By They should build this place right next to the Sodaemun Prison along with constructing a Dokdo Museum and this would allow Koreans to spend a whole day getting their anti-Japanese hate on:
A new location has been set for the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum, with efforts launched to raise money for a construction fund.
At a press conference Thursday morning at the new museum site in the Seongsan neighborhood of Seoul’s Mapo District, the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Korean Council) announced that it was beginning work on building the museum. Discussions on building the museum began in 2003 as women who had been drafted as “comfort women” in the past entered their eighties and began to pass away one by one. The women had been coerced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II. The starting point was an appeal by former comfort women asking to “help create a world without any more war or violence as people see and learn from the truth about us.” [Hankyoreh]
10:36 pm on July 22nd, 2011 1
“this would allow Koreans to spend a whole day getting their anti-Japanese hate on”
I’m no fan of nationalism and xenophobia (which walk hand-in-hand in most cases), but the above comment seems rather tasteless.
Remember that these women were young girls and women who were told they would serve in the volunteer corps, doing work in ammunition factories and hospitals. The recruiting drive made enough parents suspicious that it was not uncommon for parents to take their daughters out of school and university to marry them off just so they wouldn’t be recruited. Thousands of girls were recruited in the volunteer corps and very few returned after liberation.
11:21 pm on July 22nd, 2011 2
Agree with Teadrinker, that was an inappropriate comment. It’s always the evil Koreans who are preying on the poor, innocent, sweet little Japanese.
5:09 am on July 23rd, 2011 3
It’s like saying Jews get their anti-Nazi hate on.
5:45 am on July 23rd, 2011 4
Tasteless humor? How about this little vignette: Read up to the baseball reference that occured during the Iraq War:
From The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell
5:45 am on July 23rd, 2011 5
“It’s like saying Jews get their anti-Nazi hate on.”
Why would Jews hate anti-Nazis?
5:55 am on July 23rd, 2011 6
Dunno, I think GI Korea is right about this becoming a place to brew up anti-Japanese sentiment. That said, a memorial to those poor girls is definitely in order.
6:19 am on July 23rd, 2011 7
Please don’t use the term comfort women. The “term “comfort women” is an euphemism for enforced military sex labourer or slave. It was coined by the Japanese government and military officials, and sexual industry agents, all hoping to obscure the reality behind the term. Instead, the term “military sex slaves” is used.”
http://www.thechrysanthemums.com/
Thanks. Great blog!
6:23 am on July 23rd, 2011 8
@1: This museum will likely end up like the Soedaemun Museum that goes out of its way to promote anti-Japanese sentiment while mentioning nothing about what Koreans were doing to Koreans in that prison.
The comfort women issue is much more complex than what the activists want you to believe that the Japanese just went out and kidnapped all these women and put them in “rape rooms”. If anyone wants to read about what really happened I highly recommend reading Sarah Soh’s book, The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. In the book Soh shows how many Korean women were tricked by Korean men to work in factories and are instead locked up in brothels run by 50 year old Korean ajummas who pimped them out to the Japanese military. Other women were sold by their poor parents to Korean brokers that sell them to these brothels as well. Does anyone think these inconvenient facts that stray from the normal activists narrative will be presented at any comfort women museum?
7:49 am on July 23rd, 2011 9
#7 So, Koreans should be blamed for providing comfort women to the jolly old Japan. Koreans in the past and present love pimping women to the Japanese. Yeah I like your argument. (Where’s the green font here?????)
9:24 am on July 23rd, 2011 10
#7,
“This museum will likely end up like the Soedaemun Museum that goes out of its way to promote anti-Japanese sentiment while mentioning nothing about what Koreans were doing to Koreans in that prison.”
Oh, come on. Placing criminals and thugs as police officers is standard operating procedure for colonialists and tyrants. Koreans are fully aware that there were collaborators.
9:39 am on July 23rd, 2011 11
Hmmm…
Before too many fingers get pointed, keep in mind that it wasn’t too many years ago that Koreans were pimping out lost, stolen, and strayed Korean comfort women to AMERICAN soldiers…
…and they are still pimping out Filipnas to American soldiers… though it has been 8 or 9 years since I actually saw one get beat with a shoe by Mama because the GI demanded his money back after she refused to go all the way.
None-the-less, while I am a big supporter of constructive nationalism, Korea needs to let the hate go… and be more like America than the Balkans.
One of America’s great strengths is to quickly forgive and forget after hostilities have ceased… putting reason before emotion. England, Canada, Mexico, Germany, and Japan have all fought brutally against us but now are our greatest allies. Even the bitterness of Vietnam was pretty much forgotten after 15 years.
As the Jews direct attention at Nazis rather than Germany, Korea needs to direct its attention at Imperial Japan rather than modern Japan.
GI Korea is right.
This museum is likely to become a focal point and hateful tool for those who rally the bad aspects of nationalism to further their own political and economic ends rather than look to the future for the greater good of Korea.
This history should be remembered… but it should be remembered constructively.
10:05 am on July 23rd, 2011 12
“The comfort women issue is much more complex than what the activists want you to believe that the Japanese just went out and kidnapped all these women and put them in “rape rooms”.”
Oh, now. Semantics. In Korea, many were told they’d work in factories or as nurses, others were arrested by the police for no other reason than they were female (they weren’t dragged away, but it was kidnapping). And, yes, the were beaten and raped. That’s how pimps have been recruiting women for thousands of years.
10:06 am on July 23rd, 2011 13
“One of America’s great strengths is to quickly forgive and forget after hostilities have ceased.”
So, when’s your next trip to Cuba?
10:09 am on July 23rd, 2011 14
…and to make something clear: by “recruiting” I mean enslaving…
10:30 am on July 23rd, 2011 15
ChickenHead #10 is right. But Koreans are not capable of such advanced thought. They much prefer the emotions of hate directed backward as to the logic that should prevail.
The Japanese did nothing that Koreans do not still do. The Japanese did it for their Soldiers. The Koreans do it for Money. Koreans have no moral leg to stand on. They sold their own daughters to the clubs that serviced I and my buddies. Then they import the poor from the Philippines for the same purpose. Koreans can not cry “victim”. They have, and would again do the same to their own women, to line their pockets.
Look at their SMILING faces. “I was a sex slave to the Japanese and now we have a museum!” WEEEEEeeeee! No lasting damage I would say. They look like old Beauty Queens with those smiles. Nope. No lasting damage what so ever. If ever there was any.
“Victims” are not so happy, even after many years! They have a Museum now. This makes them Happy? Something is not right with this. Nothing like a Rape Museum
to make a girl feel all warm a special. At least in Korea 
12:25 pm on July 23rd, 2011 16
“So, when’s your next trip to Cuba?”
Probably before the cement over Castro’s mausoleum is fully set.
America took Castro personally… and that conflict is not yet over in the America psyche… with no small credit going to the concentrated Cuban exile lobby in a high-electoral vote state.
As soon as Castro dies, Cuba will be an American favorite in terms of trade and tourism… assuming they can drop their own anti-American hate… which they seem ready to do.
Interestingly, both Canada and the United States believed they were victorious in the War of 1812… as Canada defended against an American invasion and America defended against a British invasion.
Despite long-term tension and war, Canada and the United States now have one of the best relationships of any two countries and the world’s longest unguarded border.
All parties threw away their hate for each other. The Era of Good Feelings started in America after the war and I think Canada experienced a similar phenomena.
Come to think of it, the only losers in the War of 1812 were the American Indians… which Britain tried to unify against the Untied States.
That didn’t work out so well and it was all downhill from there for the next 60 years.
But even with the terrible brutality on both sides, fully ending less than a hundred years ago, there is no American hatred toward the Indians.
So. That’s that.
Once again, Korea needs to grow up in its dealings with Japan. Constantly complaining about modern Japan for the actions of Imperial Japan wears thin on an international audience which very much wants to respect the accomplishments of modern Korea but is turned off by this continued pettiness.
4:37 pm on July 23rd, 2011 17
Teadrinker 13 and ChickenHead 16: our policy against Cuba is crazy. Fidel and Raul Castro want it to continue because it helps keep them in power. On our side, leaders like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen support them while seeming to oppose them. England, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan, and Vietnam chose to reconcile with us; Cuba chooses not to. The outcome of this appeal may clarify Cuba’s policy.
9:29 pm on July 23rd, 2011 18
#16,
Remember a couple of years ago how the American media spoke about the “opening of Vietnam”…as if everyone in the world but the US didn’t trade with Vietnam, which had, and still has as far as I know, one of the fastest rising economies in Asia.
9:42 pm on July 23rd, 2011 19
#17,
Don’t forget how your government is/was trying to punish foreign businesses from trading with Cuba when your embargo against Cuba was not mandated by the UN.
The idea was so ridiculous, Canadian politicians came up with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey-Milliken_Bill
11:11 pm on July 23rd, 2011 20
Teadrinker 19, I don’t forget it, I’m well aware of it. Alienating our friends is part of the insanity of our Cuba policy.
12:26 am on July 24th, 2011 21
It is a personal vendetta against Castro that has become institutionalized.
If the next guy doesn’t run his mouth, America and Cuba will get along just fine.
The same thing happened with Gadaffi… and, after all these years, it became payback time.
Chavez will get his, someday, if he lives that long.
Had there been anything truly vital to American or European interests, Cuba probably would have been “liberated” within days of the fall of the Soviet Union.
Upon the flimsiest of excuses, Grenada got liberated anyway.
12:47 am on July 24th, 2011 22
#21,
“It is a personal vendetta against Castro that has become institutionalized.
If the next guy doesn’t run his mouth, America and Cuba will get along just fine.”
The next guy? You mean the one after the current president, Raul Castro?
I believe that the human rights condition would be worse if there was a real embargo against Cuba. My only problem with dealing with Cuba, and it’s a big one, is that most of the economy is controlled by the Castro family.
12:53 am on July 24th, 2011 23
ChickenHead 21, personal animosity may play a part. Two prominent Florida Republicans, Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, are nephews of Fidel Castro’s ex-wife.
6:01 am on July 24th, 2011 24
#7 Frank, “comfort women” describes it quite well. Everyone knows what it means. I know I took comfort with korean women working the bars in the 80s and 90s. Some of them were there because their daddy had borrowed money from the club to put his son, the girl’s brother thru college. The girl was working to pay off the loan. She could pay it off faster if she took american soldiers to her “room” for a “short time”.
So don’t get all boohoo about COMFORT WOMEN. They were stronger than you.