Former "comfort woman" calls South Korea's deal with Japan "null and void"

An agreement between South Korea and Japan on "comfort women" is "null and void," Yongsoo Lee, a South Korean survivor of Japanese military sexual slavery, said here on Tuesday.

The deal is "null and void" because this issue is not a diplomatic dispute between South Korea and Japan, but instead, "a universal human rights and women's rights issue the whole world should be concerned about," Lee said at UN headquarters.

"I am enraged" about the deal, the 88-year-old said. Lee was taken by the Japanese military when she was 15 in 1943 and victimized until 1945 in the Kamikaze base in Taiwan.

"I thought myself and the women who were in the same comfort station were the only victims. However, when I registered with the government as a victim over 20 years ago, I realized that some 200,000 women from 11 different countries were victimized like me. I couldn't sit there doing nothing," she said.

"Since then, I have been traveling around the world, telling people what crime against humanity the Imperial Japan committed, demanding Japanese government to take responsibility, provide official apology and government reparations and accurate history education," she said. Lee has become a women's rights activist.

On Tuesday which marks the International Women's Day, Lee held a press conference and issued a joint statement with Korean American Civic Empowerment, Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issue, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Korean American Forum of California at the UN headquarters.

In December 2015, Japan and South Korea reached a deal in a decades-long row over Japan's use of Korean "comfort women" in military-run brothels during the Second World War.

As part of a deal to see Japan take accountability for its part in the "comfort women" issue, Japan agreed to pay 1 billion yen (8.3 million U.S. dollars) from its national budget to create a new foundation to support the former "comfort women," to be set up in South Korea.

In addition, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, by way of his Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, renewed his apology, expressing his apologies and remorse to all those who suffered immeasurable and incurable physical and mental wounds as "comfort women."

However, Lee believes that "recent deal struck between the government of Japan and South Korea does not resolve this issue of crime against humanity because the victims from 10 other countries besides Korea were not accounted for in this deal," according to the statement.

"The deal doesn't stand because it doesn't put victims in the center. The victims were never consulted and their voices were completely ignored," said Phyllis Kim, representative of the Korean American Forum of California.

Further, the deal prohibits the South Korean government to raise this issue in international forum such as the UN, effectively silencing the victims. This attests the fact that Japan's apology was not truthful and sincere, said the statement.

Therefore, the civic groups urge Japanese government to negotiate with the representatives of the survivors and their advocate groups from all 11 countries in order to come up with a full and comprehensive resolution to "resolve this egregious human rights violation in an official and unequivocal manner," said the statement. Enditem