Published on August 6, 2019.
Continuing from the previous chapter, this article introduces an essay by Otaka Miki published in the monthly magazine WiLL.
It examines not only human rights abuses against North Korean defector women in northeastern China, but also South Korea’s prostitution industry, kisaeng tourism, the Japan Christian Women’s Organization, the Korean Council, and the activities of Matsui Yayori, tracing how the issue of prostitution was shifted into the comfort women issue.
It also criticizes the Asahi Shimbun’s検証 articles on its comfort women reporting, its withdrawal of Yoshida Seiji’s false testimony, and the distorted comfort women narratives that continued to spread overseas even after the 2015 Japan-South Korea agreement.

August 6, 2019.
Not only human rights violations against North Korean defector women in northeastern China, but even within South Korea, rape victimization is pointed out as being about forty times that of Japan, and according to an announcement by South Korea’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which at first kept it strictly hidden,
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
Licensed prostitution = sex slavery?
Not only human rights violations against North Korean defector women in northeastern China, but even within South Korea, rape victimization is pointed out as being about forty times that of Japan, and according to an announcement by South Korea’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which at first kept it strictly hidden, but which Hankyoreh 21 scooped and disclosed, the scale of the prostitution industry as of 2010 was as much as 8.71 trillion won, about 630 billion yen, accounting for as much as about 5 percent of South Korea’s GDP.
This was despite the fact that, six years earlier, the Roh Moo-hyun administration had enacted the Special Law on Sex Trade.
There have also been cases in which South Korean women engaged in the sex industry demonstrated, saying, “Do not take away from us the right to freedom of occupation!” but if, even after crackdowns on the sex industry, it was still this flourishing an industry, one can easily infer what the situation before 2004 must have been.
To begin with, the origin of the comfort women issue lies in kisaeng tourism, in which South Korea, as a national policy for earning foreign currency, encouraged its own women to engage in prostitution.
Takahashi Kikue of the Japan Christian Women’s Organization, who participated in the First Asian Solidarity Conference held in Seoul in 1992 and, together with the Korean Council and Matsui and others, played the role of igniting the comfort women issue, stated as follows.
“It was in July 1973 that the appeal of the Korean Church Women United was issued, saying, ‘Japanese men, relying on their economic superiority, are making Korean women sexual slaves in order to satisfy their own desires.’
That is when our movement began” (Confronting the Prostitution Problem, Akashi Shoten).
Takahashi also became indignant, saying, “It is said that South Korea had previously made up for its trade deficit through the special demand from Vietnam—the lives of young men—and is now paying for it with the bodies of young women.
The special demand from Vietnam was 170 million dollars, while tourism income is 270 million dollars, so the latter is a source of income that exceeds the former,” and, in cooperation with the Korean Church Women United, she reportedly distributed leaflets opposing kisaeng tourism at Haneda and Seoul airports.
After that, she met Yun Chung-ok, the first representative of the Korean Council, on Jeju Island, and in December 1990 the Japan Christian Women’s Organization invited Yun Chung-ok to Japan and built a cooperative relationship.
It was also the Japan Christian Women’s Organization where Matsui and the others first placed their office.
It did not take much time for the activists to shift the issue from prostitution to the past comfort women issue.
If it was prostitution, it would be nothing more than a domestic problem of South Korea and North Korea, but if it could be transferred to the comfort women issue, they must have judged that it could be used as a diplomatic card to condemn Japan.
In 2013, I attended a symposium on comfort women held by the aforementioned VAWW RAC.
Since Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki of Chuo University was participating as a panelist, at the end I threw out the following question.
“According to Professor Yoshimi’s theory, licensed prostitution equals sex slavery.
If so, it is said that 60,000 Korean women are currently engaged in the sex industry in Japan, and since they too are poor sex slaves, could VAWW RAC also undertake rescue activities for them?”
Then Professor Yoshimi answered in a voice that seemed to disappear, “It is a major problem, so if we have spare capacity…”
This question caused a stir in the hall, and some people laughed scornfully, but I was serious.
To the panelists on the platform who were trying to judge the comfort women issue by present-day values, I wanted to ask, “Rather than a case from seventy years ago, in which many of the people concerned, Japanese and comfort women alike, have passed away and the truth is difficult to clarify, should you not be discussing the resolution of sexual victimization of women on the Korean Peninsula, which is being threatened in the present progressive tense?
Do your activities not, as a result, lead to concealing the tragedy right before your eyes?”
On the following year, August 5, 2014, the Asahi Shimbun published検証 articles titled “Facing the Essence of the Comfort Women Issue Directly” and “How We Reported the Comfort Women Issue: Answering Readers’ Questions.”
Questions and criticisms had arisen from various fields regarding articles that had been persistently reported by the Asahi since the 1980s, and at last it had no choice but to raise the white flag.
That said, the検証 article, which merely retracted only the false testimony of Yoshida Seiji, even brought up rape incidents in the Bosnian conflict that had absolutely nothing to do with the comfort women, and was nothing but worthless content that merely shifted the focus of the comfort women issue from “forcible taking away” to “women’s human rights.”
Just as expected, even two years after the Asahi Shimbun’s apology reporting, the comfort women issue overseas was far from resolved and had instead continued to deteriorate even further.
Even after the 2015 Japan-South Korea agreement, which created the occasion for the establishment of the comfort women foundation that was unilaterally dissolved just recently while ignoring Japan’s repeated warnings, anti-Japanese lobbying activities in the United States by Korean-American and Chinese-affiliated activists accelerated, and moves to include descriptions of the comfort women issue that do not accord with historical fact in California high school textbooks also accelerated.
I would also like to introduce part of what was reported around the world in response to the Japan-South Korea agreement.
“The so-called comfort women system was the systematic and organized sexual enslavement of hundreds of thousands of young Asian women.
What initially began as ordinary prostitution grew into a huge industry for the purpose of sexually exploiting women.
It was a system of rape, human trafficking, confinement, and torture comparable to the Holocaust” (U.S. Counterpunch, December 31, 2015).
“She was forced to have sex with forty men a day.
At last Japan apologized for its horrific comfort women system.
Survivor Chong Ok-san was only thirteen when she was abducted by police from her home in Hanyong County in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.
Many victims were between fourteen and eighteen, and the reason was that the army wanted virgins.
There were cases in which families who resisted abduction were killed” (U.K. The Sun, December 30, 2015).
To be continued.