Clinton: Use ‘enforced sex slaves’ instead of ‘comfort women’

Man Rams 1-ton Truck into
Entrance of Japanese Embassy in Seoul

At 4:55 a.m. on July 9th, a 62-year-old man from Seongnam
City, South Korea drove a 1-ton truck into the front entrance of the Japanese
Embassy in Seoul. Attached to the truck was a sign that read, “Dokdo Is Our
Land.” The man has been arrested.

According to Seoul police, there were
no injuries, but the front entrance of the embassy has been pushed in about one
meter.

The man told police that he was protesting a recent incident in
which a Japanese man videotaped himself standing next to a “Comfort Women”
memorial in Seoul with a stick that read, “Takeshima is Japanese Territory.”
Takeshima is the Japanese name for Dokdo, a small group of rocky islets that is
the subject of a territorial dispute between Japan and South Korea. South Korea
has illegally occupied the islets since the 1950s.

According to THIS Wall Street Journal blog article, police said
the man had a hand-written note in his pocket that read as follows:

“Driving a stake at the
comfort woman’s statue is doomed to God’s wrath. If I die please cremate me and
scatter my ashes in the waters near Dokdo.”

“Comfort Women” was a euphemism used by both Koreans and Japanese to refer to
prostitutes, especially prostitutes for the military. Japan provided comfort
women for its troops during World War II, and South Korea provided them for
Korean and UN troops during the Korean War and beyond. The Korean newspaper
Dong-a Ilbo reported in an October 1959 article HERE that there were 261,089 “comfort women” working in Korea
at the time the article was written and that 66% of them were infected with a
venereal disease

Korea 1 Japanese revisionist 0.

Since there are already some detractors on this comfort women or rather enforced sex slave issue I thought I might bring this up especially since Bevers seems to imply that Korean women prostituted themselves after 1945 therefore the Japanese cannot be held responsible because Korean women have loose morals or conducted themselves as prostitutes even without the Japanese.

Read up on the Recreation Amusement Association that was set up as soon as the US occupied Japan. It was set up by the Japanese Home Ministry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreation_and_Amusement_Association

It ‘s obvious but
● American wartime comfort women.
● rape in Vietnam in South Korea.
● comfort stations of all countries was held in the past war.
Should denounce all.

The term “comfort women” was used by both Japanese and Koreans to refer to prostitutes for military troops. After the Japanese left Korea in 1945, Koreans set up their own “Comfort Woman” system for Korean and UN soldiers. Yes, the Koreans also referred to the women as “comfort women.” If you read old Korean newspaper articles from the 1950s and 1960s, you will see the term used quite frequently.

When I was in the US navy in Korea in the late 1970s, I learned that many of the prostitutes in Korea then were first lured from the countryside with promises of good-paying waitress jobs. The pimps immediately provided the girls with furnished apartments that involved a large loan with interest so high that the girls could never pay it off with their waitress salaries. Since the girls could not declare bankruptcy or run away from their loans back then, they were forced to prostitute themselves.

Some Korean pimps even in the 1980s would hang out at train stations in Seoul and kidnap naive women coming from the countryside. After the girls got off the trains, I heard the pimps would lure the women to places nearby where they were repeatedly raped and beaten into submission. That is what one woman told me happened to her and to others she knew.

I think Bevers thinks that if people are committing the similar crimes unto each other then they have no right to complain about it if somebody else did that samething to them. If we follow that rationale than no crime will be persecuted because murders do happen in practically all countries, drug abuse, and so forth. 

Does he think that say Russians have no business confronting Germans over the issue of Holocaust since they themselves have been engaged in things like pogroms against Jews and confined them to an area called the Jewish Pale??

I think Bevers thinks that if people are committing the similar crimes unto each other then they have no right to complain about it if somebody else did that samething to them.

