similar bullying and intimidation in Australia since the comfort women statue became an issue here and this is what the local mothers are worried about.
This is the fundamental difference between ANZAC monuments and comfort woman statues. Australian children learning history are never taught to hate former enemy countries and their descendants. Unfortunately this is not the case with the comfort women statues, and so we are forced to defend our families from this kind of racial intimidation as best we can.
Accordingly it is impossible for us to consider the comfort woman statue as a statue that symbolises all women who suffered in war as Rev Crews insists. The statue is never free from the intention and the motivation of the people who created and erected it. The plaques that accompany the statue clearly accuse only the Japanese during World War II and there is no mention of the suffering of any other people forced into prostitution during wars, including for example comfort women during the Korean War and Vietnamese War under the South Korean government’s own military prostitution programme. It is always important to learn from the past but we have to teach our children to positively construct the future as well.
This is not about dispute over historical facts. Everyone can have his/her own view. Yet we must refrain from threatening and adversely affecting other ethnic communities. There are many cross cultural families in Australia. They are all worried about the safety of their children.
We would like the Uniting Church to rewrite the plaques according to what Rev Crews says himself and house the statue somewhere inside, more private and discreet to minimize the risk of adversely affecting the local communities. Korean people can visit the statue commemorating women suffered in war in peace without offensive demonstrations. This is rather a simple and reasonable request.
If you wish to further investigate this issue, please read the articles below:
“Comfort women articles by scholars “
http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/the-comfort-women-by-chunghee-sarah-soh.html
Tetsuhide Yamaoka
President
Australia-Japan Community Network
