Filmmaker wants Japan to remember the 'comfort women'

NHK recently aired a documentary that touched on the 50th anniversary of normalized relations between South Korea and Japan. The main theme was how after World War II Japan prioritized state-to-state relationships with countries it had invaded during the war. Individual victims were sacrificed to expedience, especially with regard to South Korea, a former colony. Many of Korea's postwar leaders worked with their Japanese overlords during the war, and afterward they were desperate to build an economic base with Japan's help.

In 1991, a 67-year-old Korean named Kim Hak-sun became the first former "comfort woman" to talk publicly about her experience sexually servicing Japanese Imperial troops. The revelation was embarrassing not only to the Japanese government, but to South Korea's as well, since all war-related reparations had been resolved in 1965 when the two countries signed a treaty. Though NHK did not question Kim's testimony or the Japanese military's involvement in the comfort station system, it over-generalized the government's subsequent approach to the issue by focusing on its dealings with Dutch women who had been forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers in Indonesia. The program gave the impression that these women and the Dutch government feel that Japan has been forthright in addressing their claims.

South Korea has not been as forgiving, owing to its more complicated relationship with Japan. Many of the comfort women were recruited and/or kidnapped by fellow Koreans, even if they ended up serving the Japanese, and their government's guilt over its forebears' historical complicity has been exploited by Japanese elements trying to neutralize their own guilt by splitting hairs as to who did the recruiting and whether or not the comfort women qualify as a compensated labor force. Each country's media has been compelled to take sides. Japan's has played up the state-vs.-state nature of the controversy at the expense of the surviving comfort women, who want Japan to officially acknowledge its responsibility for their suffering.