South Korean comfort women sue ultra-right Japanese rock band for defamation

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Ida Torres in National with 15 Comments
South Korean comfort women sue ultra-right Japanese rock band for defamation

A group of South Korean women forced into sexual slavery for Japan during World War II filed a defamation suit against an obscure Japanese rock band. They are suing in particular for a song by the band calling them “prostitutes”.

A CD of the song by the band Scramble, complete with a printout of the lyrics translated into Korean, was delivered to a shelter for ex-comfort women (the common term for the Chinese, Korean and Filipino women who were used as sex slaves) in Gwangju, south of Seoul last February 28, one day before the March 1st Independence Movement anniversary. The song, called “Slashing Koreans,” is obviously, from the title itself, is extremely anti-South Korean and calls for the death of the ex-slaves. The song also has an accompanying music video which was uploaded on YouTube last January. Eight women, mostly in their 80s and 90s, are filing the suit, calling for the punishment of the band for defamation, blackmail and other charges. A spokesman for the elderly women says that the women were “shocked” by the musical attack and feel that “Nobuyuki Suzuki, a member of an ultra-right Japanese party”

The band is not well-known, apart from the ultra right-wing circle. They participated at an event by Nobuyuki Suzuki, a notorious member of an ultra-right Japanese party. Suzuki was indicted earlier for setting up “provocative” wooden stakes in Seoul and Tokyo last year, as part of Japan’s claim to the islets of Takeshima/Dokdo. The right-wing supporters have always contended that the claims of the comfort women are historically inaccurate, and this has been a source of contention between Japan and the countries whose women were victimized during the Japanese occupation.

[ via France 24 ] [ photo credit via Yonhap News ]
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  • -observer-

    shame on these right wing nutjobs

    • Truth

      It’s not as simple as that.

      Here is the actual track. Interestingly, 桜乱舞流 have a female vocalist.

      If someone else’s Japanese or Korea is better than mine, I would appreciate a translation but, as far as I can understand, they are singing something like,

      “Death to the Granny Sluts”

      and it is only one line at the end.

      As it is an artistic piece of work one would have to question what it means, e.g. whether they actually mean “someone kill these old prostitutes” … which I very much doubt … or whether it is more metaphorical, as in “an end to the bogus issue” … which I suspect.

      They have as much of a dig at K-Pop, Kimchi culture and Takeshima as they do the old prostitutes. It’s a fairly formulaic rock song but, as with Punk etc, it’s probably a good thing young Japanese people start to stand up against the crap coming out of Korea.

      • Truth

        Alternatively, it could mean “kill the Korean hag whores” which is why it is important to have a native speaker put the quote in context.

        But this is rock and roll not an exercise in diplomacy and I would not expect a gang of old ladies to understand or appreciate it. Why are the Korean nationalist even upsetting them by telling them? Are they winding them up by telling them they can get more money if they sue?

        How many 80 year old ladies really start such court cases?

        Korean rockers and rappers have been throwing the same kind of shit at Japan for years … here’s one called Fuck Japan going on about nuking the Japanese and call them stinking people with disabilities. It isn’t pretty.

  • Truth

    Any chance of some real journalism rather than just copy and pasting AFP press releases?

    Where is the original source? What did the lyrics actually say? Which women are we talking about?

    Why repeat the myth of 200,000 women being “enslaved” yet again?

    It just more nationalistic melodrama … the case will go to a Korea court, the Japanese will not turn up, the court will find in the women’s favor as the case will be undefended and make a silly award, the Japanese rockers will just ignore it as Korea courts have no jurisdiction in Japan. The Korean nationalists will get their big press release and reconfirm their anti-Japanese propaganda and racist sentiments.

    Repeat ad nauseum for the next 20 years …

    It’s worth point out that even when the pro-comfort women activists look to take up their cases, they had to dismiss 80% of the women’s claims because they were deemed unreliable.