No, but I do think that if you are truly against sexual slavery or feel that prostitution is a form of sexual slavery, then you should be critical of everyone who does it rather than focusing on one particular country or one particular ethnic group. For example, even though there is sexual slavery happening in Korea and other countries today, many Koreans, like Q, focus their criticism only on the Japanese and what happened more than 65 years ago rather than criticizing the problem today. In fact, many Koreans today promote “sexual slavery” by buying prostitutes. They criticize the “Comfort Woman” system Japan had, but say nothing about the one Korea had. They make excuses by saying, “Well, Korea’s system was not as bad as Japan’s,” without really knowing how bad either system was.

You mentioned there being sexual slavery in Thailand today, but how many Korean newspaper articles do you see criticizing it? How many Koreans do you see protesting it in front of the Thai Embassy? How many Koreans fly to Thailand and the Philippines each year to take advantage of the prostitution in those countries? In fact, I have read that Koreans are opening up more and more bars of prostitution in the Philippines.

I just do not like hypocrites or people who claim to support Korean comfort women when, in fact, they really just want to hate Japanese.Q, complains about “racist japornophiles,” but Q makes some of the most racist comments of anyone at the Marmot’s Hole. I would suggest you not pander to him.

I don’t care what Q says. If you begin dismissing complaints of people about abuse because fellow compatriots are engaged in this kind of practice then you’d get nowhere. If somebody is truly against sexual slavery that person has never engaged in this kind of conduct. Despite the press coverage you can’t paint all Koreans as hypocrites because there are Koreans that are engaged in this conduct. This is stereotyping that every Korean is guilty of this. You’d never condem anything if you took that stance and certain people will continue to engage in that. You might as well condem the US for beating the drums on human rights when there are human right violations occuring in the US. people gettin smuggled, people getting busted in trafficking people into the US. Also why single out Koreans, Japanese are big or even bigger into this kind of trash. 

The other thing why Japan gets singled out is that Japan has not come clean on this war time atrocity compare that to the Germans. As to Thailand this is not a foreign country doing that to Thais it is more having to do with crime within Thailand. Another thing that I might add is the reason why Thailand became infamous for this was American GIs during the vietnam war.

Do you, Bevers, know how bad the two systems were? You keep saying that the two systems were the same.

I have said that Japan and Korea had similiar systems, not that they were the same. They were similar in that they both provided prostitutes for their military troops and that the two governments supported their respective systems. In the Japanese system, the women were required to get weekly VD checkups, and so were the women in the Korean system. Women with debt obligations in the Japanese system were not allowed to run away from those obligations and neither were the women under the Korean system. Some women were tricked by pimps into becoming prostitutes in the Japanese system, and some women were also tricked in the Korean system.

I am not saying that ”All” the women in the Korean system were kidnapped and forced into prostition by the Korean government, so why are many Koreans saying that about the Japanese system, even though they have no proof of it?

You wholeheartedly believe the testimonies of the Korean prostitutes you met back in the 1970s.But you completely disbelieve the testimonies of the former comfort women (WWII sex slaves), whom you’ve never even met.

The women who talked to me in the late 1970s were not trying to make a political statement or get some kind of compensation or attention. They did not have handlers or people using them for political purposes. And they did not wait fifty years to tell their stories, some of which are inconsistent.  They told me their stories while they were still living them.

The Japanese comfort women system in World War II was pretty much ignored for fifty years, even though the Americans, Koreans, and others knew about it. If it was such a heinous “sex-slave” system, why did Koreans adopt a similar system after the Japanese left and set up “comfort women stations” for Korean and UN troops? And why did Korean and UN commanders allow their troops to visit such places?

And please stop putting words in my mouth, JK. I have never said that I “completely disbelieve” the testimonies of former comfort women, but the issue has become so politicized that their testimonies should be scrutinized, especially when they are making claims that are not supported by documentary evidence.

Finally, you cannot claim that 200,000 women were kidnapped by the Japanese military to be sex slaves based solely on the testimony of a few women, especially when there is evidence that many of the women were not kidnapped.

Japanese military used various methods to get women including kidnapping. I think the reason why this sex slave system of WWII took so long to come to light is it takes time to muster the courage to tell. Look at the rape victims in general they may not be very forth coming about being raped and may internalize the experience. Another is the shunning by the public that these women are tainted by no fault of their own and last but not least is politics. Park in the 60s normalized relations with Japan to get their aid so things like comfort women may have been hushed up a bit by him.

