Ten years after the Asahi Shimbun retracted Yoshida Seiji’s false testimony about the “forcible abduction” of Korean women as comfort women, scholarly research in Korea and the United States has increasingly rejected the forced-abduction and sex-slave narratives, and even long-taboo criticism of advocacy groups such as the Korean Council/Justice and Memory has surfaced.
At the same time, anti-Japanese propaganda centered on comfort women statues continues to spread globally, exemplified by the monument in Stintino, Italy, and the correction of entrenched fictions remains extremely difficult.
Tracing the origins of the problem back to Asahi’s erroneous reporting in 1982 and its neglect of early expert criticism, the article argues that these missteps allowed the issue to grow into a major international dispute that all Japanese citizens and readers worldwide must confront.

Why does the fiction of “forced abduction” refuse to disappear? — Ten years after Asahi retracted its comfort women reports, denial studies in Korea and the United States advance while anti-Japanese propaganda spreads worldwide.
Ten years have passed since the Asahi Shimbun retracted as false the “Yoshida testimony” on which it had reported the forcible abduction of comfort women.
In Korea and the United States, academic research has advanced that denies the theory of forced abduction and the narrative of sex slaves, and in Korea criticism of the Justice and Memory Council (the former Korean Council), which had been taboo, as well as suspicions of wrongdoing, have come to the surface.
Meanwhile, anti-Japanese propaganda through comfort women statues continues around the world, and correcting the fictions remains difficult.
The comfort woman statue installed in the Italian city of Stintino symbolizes the distortion of history, and fabricated stories about Japan continue to spread throughout the international community.
The erroneous reporting by Asahi, which is the starting point of the problem, has existed since 1982 (Showa 57), and as a result of ignoring early denials by specialists, it developed into a huge international issue.
This is content that must be read by the Japanese people and readers around the world.

The following is from today’s Sankei Shimbun.
As for the matter of the comfort woman statue installed on public land in Stintino, Italy, it is a ludicrous fact that the great majority of the Japanese public, myself included, have learned of for the first time.
As readers know, I am a person who not only, through a certain connection, established a branch office in Rome, but also has loved Italy and the Italian cinema represented by Fellini.
However, this city of Stintino, which I have now encountered for the first time, is a foolish city that possesses only the lowest level of intellect in human history, and is a city that deserves contempt for staining the name of Italy.
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for people all around the world.

“Misunderstandings over ‘forced abduction’ remain uncorrected”
Ten years since Asahi retracted its comfort women reports
Denying research progresses in Korea and the United States

On the 5th, ten years will have passed since the Asahi Shimbun acknowledged as false the testimony of Yoshida Seiji (now deceased), who had claimed that women in Korea were forcibly taken away during the war in order to make them comfort women, and retracted the related articles.
During this time, research denying the theory of forced abduction of comfort women has been published in Korea and the United States, and criticisms of former comfort women support groups, which used to be taboo in Korea, have begun to be raised publicly.
On the other hand, misunderstandings surrounding the comfort women issue still cannot be dispelled, and the reality has emerged that it is not easy to correct the “fabricated stories” that have spread throughout the world.
(by Takao Harakawa)

In July 2019, a collection of academic papers that examined Japan–Korea historical issues, titled Anti-Japan Tribalism, was published in Korea and became a bestseller.
“It was nothing more than a system of private licensed prostitution that was mobilized and organized for military purposes.”
So explained Lee Young-hoon (former professor at Seoul National University and head of the Syngman Rhee School) regarding the comfort women, pointing out that the basis for the theory of forced abduction rested on Yoshida’s lies and on testimonies by former comfort women that contained many problems.
He dismissed as “groundless and preposterous” the claim that there were 200,000 comfort women, and he also rejected the sex-slave narrative, pointing to the “ignorance and prejudice of activists and researchers.”
In the United States, in 2020, Harvard University’s Professor J. Mark Ramseyer published a paper that empirically demonstrated that comfort women were not sex slaves but had concluded contracts with the comfort station operators that combined advance payments with fixed terms of labor.
Lee and others were subjected to emotional criticism from the media and academics.
Professor Ramseyer, for his part, rebutted U.S. scholars who had criticized him, saying that they appeared to be “taking Yoshida’s claims at face value.”

