Tag: comfort women

Here is the latest on the comfort woman fraud case involving left wing national assembly member Yoon Mee-hyang:

During the Friday press conference, Yoon read from a prepared statement before taking questions from the press, and rejected almost all accusations leveled against her. She also made it clear that she has no intention of giving up her seat. Yoon said she could not discuss all the “small details” because “a questioning by the prosecution is imminent,” referring to an ongoing criminal probe into the Korean Council.    

But while denying any misappropriation of funds, Yoon apologized for using her personal bank account to collect public donations, saying she had been “naïve to think it is okay as long as there was no problem about financial [transparency].”   

She said that after utilizing the donations, she transferred leftover funds to the Korean Council account, and added, “I have never used donations collected in my account for personal use.”  

Yoon said she has raised a total of 280 million won ($227,000) that was deposited into her personal bank account. She said she spent 230 million won of the total on projects related to comfort women victims that were outside the purview of the Korean Council, with the remainder used by the Korean Council. She added that she plans to disclose all of the details to the prosecution. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read much more at the link, but this may just be the tip of the iceberg involving this fraud. Yoon’s husband is noted convicted North Korean spy and fraudster himself.

Of the 47 surviving South Korean ‘comfort women’ 36 agreed to accept money from a fund paid for by Japan before it was closed by Seoul for not being part of a sufficient solution to the WWII legacy. https://t.co/KchOm3QDf4

— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) July 6, 2019

It looks like the Moon administration is about to scrap an agreement made with the Japanese to settle the comfort women issue:

The planned shutdown of the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation, funded by Japan, is seen as Seoul’s move to effectively discard a 2015 accord between the neighboring countries on the “comfort women” issue.

Many Korean women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. Some historians put the number at as many as 200,000. Korea was under Japan’s brutal colonization from 1910-45.

Participants call for Japan to apologize for its wartime sexual slavery at a weekly rally in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Oct. 10, 2018. Some 200,000 women, mostly Koreans, are estimated to have been forced to serve the Japanese army in front-line brothels during World War II. They are euphemistically called “comfort women.” (Yonhap)

This image provided by Seo Kyoung-duk, professor of Sungshin Women’s University, on Aug. 14, 2018, promotes a video clip on YouTube (https://youtu.be/5isUH0g_YEU) that he made to criticize Japan for its attempts to distort the history of its wartime sexual slavery. South Korea has designated Aug. 14 as national day for the former sex slaves, also known as comfort women. (Yonhap)

It appears these activists will not be happy until there are comfort women statues in every major city in the world:

Japanese diplomats in Germany are reportedly trying to obstruct a civic group’s plan to erect a “girl statue” representing wartime sex slavery victims inside a museum in Bonn.

The diplomats recently visited Marianne Pitzen, founder and chief of the Bonn Women’s Museum, following media reports that a girl statue would be installed inside, said Yi Eun-hi, an activist who is leading the project.

Over 200,000 South Korean women were abused as sex slaves by the Japanese army before and during World War II.

At the meeting with Pitzen, the Japanese diplomats insisted that the number of the so-called comfort women is difficult to calculate and that they “volunteered” to serve for Japanese soldiers.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.