Former Comfort Women Were Used to Fraud People Out of Millions
I am actually not surprised by any of this. These elderly women have long been exploited for political purposes, so it is no surprise that they were also exploited for financial purposes as well:
Lee Yong-soo, who was forced to serve as a sex slave for Japanese soldiers during World War II, on Tuesday called on prosecutors to investigate the head of a charity that has been looking after her. The 92-year-old woman sobbed as she made her accusations. Lee came to prominence when she testified before American lawmakers about the brutal treatment she endured and played a pivotal role in getting the U.S. Congress to adopt a resolution seeking an apology from Japan. She is virtually the symbol of efforts over the past three decades to get the Japanese government to take full responsibility for forcing women into sexual slavery. But on Tuesday she told reporters, “I did somersaults while they took the money.” Lee added that the head of the charity that supported her, called the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, “shed crocodile tears” at the grave of another former sex slave who died in 2019. Lee gave other accounts of former sex slaves being used by the charity for financial gain.
The activist group is facing snowballing allegations of embezzling donations. Up to W3.7 billion in donations and state grants remains unaccounted for (US$1=W1,233). Yoon Mee-hyang, the head of the charity, took donations on 11 different occasions when a former sex slave died or traveled overseas. They were transferred directly into Yoon’s personal bank account and is now thought to amount to tens of millions of dollars. There are other accounts that the charity spent far less money than it received, collected donations without specifying a clear purpose for their use, and in some years gave not a single penny to the victims.
Chosun Ilbo
You can read more at the link, but the article doesn’t mention this, but this fraud case also has ties back to a convicted spy for North Korea. The comfort women have been long used as a wedge issue between South Korea and Japan and now we know there was a convicted North Korean spy involved in running the organization that supported them.
Unsurprisingly the Moon administration has not commented on this and the head of the ruling party said this was not a serious issue.
What happened to the women was detestable. And those who abused them again should be treated as war criminals now.
What’s even more detestable is the fact that the sons and daughters of that generation of women were the ones who were committing the crimes against them.
You are right, Tim. It’s just tragic how utterly evil these people turned out.
We all know she’s going to hide behind National Assembly immunity from prosecution.
You are quoting from the Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s version of the ultra-conservative daily which obviously will have a very good motive to see one of the ruling Democratic party to be dragged thru the mud, which makes for a good political score.
Do you have any other non-partial source which is politically centered or neutral? And no, the East Asian Forum Society of South Korean Rightists with Gordon Chang at the top isn’t a neutral source either.
The comfort women are ripe for exploitation by the Korean left. There is the famously overwhelming anti-Japanese sentiment among the Korean general population. Add to that the overwhelming sympathy that would lead to Koreans not hesitating about donating money and not questioning where and how the money was spent, you have the perfect formula for political and financial exploitation.
If the Korean left were really thinking about these women, they should help them find closure and live the rest of their lives in peace. But no, the Korean left being the Korean left cannot help but drag these women to noisy weekly protests in front of the Japanese embassy, so they could be used to yell out their anti-Japanese slogans and collect money to finance their lavish lifestyles.
Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Korean left skimmed off the 1 billion Yen the Japanese government gave to the Korean government as part of the comfort women settlement.
TOK, they already have.
Set, King Mac took care of all those pesky war crimes while the world was watching Nuremberg with rapt attention. You know things like no prosecution as long as you turn over your notebooks on murdering prisoners with poison gases, comfort women? They were just Koreans, Chinese mostly, not real humans like the Japanese. We sentenced everyone to prison and after their release made sure they returned to political life. In some quarters Mac was worshipped equally with the Emperor and believed he was the emperor’s equal.
MacArthur’s no hero in my book. His Air Force was caught on the ground essentially 8 hours after Pearl Harbor. And I heard from an officer who served in 7th Infantry “Intel” that Mac told them not to send more Chinese PoWs for interrogation at HQ as “the Chinese weren’t going to get involved.