Koreans in Seoul protest against Japan over women sex slavery
By Chhay Sophal
Seoul, South Korea (26 June 2012): A group of Korean citizens gathered on Monday in front of Japan’ embassy to protest against the Japanese government over forcing Korean women into sex slavery during Japanese colonial rule in the mid 1960s.
The protesters put a bronze statue of a woman to mark the 1,000th week of protest launched in 2002 by the so-called comfort women and their families. The protesters also held up slogans and banners in both Korean and English and spoke out a through a loudspeaker opposite of the embassy’s entrance where police forces were guarding for security reasons.
One banner with both English and Korean language read “Japan should restore the sex slave, the labor forces”
Japan has acknowledged that its troops used sex slaves in front-line brothels but argues that a 1965 indemnity pact between Seoul and Tokyo already settled the issue. However, Japan has officially claimed that the “peace statue” in front of its embassy in Seoul breaches the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, an international treaty that outlines a framework for diplomacy, a report submitted to the Diet showed Saturday.
In a separate story, two Koreans have been arrested and faced charges with allegedly raping two Japanese women in Lapu-Lapu City, the Philippines. The suspects — Jong Duk Lee, 34, and Carl Park, 21 — were detained at the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Cental Visayas stockade inside Camp Sotero Cabahug in Cebu City, pending the filing of rape charges at the prosecutor’s office in Lapu-Lapu on Monday, according to a report of Philippines’ Inquirer. The report said the victims, aged 21 and 20, were tourists in Cebu City.
