ABSTRACT
On May 9, 2017, former human rights jurist Moon Jae-in was elected president of South Korea, replacing Park Guen-hye, who had been impeached and removed from office in December 2016. One of Moon’s first official actions was to express dissatisfaction with the December 2015 Japan–ROK agreement on the comfort women problem, which to the dismay of many Koreans, his predecessor had endorsed unilaterally. Besides Japan, the agreement appears to have pleased primarily the United States, which worked behind the scenes to bring both sides together on the issue as a means of strengthening its tripartite military alliance with the two feuding states.
U.N. human rights bodies have criticized the comfort women entente for not including a consultative mechanism. Redress, they point out, includes “the right to compensation and rehabilitation and the right to truth, reparation and assurances of non-repetitions.” For its part, the Japanese government even now rejects the term “military sexual slavery” widely used by world human rights bodies and refuses to comply with the recommendations they have issued over the past 20 years. Japanese politicians continue to assert publicly that the comfort women were not victims but willing participants.
Today, we cannot predict how this controversy will play out. What is certain, however, is that only the victim-centered approach urged by U.N. human rights organizations can bring us closer to a genuine resolution. This is not a simple diplomatic dispute between Japan and South Korea but a human rights issue that affects all victim-survivors in Asia and the Pacific and also has important implications for the elimination of violence against women in contemporary armed conflicts.
