A girl statue accusing the sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army was set up on September 28 in Berlin, capital of Germany.

At issue is the fact that the dumbfounded Japanese authorities including chief cabinet secretary are venting their uneasiness and anxieties in order to get the girl statue removed, uttering that they “would request for its removal” and they “would act by approaching to different people concerned to explain Japan’s view.”

As for the girl statues, they are a reflection of the resolve of the international society at large which would never pardon the heinous crime of sexual slavery perpetrated by Japan.

This act of Japan is an outright challenge to the international society as well as an impudent act of infringing once again upon the universal rights of women and an extreme moral turpitude.

With the revelation in early 1990s about full story of the sexual slavery crime committed by the Imperial Japanese army, the then chief cabinet secretary Kono released a statement in 1993, admitting the fact and reflecting on it.

Japan’s act of having forced sexual slavery was the first and only case in the war history of world, and it is a heinous crime of abusing women’s right, which was carried out as a national policy under the direct and full involvement by the government and military authority, starting from its design down to its implementation.

This fact is attested by a large number of data and video materials which are continuously brought to light. Some of them are a document entitled “recruitment of staff needed to operate military comfort stations” worked out by the Legal Affairs Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of War and sealed by Imamura, the then Army Chief of the General Staff, and Umezu, the then Director of the Legal Affairs Bureau on March 4, 1938; “royal edict” No. 300 issued by the Japanese “emperor” in March 1942, referring to reorganization of the structure of the Ministry of War in order to handle the matters related to the military “comfort stations”; the wartime telegram of March 12, 1942, wired by the former Commander of the Imperial Japanese Army stationed in Taiwan to the Japanese Prime Minister Tojo, requesting more staff needed for controlling the sex slaves.

Many victims of the sexual slavery who survived in the DPRK and other countries had to lie grievously on their deathbeds cursing Japan, without settling their lifelong grudges. This is the stark reality.

Japan has not even acknowledged its criminal fact of having forcibly drafted tens of thousands of women to coerce them into sexual slavery and worse still, erased this fact in the textbooks. Such being the case, what would be the view Japan is going to explain to the international society?

Does Japan have the qualifications or face to talk about “championing women’s rights” at the United Nations and other international arena?

I am asking if the Japanese authorities aren’t ashamed and don’t feel guilty at standing in front of their mothers who gave them life and raised them and looking into the honest eyes of their children while continuing to carry out the shameless acts of negating their past.

In August 2014, the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) requested that the Japanese government make full reparation to the victims of sexual slavery and bring to trial those held accountable. And in May 2017, the UN Human Rights Council released a report condemning the Japanese government for having permitted the history textbooks with distortions of the sexual slavery crime to pass through the national vetting procedure.

So far, girl statues and memorials condemning the sexual slavery were set up in several countries and regions of the world including Germany and Canada, and resolutions approving the setting up of statues relating to sexual slavery were adopted in California, Michigan, Georgia, San Francisco and New York of the United States, an ally of Japan. What are the indications of these realities that the international moves denouncing the Japanese crime of women’s rights abuse are more and more expanding across the world?

No matter how desperately Japan attempts to remove the statues accusing its sexual slavery, the gravest inhumane crime never seen in the history of humankind will not be concealed, nor the bitter wound engraved in the hearts of the Asian people get erased.

The more Japan tries to cling to a thinly veiled trickery to cover up its past crime by spreading money, the greater denunciation and rejection it will bump into by the international society.

Cha Hye Gyong

Researcher of Institute for Studies of Japan

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea