News Briefing Apr & May 2021

General comment

The 4/21 Seoul Central District Court ruling had rejected the survivors’ voices for justice, contradicting the earlier 1/8 court ruling. Many news articles and editorials reported on the ruling from a diplomatic perspective, assessing the potential impact of the ruling on Korea-Japan relations. Further, the Japanese government and historical revisionists continue to demand removal of Statue of Peace established by citizens around the world. This leaves us with the following questions: Where are the survivors’ voices in these news articles? Are the survivors being heard by the judiciary and the media? We need to challenge the media for its lack of human rights perspectives and victim-centered approaches. 

Key articles

📌 4/21 Court Ruling
S. Korean court dismisses lawsuit against Japan filed by “comfort women”

📌 Follow-up on 1/8 Court Ruling
Court orders Tokyo to disclose assets in S. Korea after ‘comfort women’ ruling
As a follow-up measure to the groundbreaking court ruling on 1/8, the Seoul Central District Court has ordered the Japanese government to disclose its assets in South Korea as part of efforts to secure reparations for the Japanese military “comfort women” plaintiffs.

📌 Debunking right-wing revisionism
The History the Japanese Government Is Trying to Erase
Ramseyer and the Right-Wing Ecosystem Suffocating Japan
Refuting Revisionists’ Attempts to Whitewash Atrocities Committed Against “Comfort Women”
Scholars such as Chelsea Szendi Scheider (author of first article) and her colleagues who wrote a comprehensive rebuttal to Ramseyer’s article had been attacked by Japanese right-wing neto uyo. This group promotes revisionist history on social media while threatening researchers. Ramseyer himself feeds off of such revisionists and had even gone so far as to openly admit that discussing the issues of Korean, Burakumin, and Okinawans in Japan allows him to make offensive remarks about minorities while avoiding the backlash he would receive if similar statements were made about American minority issues. The third article details victim-survivor Kim Soon-duk’s visit to the United States to raise awareness of the issue, and stresses the importance of remembering the history.

📌 Statue of Peace
Does Berlin need a sex slave statue?
Memorial honoring Korean ‘comfort women’ unanimously defeated by Aurora City Council
Controversial art exhibition to open in Tokyo on June 25
The first article details the struggles of establishing the Statue of Peace in Berlin, including the Japanese government’s pressures to remove the statue and the efforts of local activists to keep the symbol of peace and remember the atrocities so as to not repeat it again. In Aurora, CO, USA, a proposal to establish the statue of peace was voted down by the city council, while in Tokyo, an exhibition featuring a statue of peace is scheduled to open on June 25th.