ABSTRACT
Song Sin-do, a Korean living in Japan, is a former comfort woman who launched the fourth survivor lawsuit against the Japanese state in the spring of 1993. Since then, this author has stood by Song’s side in her long and bitter struggle to obtain justice from the government. Listening carefully as she recounts her experiences, I have come to appreciate how crucial and yet how very difficult it is to grasp her deepest feelings. When the semiprivate Asian Women’s Fund was created in 1995, I watched how Song agonized over whether to accept the fund’s “atonement” payout, until one day she finally shouted, “Just give me official compensation! I don’t want anyone’s private donation!”
On August 30, 2011, the Constitutional Court of Korea ruled that Seoul must resume bilateral talks with Tokyo. The Democratic Party of Japan, then in power, appeared to take up the challenge, once again focusing public attention on a possible solution to the comfort women dispute. Japanese society, however, was narrowly focused on a “realistic proposal,” meaning one that was politically feasible to implement. A truly realistic proposal is one that the victim-survivors can agree to. Consequently, in June 2014, the international redress movement recommended “a settlement that victimized women can accept” as the surest, quickest way forward. But on December 28, 2015, the Japanese and South Korean foreign ministers announced a political compromise that only the two governments could accept. The survivors themselves were not consulted and victims of other nationalities were excluded. Today, the struggle for justice continues.
