S. Korean, Japanese far right exploits Yoon Mee-hyang controversy to rewrite historical narrative

Posted on : 2020-05-21 18:19 KST Modified on : 2020-05-22 08:21 KST
Conservatives accuse comfort women activists of “child abuse” by indoctrination
Lee Na-young, president of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, speaks during the 1,440th Wednesday demonstration on May 20. (Baek So-ah, staff photographer)
Lee Na-young, president of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, speaks during the 1,440th Wednesday demonstration on May 20. (Baek So-ah, staff photographer)

A host of allegations have been raised about Yoon Mee-hyang, former chair of a comfort women advocacy group and a newly elected lawmaker for South Korea’s Together Citizens’ Party, following a press conference by former comfort woman Lee Yong-su, 92. But those allegations go beyond a conservative backlash against progressive achievements and are evolving into a concerted attempt by far-right forces to rewrite history. The battle lines are blurring as Japanese groups jump into what had been an internal conflict in Korean society.

The conservative press and the United Future Party have been instrumental in raising accusations about accounting and donation-funded projects at the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Korean Council), accusations that represent one half of the Yoon Mee-hyang scandal. The other half, which has to do with historical attitudes, appears to be sponsored by the Japanese right wing and by far-right groups in South Korea.

One of the leading groups trying to turn history upside down is the little-known Joint Action Committee for Investigating Anti-Japanese Statues. On May 12, one day before the Korean Council held its 1,439th Wednesday demonstration, the Joint Action Committee held a rally of its own on Pyeonghwa (Peace) Street, in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

During that rally, the Joint Action Committee called for the removal of comfort women statues and for the end of the Wednesday demonstrations. The committee asked the authorities to investigate Yoon (who dedicated 30 years of her life to resolving the comfort women issue as the chair of the Korean Council) for what it described as child abuse and a violation of the Juvenile Protection Act. The Joint Action Committee justified those charges on the grounds that the Wednesday demonstrations, under the lead of the Korean Council, have “psychologically abused juveniles by indoctrinating them with the concept of sexual slavery.”

“The Korean Council and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family are organizations that have committed unforgivable human rights violations by laying bare the shameful history of the comfort women in all its detail, when that history should have been kept hidden,” the Joint Action Committee contended. On May 19, the day before the 1440th Wednesday demonstration, the group held another demonstration opposing the comfort women statues that doubled as a “press conference for a comfort women investigation.” While the comfort woman statue is officially known as the “Statue of Peace” and often called “Statue of a Girl” in Korea, the Joint Action Committee uses a derogatory term based on the Japanese name for the statue.

The two demonstrations were hosted by Jeong Gwang-je, secretary general of the Joint Action Committee and a member of the board at the Syngman Rhee School. The principle of that school is Rhee Young-hoon, former professor at Seoul National University and the primary author of the books “Anti-Japan Tribalism” and “Struggle Against Anti-Japan Tribalism.” Another person who contributed essays to those two books is Lee Woo-yeon, a researcher at the Nakseongdae Economic Research Institute, who gave a presentation on the history of the organization during the Joint Action Committee’s inaugural press conference on Dec. 2, 2019. In effect, the same people are behind the Syngman Rhee School, the Nakseongdae Economic Research Institute, and the Joint Action Committee for Investigating Anti-Japanese Statues.

If Rhee Young-hoon and Lee Woo-yeon are behind the academic attack on movements advocating on behalf of the former comfort women and victims of forced labor during the Japanese colonial occupation, Jeong Gwang-je is leading the charge in the civic arena, denigrating the comfort woman statues and a statue to victims of forced labor in front of Yongsan Station as being “anti-Japanese statues” and demanding their removal. Rhee raised the hackles of groups that advocate for the victims by the description in his two books of the imperial Japanese army’s comfort women system, which is generally regarded as a system of wartime sexual slavery and a crime against humanity perpetrated by the state. “The Japanese army’s comfort stations constituted an intense-labor market involving high risks and high returns, in comparison to the state-sponsored prostitution in the rear,” Rhee wrote.

On the morning of May 20, when the 1440th Wednesday demonstration was held, these groups’ verbal hate escalated into physical violence. A man in his 20s damaged a comfort woman statue in the Heukseok neighborhood of Seoul’s Dongjak District by slamming a rock onto its face, leading to his arrest by the police.

Japanese conservative paper says statutes represent “anti-Japanese hatred”

The Japanese press has also engaged in the controversy. Japan’s conservative newspaper Sankei Shimbun ran an editorial on the second page of its Wednesday edition titled, “Stop the anti-Japanese demonstrations and remove the [comfort woman] statues.” “We hope that the comfort woman statues, which symbolize anti-Japanese hatred, will be quickly removed,” the paper said. That revives the calls for the statues’ removal that Japan made following the agreement reached on Dec. 28, 2015, by former South Korean President Park Geun-hye and current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“South Korea’s conservative parties, conservative press, and far-right groups appears to be launching an attack in concert with the Japanese with the goal of removing the comfort woman statues, bringing the Wednesday demonstrations to a halt, and neutralizing the Korean Council,” said a veteran figure who is familiar with the history of advocacy for the former comfort women.

“There are forces that are misrepresenting and denigrating our demonstrations, but we will stand strong and continue holding them,” said Lee Tae-hui during the demonstration on Wednesday. Lee is head of Peace, a Butterfly Network, a youth organization that is seeking a solution to the comfort women issue.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer, Park Yoon-kyung, staff reporter, and Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]

button that move to original korean article (클릭시 원문으로 이동하는 버튼)

Related stories

Most viewed articles