However you can’t just say Koreans have no business objecting to this since they set up a similar system otherwise nobody will see that this is very wrong and immoral. You are touching on a part of history that Koreans either weren’t informed or was shunned. I think one of the Korea bashers in youtube quoted a comment by a Korean official exhorting the women to earn foreign exchange for the country, probably because the country was poor at the time and didn’t have much to earn foreign exchange. However that doesn’t mean Koreans shouldn’t object to the Japanese because it tantamounts to hypocrasy. It is like saying people should not object to Nazxi discrimination because they have also discriminated against other races. Its like telling an American that they have no business of telling europeans that Nazism is wrong because they had KKK and this business of separate but equal facilities. Also Japanese even after WWII set up similar system and let American GIs. The excuse as to why Japanese did this was to protect the purity of Japanese women so they had women “volunteer” for this. There were reports of coercion. 

Looking into studies about camptown prostitution in Korea and Japan is in order. However Japan gets the spotlight for denying the atrocities. I definately think that in the Korean case there may have been women who volunteered out of desperation too poor with no meaningful way of making a living. Heck to this day some people hide that sort of background. In the case of Japanese colonialism Koreans certainly could go a find work in factories and I think many did to get paid they had that option. Unfortunately in the 50s and 60s in Korea there wasn’t that option since all the factories were in the north and Japan was a separate country.

You should read 
 C. Sarah Soh’s 
 ”The Comfort Women” first. She sums up about the politicization of this issue that Gerry described.
http://www.sfsu.edu/~news/2009/spring/26.html 

Gerry,

The Japanese and Korean systems may have been set up for the same purpose, but they turned out very differently.
The Korean system existed in Korea, during peace time.
The Japanese system existed during war time.  
The women were shipped to faraway places, and many of them were never heard of again.
Gross abuses and atrocities took place on a large scale.

You should know something about the Japanese military in the WWII era.
Japanese soldiers in that era were trained very very harshly, in order to maintain the strictest discipline.
They underwent very brutal training and were often treated cruelly by their superiors.

Since this brutal treatment pervaded the system, it’s not at all surprising that the Japanese soldiers treated those who were beneath them badly as well.
It’s not just “comfort women” who were treated badly, Allied POWs were treated very badly as well.
(At the end of the war, the Japanese leadership ordered Japanese military to destroy all of its confidential documents, especially those pertaining to the treatment of POWs.  That’s how badly they treated them.)

You should also know that Japan was the losing side in WWII.
In the latter part of the war, they suffered horrendous losses against the Americans, and conditions in the field became very dire and stressful.
So you can imagine how comfort women, who were the absolute lowest in the Japanese military system, must have been treated.  
Often, when they became a burden to the Japanese forces, they were just massacred and dumped in mass graves, along with Korean forced laborers.

The comfort women were treated so badly by the Japanese military that the Japanese govt has officially apologized for them “on numerous occasions”. 
They apologized as soon as they were confronted with evidence regarding comfort women.  (like, on the very next day)  
I don’t even know why we are still having this debate.

As for the former comfort women not speaking about their experiences for 50 years..
As I said before, many of them died, and of those who survived, many chose not to come back home.  
Remember the Korean photographer Ahn SeHong’s recent exhibition?  There are former Korean comfort women who are still in China, living out their last days there.  Why are they still there?

Simple.  Their shame is too great.
Most of these comfort women did not volunteer to be prostitutes.  They were duped into it or forced into it.
You don’t want to remember such experiences and talk about them.  You want to forget about them and bury them.
Only the most courageous few can talk about them.  They are far more courageous than I could ever hope to be.
 
You know those camptown Korean prostitutes you frequented so often?
They were viewed with disdain by Korean society.  Always were.
I can only imagine how, 30 or 40 years ago, Korean comfort women who had been violated by the hated Japanese would have been viewed by Korean society.
The former comfort women had a very good reason not to speak out about their experiences.
They and their families would have been completely ostracized by society.

But by the late 1980s, the Korean women’s rights movement got started.  I believe that when the societal climate changed sufficiently the former comfort women could finally come forward and speak out.

