Comfort Woman Statue – After all insult and aggression

Press Release

12 January 2017 

Comfort Woman Statue – After all insult and aggression 

Everybody would know by now what happened in Busan, South Korea.  Another comfort woman statue was erected right in front of the Japanese Consulate by Korean activists despite the governmental agreement to settle this matter and move on and despite the fact that the majority of former comfort women supported the agreement and already received compensation. Japan has made efforts to settle the matter many times in the past. Whoever is in power in the Korean government each time made promises that they would never bring the matter up again only to break the promise over and over again.

Whatever justifications are given by those Korean activists and the South Korean Government, the reality is that the statue is always followed by insults and aggression towards Japanese.

It is not peaceful commemoration. The South Korean Government does not bother with its obligations under the governmental agreement and they are even asking the Japanese Government to resolve the matter with the activists directly rather than enforce their own laws.  We are still surprised that they are breaching the agreement after receiving the reparation money and giving it to most of the former comfort women.  

Their aggression does not stop here.  Lee Jaemyung, mayor of a city near Seoul called Seongnam who is nicknamed as Korean Trump is accusing President Pak of spying for Japan and publicly stating that he considers Japan is a military foe.  We know that he came all the way to Sydney for the unveiling ceremony of the comfort woman statue now sitting in the car park of the Uniting   Church and accused the Japanese Emperor of being a “War Criminal”.

Mr Lee Jae-myung in Sydney considers Japan as South Korea’s immediate Military Foe.

Enough is enough.  We don’t want this kind of thing imported into our local community in Australia.  It is known that those activists in Sydney and Busan are controlled by Chon Dea Hyup which is officially recognized by the South Korean Government as a North Korean connected agency.  Their purpose is to break the governmental agreement and cause animosity as much as possible and so they don't listen to our concerns.

We are concerned about the extremely offensive behaviours always associated with the statue.  We firmly believe that all  migrants should accept Australian values once they decide to migrate here and that includes living in harmony with people from other countries, even countries who were once at war.  

This is absolutely not a peaceful commemoration of all the women who suffered in war as well as women suffering from domestic violence as Rev Crews insists.  As shown in Busan, the comfort woman statues have a political purpose, and they foment antiJapanese sentiment amongst local Korean communities with a very negative impact on us.

Meanwhile AJCN received a threatening email from a person living in South Korea who wants to kill us in the most cruel way and see us dying begging for life.  We are reporting this matter to police.

Tetsuhide Yamaoka
President
Australia-Japan Community Network