WWII: ‘COMFORT WOMEN’

A Japanese rock band has reignited the bitter outrage of Koreans, both in the north and south, over the Imperial Japanese Army’s use of Korean women as sex slaves – known as ‘comfort women’ – at a time when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is threatening war with the U.S. and its allies.

‘KOREAN WOMEN ARE ALL PROSTITUTES!’: JAPANESE ROCK SONG MOCKING ‘COMFORT WOMEN’ WHO WERE FORCED TO HAVE SEX WITH SOLDIERS IN WAR IS BANNED AMID FEARS IT COULD ESCALATE WAR
Around 80,000 to 200,000 women from the occupied territories were made to provide sex for soldiers at ‘comfort stations’ set up across Asia-Pacific in World War II

Mail Online
April 5, 2013

North Korea's increasingly fragile relationship with the outside world is being further threatened by an obscure Japanese rock band who have released a song insulting Korean women.

The song, by a band called Scramble, addresses the sensitive issue of 'comfort women' - the name given to the women forced into prostitution by the Japanese in the Second World War.

The release of the song comes at a turbulent time - Kim Jong-un leader of North Korea has been issuing increasingly threatening messages to countries which he perceives as enemies of the rogue state.

The song called Slashing Koreans has a video to go with it and mocks and encourages violence against the surviving women, who are now in their 80s and 90s.

Scramble is an ultra-right and little-known band in Japan, but they seem determined to boost their profile with the stunt.

A CD of the inflammatory song and a translated text was sent to a shelter for the surviving 'comfort women' in Gwangiu, south of Seoul, South Korea, last week.

As a result, a group of eight elderly former 'comfort women' has filed a defamation suit against the Japanese band, in a move that will only fan the flames of Korean dissatisfaction with other nations.

The song is said to be so offensive that the official North Korean news outlet, the Korean Central News Agency, dedicated a whole day's editorial to it, in an unusual break from its daily fare of criticising America.

After the war, many of the women were brutally slaughtered and their story was first told in 1991.

'Comfort woman' is a translation of the Japanese euphemism, jugun ianfu, (military comfort women), referring to women of various ethnic and national backgrounds and social circumstances who became sex slaves for the Japanese troops before and during World War Two.

Military brothels existed across the Asia Pacific region in areas occupied by the Japanese forces.

There is no way to determine precisely how many women were forced to serve as comfort women, but estimates range from 80,000 to 200,000, of whom about 80 per cent of whom are thought to have been Korean.

Some of the girls forced into sexual slavery were as young as 12 years old, according to Chinese legal groups.

Japanese women and women of other occupied territories (such as Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma and the Pacific islands) were also used as comfort women, according to a report by San Francisco State University.

The authorities believed the comfort system would enhance the morale of the military and help prevent soldiers from committing sexual violence toward women of occupied territories, which became a real concern after the infamous Nanjing Massacre in 1937.

They were also concerned with the health of the troops, which prompted close supervision of the hygienic conditions in the comfort stations to help keep STDs under control.

When the war ended, the only military tribunal concerning the sexual abuse of comfort women took place in Batavia (now Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia) in 1948.

Several Japanese military officers were convicted for having forced the 35 Dutch women involved in the case into comfort stations.

The issue began to emerge in Korea only in the late 1980s.

The Japanese government admitted deception, coercion and official involvement in the recruitment of comfort women in August 1993, but critics said they needed to go much further.

After Japan's surrender it is reported that it set up a similar system there for American GIs, with tacit approval from U.S. authorities,

Japanese officials visited a New Jersey town in April 2012 to ask for a memorial to the thousands of Korean women and girls who were enslaved to be removed.