In July 2020, it was reported that a sculpture titled “Eternal Atonement” had been installed at the Korea Botanic Garden in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province, depicting a figure modeled on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe kneeling before a statue representing a comfort woman.
This article records a July 29, 2020 Sankei Shimbun column that connected the sculpture with former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s kneeling gesture in South Korea in 2015 and with a question raised in Anti-Japan Tribalism, edited by Lee Young-hoon, concerning responsibility within Korean society for the historical treatment of women who became comfort women.

2020-07-29
In July 2020, a new season of the TBS drama Hanzawa Naoki began airing in Japan, recalling the enormous public reaction to a dramatic kneeling scene in the first season broadcast in 2013.
At around the same time, reports emerged of a sculpture in South Korea titled “Eternal Atonement,” depicting a male figure modeled on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe kneeling before a comfort-woman statue.
The following is from the Sankei Shimbun column “Sankei Sho” published on July 29, 2020.
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2020-07-29
“Was it not we Koreans who deceived women from poor families into becoming comfort women…and subjected them to such social contempt that they had no choice but to live their lives in silence?” — Anti-Japan Tribalism
The following is from today’s Sankei Sho.
The second part of the television drama Hanzawa Naoki on TBS began this month.
The first series, broadcast in 2013, became enormously popular and produced the catchphrase “baigaeshi,” or “double payback.”
One of the scenes that drew the greatest response was in the final episode, when Owada, Hanzawa’s archrival, was forced to kneel in apology.
The tendency to demand complete submission from another person also spread through society.
When major corporations became involved in scandals, calls for their executives to “kneel and apologize” erupted across the internet.
There were also repeated cases in which angry people attempted to force railway employees or shop workers to kneel, sometimes resulting in court cases.
Perhaps he, too, was influenced by the trend.
Two years later, former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama traveled all the way to South Korea and performed what the column described as a kneeling apology.
The setting was the former prison site in Seoul where Korean independence activists had once been incarcerated.
Hatoyama removed his shoes and knelt before a monument.
He also said that Japan should continue apologizing until South Korea said that it had apologized enough.
South Korean newspapers gave extensive coverage to the event and used it to criticize Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by contrasting his position with Hatoyama’s.
The wishes of some local media, the column argued, were later realized in an unexpected form.
A sculpture titled “Eternal Atonement” was installed at the Korea Botanic Garden in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province, in northeastern South Korea.
A figure modeled on Prime Minister Abe was shown kneeling before a comfort-woman statue.
The column characterized the sculpture as an insult to the leader of a neighboring country.
It was scheduled to be opened to the public the following month.
Opinion in South Korea was reportedly divided.
The column expressed disbelief that the work also had supporters.
“Was it not we Koreans who deceived women from poor families into becoming comfort women…and subjected them to such social contempt that they had no choice but to live their lives in silence?”
The column concluded by asking when the argument presented in Anti-Japan Tribalism, edited by Lee Young-hoon, would come to be widely accepted.