    • -observer-

      LOL your one of those denialists. The Koreans and Chinese still hate the Japanese.. the Legacy of WWII will continue.

      • Truth

        You probably mean, “deniers”; no, there’s no denying going on.

        The 200,000 figure arose from estimates made by Yoshida Seiji. He’s since withdrawn it as no evidence can be found to support this.

        This figure has then been exaggerated and confused even further by Korean nationalists (who claim the majority were Korea) and Chinese nationalists (who go on to claim their own additional 200,000) on the basis of no evidence.

        In order to serve their racist agendas against a Japan of today which has no responsibilities for any wartime crimes, and to hide the crimes of their own citizens in the business, they confuse ordinary prostitutes with victims of war time sex crimes.

        Indeed, particularly on the Korean side, they refuse to acknowledge that there were also ordinary prostitutes involved at all, that the industry grew out of traditional Korean prostitution, which involved the buy and selling of young girls, coercion and deceit, and which directly involved Korean pimps, agents and government and security/police officials.

        Until the Korean do start acknowledging them, and apologizing and compensation other countries for their own military sex crimes as Japan has done many times, then they will have very little credibility in the international community whatsoever. Their actions will only damage Korea’s international reputation.

        The case with China is slightly different.

        • History major

          You should read more books to be so certain. “no evidence can be found to support this??” It is true a lot of documents were burnt by Japanese government, but there are enough evidence. Read more books. Many Japanese scholars also write about them too. Also, when you say there are no evidence, you are saying these women are lying. Please do not insult elderly women…

          • Whirled Peas

            A liittle-known historical fact is that Japan has indeed issued sincere verbal public apologies as well as signed written apologies to individual comfort women identified and also earmarked 2 million yen for each. plus health and welfare assistance. This was back in 1995-2007 when Japan established a special organization (The Asian Women’s Fund) to handle comfort women matters. Unfortunately certain dogmatic organizations pressured the comfort women NOT to accept! (In Korea it was and NGO called the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, or “Chongdaehyop, and in Taiwan it was the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation. ) The Korean and Taiwan comfort women who said they wanted to accept were pressured to change their mind. In some cases Japan had to send apologies and money covertly through third parties (Sad, eh?) Those women who accepted reported a great sense of closure and relief in finally getting a letter from the Prime Minister, and some sincere atonement offering from the government and from Japanese citizens who wanted to contribute. Now that these so-called advocates for the comfort women have deprived many of the comfort women of closure and money, they are obliged to shout even louder that Japan never apologized to cover their own guilt and to keep up the Japan-bashing for nationalist reasons.

            The lesson here, if you ever get involved in social activism, remember that when you are working on behalf of others, such as the comfort women, you must put the best interests of thei clientele first, not your own hopes for glory, or to appear the most radical and militant and “pure.” Those who use their clientele for their own political gain are soon labeled “movement opportunists” and “poverty pimps” by those experienced enough to recognize them.

          • Truth

            Very good and fair analysis of the dynamics, Whirled Peas.

            To it I would add that latterly the increasingly vulnerable old ladies have been co-opted by racist or nationalistic forces that very little interest in their welfare but are just using them as a stick with which to beat a modern day Japan which has no responsibility for whatever they did or did not suffer. A Japan which is at a loss to deal with such increasing hatred and hysteria.

            History major

            The statement “no evidence” comes from the historian who first proposed the estimated figure of 200,000. He admits there is no evidence to support this figure and yet it is repeated time and time again, ad nauseum, as if it was a concrete truth and is literally being set into stone. There is no evidence for it and there is plenty evidence to support the truth that these women were prostitutes, albeit often sold by their own parents and trick and coerced by Korean agents just as is happening by Korean human traffickers today. We call it “debt bondage”.

            What Yoshida has had to admit is that due to the extremely efficient and bureaucratic nature of the Mejie military, several layers of paperwork from numerous departments of levels would have had to have been created in order for what is claimed to have happen to have happened.

