Interview: History of comfort women should not be forgotten: Korean advocate

"For the past 25 years, the Japanese government has kept lying and trying to conceal the truth. We hope to do everything in our capacity to expose the lies and let more people become aware of the fact that the history of 'comfort women' is not to be forgotten."

Kim Sun Shil, co-representative of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan made the remarks in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Kim's council, a civic group advocating the Korean women forced into sex slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, joined its counterparts in 11 countries and regions including China and the Philippines, to nominate comfort women files to the Memory of the World Programme.

The Memory of the World Programme, established in 1992 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), preserves the world's most important documents.

In Kim's opinion, the move, by representing the informative historical facts collected by relevant countries, brings the pathetic history of the "comfort women" as well as the cruelty of the war to the spotlight, so as to teach the next generation to cherish the hard-earned peaceful life.

Founded in 1990, Kim's council initiated regular Wednesday rallies in January 1992 in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, to press for the apology and compensation from the Japanese government toward the comfort women. Moreover, the council erected a statue there symbolizing the "comfort women" in 2011.

The council also set up the War and Women's Human Rights Museum in the neighborhood of Mapo-gu, Seoul, which contains videos, photos, historic documents, as well as the testimonies of the comfort women.

Kim, also the director of the museum, said it took the council nine years to collect enough money to build the museum in May 2012.

South Korea and Japan reached an agreement on Japan's wartime sexual slavery of Korean women during World War II on Dec. 28, 2015, which sparked strong opposition from the council, Kim said.

Kim explained that before clinching the agreement, the Japanese government had not consulted the victimized comfort women on their desires, neither did it clearly stipulate the "legal responsibility" and provide compensation for the victims.

According to Kim, the 1 billion yen (8 million U.S. dollars) that Japan has promised to pay the Korean comfort women is by no means a legal compensation, rather a consolation money.

Moreover, the payment comes with the precondition of withdrawing the statue in memory of the comfort women in front of the Japanese Embassy in Korea. Both are totally unacceptable, Kim said.

After the official agreement between Korea and Japan, the Korean government has altered its attitude toward the civic organizations calling for the rights of these sexually abused women. The country's Gender Equality and Family Affairs Ministry announced recently that it would no longer finance the nomination of the comfort women documentation to be included in the Memory of the World Programme.

Indeed, the lack of funds had posed difficulties for the nomination. Some of the international meetings and activities to promote the nomination had to be cancelled due to the lack of funds, but this hadn't diminished the determination of the council, she said.

More than 400,000 women and teenage girls from around Asia were forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels in World War II. Up to now, there are only over 40 comfort women survivors in Korea, mostly in their nineties.

With tears in her eyes, Kim said that no matter what happens, she and her colleagues would make unremitting efforts for the early solution of the comfort women issue, even if there's only one survivor. Endi