One major political development over these ten years was the agreement between the Japanese and Korean governments regarding the comfort women issue.
On December 28, 2015, then–Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se held talks in Seoul and confirmed the “final and irreversible resolution” of the comfort women issue, agreeing that both sides would refrain from criticizing or accusing each other “in the United Nations and the international community.”
On the basis of the agreement, the Japanese government contributed 1 billion yen to the “Reconciliation and Healing Foundation” established by the South Korean government to support former comfort women.
Of the 47 former comfort women who were still alive at the time of the agreement, 35 accepted the foundation’s cash payment program.
However, on the Korean side, the Moon Jae-in administration, which replaced the Park Geun-hye administration in power at the time of the agreement, effectively nullified the agreement and announced the dissolution of the foundation.
The remaining funds contributed by Japan—about 5.9 billion won (approximately 640 million yen)—remain up in the air today.

Anti-Japanese expansion through comfort women statues

“Yoon Mi-hyang is using the comfort women from a pro–North Korean, North Korea-subservient position to conduct anti-state and anti-South Korean activities.”
So said Joo Ok-soon, who has called for the removal of the comfort women statues established by the former comfort women support group “Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan,” now known as the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Justice and Memory Council), at an international symposium on the comfort women issue held in July in Nagatachō, Tokyo.
The predecessor of the Justice and Memory Council, the Korean Council, had since January 1992 held weekly Wednesday rallies in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul to protest the Japanese government.
It has expanded its anti-Japanese campaign by making use of the United Nations and the U.S. Congress, seeking to spread the comfort women issue at home and abroad.

Internal strife erupted around the Justice and Memory Council.
In May 2020, Lee Yong-soo, a former comfort woman who had long worked with Yoon, charged that donations collected by the Justice and Memory Council were unaccounted for and criticized the organization, saying (as reported by the Chosun Ilbo), “For thirty years I have been deceived as much as one can be deceived and used as much as one can be used.”
This accusation led to the exposure of the Justice and Memory Council’s financial scandal.
Its cozy ties with North Korea also became known.
Yoon was charged with crimes including embezzlement of donations and was found guilty in both the first and second trials.

Although criticism of the Justice and Memory Council, which had been taboo in Korea, has now become possible, the organization continues its anti-Japanese activities.
In June of this year, at the proposal of the Justice and Memory Council, a comfort woman statue was erected on public land in the Italian city of Stintino, together with a monument that clearly states that “large numbers of women were abducted and made into sex slaves, a crime comparable to the Holocaust.”

First published in 1982 (Showa 57)
Early doubts about the “Yoshida testimony”

On August 5 and 6, 2014 (Heisei 26), the Asahi Shimbun ran a series of feature articles titled “Reflecting on the Comfort Women Issue,” reviewing the paper’s coverage of comfort women.
In the August 5 article, Asahi disclosed that it had reported the testimony of Yoshida Seiji, who had long claimed that women in Korea were forcibly taken away, “at least 16 times,” and announced that it judged Yoshida’s testimony to be false and was retracting 16 related articles (in December that year it added two more retractions).
Asahi first carried Yoshida’s account of having forcibly taken women away in Korea in the Osaka headquarters morning edition of September 2, 1982 (Showa 57).
Reporting on the content of a lecture Yoshida gave in Osaka, the article conveyed statements such as: “In one week in early summer of 1943 (Showa 18) on Jeju Island, I ‘rounded up’ 200 young Korean women.”

Doubts about the testimony that women were forcibly taken away in Korea had been raised early on.
In March 1992 (Heisei 4), contemporary historian Ikuhiko Hata conducted on-site research on Jeju Island, and local journalists and elders unanimously rejected Yoshida’s testimony.
The Sankei Shimbun reported Hata’s findings in its morning edition of April 30, 1992.

In the pages on which it retracted the articles, Asahi did not offer an apology.
The report by the third-party committee set up by Asahi to examine its comfort women reporting criticized Asahi’s initial failure to apologize, stating that “out of excessive awareness of the opposing public opinion and of the stances of other newspapers toward the Asahi Shimbun, it addressed only them as its counterpart and lacked the perspective of facing its role as a news organization and its general readership, which is not what a newspaper should do.”

The Sankei Shimbun asked the Asahi Shimbun Company how it currently views its retraction of the Yoshida-related articles ten years ago.
The public relations department of Asahi responded: “Our views and position, as announced at the time in our pages and on our website, have not changed.
Based on the observations and proposals of the third-party committee that examined our comfort women coverage and reported in December 2014, we will continue, day by day, to pursue interviews and reporting.
By becoming a newspaper that can be trusted, we hope to fulfill our responsibility.”