Gerry, these women are very old, and they are not asking for much.  
Please leave them alone.

Why were two of my comments removed, Robert? Neither used any profane language, and both were relevant to the topic. Because they didn’t fit in with your anti-Japanese theme?

Yes, I noticed you didn’t post anything about that crazy Korean asshat who rammed his 1-ton truck into the front gate of the Japanese Embassy because he didn’t like the “Japanese right-wing asshat” filming himself next to the Comfort Women statue with a stick that read “Dokdo is Japanese territory.”

A Japanese man films himself with a stick claiming Dokdo is Japanese territory and you call him a a “right-wing asshat,” but some crazy Korean guy rams his 1-ton truck into the front gate of the Japanese Embassy and you don’t mention him at all.

Meanwhile, your little friend Q’s comment calling my family “hoes and pimps” and all of his other profane-filled, anti-Japanese rants on your blog are allowed to stay.

The Bevers would not sue the sex offender for its full justice, because Bevers are anyhow hoes and pimps.

That said, Q, don’t bring up Bevers’ family, even if he is essentially calling victims of gang rape by the Imperial Japanese army prostitutes.

If you want to talk about different standards how come everybody knows and condemns the holocaust as if it were the only genocide. There have been other genocides in the past such as Armenian(Turks dispute this). 

While I see where you are getting at I still disagree with you. Your rational of hypocrasy and different standard doesn’t really fly. 

 Gerry,

If you don’t know the fundamental difference between the two, you have your head up your fundamental orifice farther than usual.

Prostitutes were paid, while the comfort women serving the Japanese were allowed to survive, sometimes.

If your reluctance to distinguish between the two clearly different situations was tied to your intellect, you’d be registering at ‘moron’. Thankfully, Robert’s provided a forum where we can help you learn. I’m thinking it’s going to take less than 40 years, but I could be wrong.

Q,

Leave the Bevers family out of your posts, please. It’s in poor taste (not that I’m against that) and it doesn’t help your arguments and makes you look infantile.

Jeff Harris wrote:

If you don’t know the fundamental difference between the two, you have your head up your fundamental orifice farther than usual.Prostitutes were paid, while the comfort women serving the Japanese were allowed to survive, sometimes.

No, Jeff, the comfort women under Japan’s system were also paid.

The “house master” received fifty to sixty per cent of the girls’ gross earnings depending on how much of a debt each girl had incurred when she signed her contract. This meant that in an average month a girl would gross about fifteen hundred yen. She turned over seven hundred and fifty to the “master”. Many “masters” made life very difficult for the girls by charging them high prices for food and other articles.

In the latter part of 1943 the Army issued orders that certain girls who had paid their debt could return home. Some of the girls were thus allowed to return to Korea.

LINK

Now that you know the women were paid, Jeff, are you now willing to call them “prostitutes,” just as you called the women under Korea’s “Comfort Women” system?

I think reading all this comments especially Bevers people still fail to understand that comfort women are in fact enforced sex slaves. People have no problem understanding the holocaust and how horrible it was but when it comes to atrocities in Asia they are less informed or more apt to contest the issue. 

Well I wouldn’t go so far as saying Shinzo Abe’s apology to be null and void. He may have meant it but the attitude of the rest of the Japanese makes it insincere and not genuine. Attempts to block and censure Korean attemtps getting attention to this issue. Shinzo Abe as an individual may have meant it. 

Well, it really happened and the Japanese government do not appear all that pleased.  Can’t help it if non-Korean sources are not saying much about the issue.  Perhaps one of the Japanese papers will write about it in the next day or so.

Imagine just how pissed off the Japanese would be if they actually made a monument of this in Washington DC along side the Holocaust monument. Come to think of it I think they should make a monument for all the victims of atrocities in the far east/pacific. 

fuckwit.

Gerry said:

“the comfort women under Japan’s system were also paid.”

You keep on bringing up this Burma document.  But it clearly says in the document that “[These comfort women] lived in near-luxury in Burma in comparison to other places.”
In other words, this was the best case scenario for the comfort women. 
It in no way exemplifies the experience of the majority of comfort women.