            The chances of all of this to have “gone missing” from numerous locations are too small. The chances of some of it still existing, from a historian’s perspective, would have been high. Numerous historians have now spent decades trying to find it … and have not. Including historians motivated to do so for political reasons.

            What weakens the Korean activists claims, apart from the hysteria, racism and their own nation’s refusal to apologize and compensate from their own war time sexual abuses in e.g. Vietnam is, to name a few,

            a) the exaggeration of their claim from being ‘some’ abuse to ‘all’ cases being abusive.

            b) the exaggeration of ‘some’ victims being Korean women to ‘all’ cases being Korean (when, on the basis of the evidence, the largest proportions were likely to be Japanese women).

            c) the confusion

            d) the ignorance of evidence of where the military found abuses happening the military punished those involved in them severely

            e) the ignorance of positive evidence, e.g. very well remunerated prostitutes, well treated prostitutes, marriages between prostitutes and clients, Korean prostitutes choosing to stay in Japan after the war and so on. All of these fly in the face of the polemic the Korean nationalists face.

            Any serious historian would have to take these anomalous factors into consideration.

            Not ever book about the past in history, not everyone who writes about the past in a historian; indeed, there is a lack of good history about this highly politicized issue. The majority of commentators merely repeat what they have seen repeated many times, e.g. the 200,000 AFP love, without asking how and where it arose.

            One has to wonder why is has such a fascination for certain minds, a sort of ‘atrocity pornography’ in the same way as some people literally enjoy thinking and looking at the pictures of the Jewish Holocaust.

            And, for America and its military historians, it’s a convenient cover for their own military’s more recent and far more extensive sexual abuse of Asian women … of, as they liked to call them, Little Brown F*cking Machines (LBFM). An abuse which continues to this day, as recent imprisonments prove.

          • yankdownunder

            It is true a lot of documents were burnt by Japanese government,

            How do you know Japanese burnt “comfort women” documents? Did you watch them do it? Did you burn them?

            Also, when you say there are no evidence, you are saying these women are lying.

            They are lying and there is no evidence!

            You think elderly people don’t lie?!
            You think prostitutes don’t lie?!

            There are many cases of people lying to get money. They claimed they were Sept 11 victims, holocaust survivors etc.

          • johnx5559

            我希望最终削减你的气管

    • johnx559

      我希望最终削减你的气管…

    • RANGER1989

      i can not wait for another earthquake/tsunami – vengenance is mine saith the lord.

  • Minami

    My great-grandmother was a comfort woman. Japan needs to stop denying comfort women. We all know it happened.

    • yo yo jiggy wit it!

      true, i agree. as much as i like standing up for japan in other issues, this is one when I’m on the china/Korea side.

      In the end, prostitution was always present in war though. it happens all the time, like with the when the Spanish fought the Aztecs, when the mongols conquered Asia, during the Vietnam war and Korea. Japan can’t deny it, nor should they. there was always going to be this sort of thing going on, regardless of the circumstances.

      I think it’s more of a matter of “is it worth apologizing?” in politics, you don’t waste time doing something unless there is a decent result. and since there is so much friction between japan and Korea, among others, It just seems like Korea would want more than an apology and compensation.
      I reckon giving the takeshima/dokkoda islands to korea would be a good apology. too bad it’s unlikely.

      Keep in mind, that while some Japanese politicians have apologized and written documents about it, Korea and China want all of Japan to acknowledge it and that’s where the real problem lies. There will always be nay Sayers and troll denying this or that, either out of pride or patriotism. kinda like how a mother hears about her son being a bully and saying “No, that can’t be right, he’s such a sweet kid”

      Japan should apologize and this group should be dissolved. As much as i try to stand for Japan, i can’t on this issue. whether there is evidence or not is irrelevant, this thing always happens in war, and there is no denying it.