Lee Yong-soo, a surviving victim of Japan's wartime sexual slavery, has called on the Korean government to bring the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), saying that the Japanese government has been ignoring a local court's ruling, which ordered the Japanese government to pay compensation to 12 Korean victims.
Her request follows the publishing of a controversial paper by Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer, which has brought serious debate in international academia over his claim that victims of sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army were “voluntary prostitutes.”
Lee, 93, held a press conference at the Korea Press Center in Seoul, Tuesday, to call for the Moon Jae-in government to bring the “comfort women” issue to the ICJ. Comfort women is a loose translation of a Japanese euphemism for women who were forced to provide sex to members of the Imperial Japanese Army.
“The Japanese government has been ignoring the Korean court's ruling, even disclaiming the appeal of the case. Rather, it has the audacity to state that the Korean court's ruling goes against international law,” Lee said during the press conference.
While the Korean government has stated that it respects the court's judgment, the Japanese government has said that Korea was breaching international law by failing to abide by the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. Tokyo says claims over the colonial past of the Korean Peninsula under Japanese rule were settled in the treaty, with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga saying Japan would never accept the Korean court ruling.
During the press conference, Lee also broached the topic of Ramseyer's paper, accusing the Japanese government of lobbying the professor to support its claims.
“The Japanese government is making the professor from Harvard Law School lie about their crimes,” Lee said. “I am not asking for money for compensation, but for the Japanese government's full acknowledgement of its crimes and an apology to the victims. There is no other way left but for the Korean government to bring the issue to the ICJ to disclose the crimes of the Japanese government in the realm of international law.”
Lee said that the ICJ's judgment on the case would help settle the decades-long conflict between Seoul and Tokyo over the thorny historical issue, as well as help the countries turn to future-oriented relations.
But some experts said that bringing the comfort women issue to the ICJ would not be an ideal way to solve the issue, regardless of whether the situation would be favorable to the victims through the ICJ review.
“Some say the ICJ review would be more favorable to Tokyo, as many members of the ICJ are from countries that have a history of imperialism. But recently, an increasing number of the ICJ members are from countries that have a history of being colonized, meaning many would review the comfort women issue from the perspective of a colonized country,” Nam Ki-jeong, professor at Seoul National University's Institute for Japanese Studies, told The Korea Times.
“But bringing the comfort women issue to the ICJ would not be an ideal choice either both Seoul or Tokyo, as they would need to make a full commitment to the case, when it is more likely that other thorny diplomatic issues, including forced wartime labor and territorial disputes over the Dokdo Islets, would be included in the list, for such a legal review by the ICJ.”
Nam said that such thorny historical issues need to be dealt with according to the historical context and sentiments towards the issue in both countries, and so a review by the ICJ would not meet such conditions.