I wish they could have interviewed the countless other comfort women who weren’t as lucky, who ended up rotting in mass graves, after being treated worse than dogs..

“the 261,089 “comfort women” serving Korean and UN troops in Korea in 1959″

I have doubts about this figure.
The Korean government started registering Korean camptown prostitutes in 1961.
I assume that they started testing them for STD’s and issuing them VD cards from that time.
Prior to that, I don’t know if the government was involved in it. 

Perhaps there were so many prostitutes because Korea’s economy was in very poor shape following the Korean War and many women were driven to prostitution due to poverty. 
(Let’s face it.  Back in the 1950s, the American GI’s stationed in Korea were rich in Koreans’ eyes.  The US military PX stores were full of all sorts of goodies that average Koreans couldn’t even dream about.  So the US bases obviously attracted many poor Korean women.)

But between the 1960s and 2000s, there were about 20,000 of these prostitutes at any one time.

By the way, Gerry.
How long are you going to keep this up?

I understand that you have a personal grudge against Korea because you feel you have been wronged by Koreans. 
But does this bring you any peace?
Are you going to spend your whole life bashing Korea?

Why do people still give a damn about this stuff? It’s history.

que parece ser bueno
.. este sitio web es de gran ayuda para mí, porque me da la información que
yo needed.thanks al propietario del sitio web.
 

The US Department of State decided to use ‘comfort women’ with ‘sex slaves’ and also decided to keep neutral about Dokdo issue:

http://japanese.joins.com/article/686/157686.html?servcode=A00§code=A10

I would like to applaud the US government’s sensible decision.

So, based on what I’ve read, Gerry Bevers doesn’t like Korean prostitutes very much…

But there’s a lot of anger there… More than just a dispassionate reading of History. I’m sensing something a lot closer to home…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSfByKgX7m8

Hi guys,

I don’ t mean to support either side. At first, let me say I’m neutral. I believe we should talk about such a critical thing rigorously based on facts, evidence beyond question. However, many of opinions attempting to one-sidedly denounce Japanese seem to innocently trust the “facts” presented by Korean side…except some guys attempting to discuss based on reliable facts.

Why? Do you really examine the evidence materials for yourself? Do you know how Korea and Japan were before the War? If you don’t, I don’t think it’s good idea to thoughtlessly cut into such a delicate issue for these two countries even though human right should be respected . I dare to say, it’s not our business. I’m shocked how Ms. Clinton and the Department is indiscreet.

I know Japanese are also attempting to examine whether Japanese officials really committed to the inhuman action (if you want to see that, check a bunch of Japanese websites). They have repeatedly stressed any direct and reliable evidence, which proves their officials’ involvement in the problem, have not been identified. So far, we only find the “image” of the brutal action by Japanese, which seems drawn from limited facts insufficient to accuse Japanese.

Of course, Japanese don’t deny Korean (also Japanese) prostitution, and even their maltreatment, under the war. But, such prostitution “doesn’t prove the official involvement by Japanese army.” Never. Because it’s quite ordinary scene in poor Korea and Japan before and in the war. Of course, the comparison between German and Japanese, just helping a propaganda to criticize Japanese, is meaningless.

Plus, in the process of resetting the diplomatic relationship with Korea in 1965, Japan apologized and compensated Korea for the damage Japan gave to Korea. Korean government officially agreed to the engagement. Why do Korean raise the issue again decades after the settlement? Any international agreement should be empty if Korean have such a right to unilaterally violate the mutual agreement. Human right should not be infringed. However, this problem now is not the matter of human right, but should be a diplomatic, legal, thing.

As far as I know, the dispute over the problem in US has been mostly issued, driven, and examined by Korean’s side. Japanese are silent as a whole. However their silence don’t mean they are “guilty.” Koreans, particularly in US, are more zealous to address this issue and put enormous efforts, thus their appeal get more paid attention to in US. But, we should listen to both sides if we want to talk about this problem.

Anyway, we cannot judge such a historical thing by our present-day perspective/value. If you try to do so, everyone in the world must be guilty…