Japan Institute for National Fundamentals

　
The persecution of an activist who advocates the truth about wartime comfort women is intensifying in South Korea. President Lee Jae Myung took to social media on January 6 and February 1 to harshly criticize Kim Byung Heon, head of the National Action to Abolish the Comfort Women Act, who has been leading rallies calling for the removal of comfort woman statues. While the police have launched an intensive investigation into Kim, media reports have treated him as a criminal almost every day. On February 12, the National Assembly passed an amendment to the Comfort Women Support Act that would impose up to five years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to 50 million won (about $35,000) for defaming comfort women with false claims.

Lee claimed comfort women as having been forced

Since December 2019, Kim has held counter‑demonstrations every Wednesday at the same time and place as the anti-Japan rallies organized by the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance (formerly the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan) near the comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. He has also called for removing comfort woman statues set up across South Korea and in Berlin. More recently, he has been campaigning in front of two girls’ high schools in Seoul that installed comfort woman statues on their campuses, calling for their removal.

Kim has continued the campaign while complying with law. He held rallies after getting permission from the police. When no permission was given for rallies around the schools, Kim simply held up a banner for a few minutes near the campus and took commemorative photos. To avoid damaging the comfort woman statues, he only put a mask labeled “Removal” on the statues and took pictures.

Kim has consistently argued that “there was not a single comfort woman victim who was forcibly mobilized by the Japanese military as defined in the Comfort Women Support Act,” citing a collection of comfort women testimonies compiled by the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. In the trial of former Yonsei University professor Lew Seok Choon indicted for defamation due to his remarks about comfort women, the prosecution was unable to identify even one comfort woman who had been forcibly mobilized by the Japanese military. Consequently, Lew was acquitted by the Supreme Court last year. Kim has been campaigning in line with that final ruling.

However, President Lee on social media condemned Kim’s activities as representing defamation against comfort women and called for isolating “beasts that are not humans.” Without investigating the facts, the media reported Kim as if he were a serious criminal almost every day. The police searched Kim’s home once and summoned him for interrogation twice. In his second social media post, President Lee unilaterally concluded the comfort women as having been “forcibly taken to battlefields, sexually assaulted dozens of times every day in fear of death, and ultimately massacred."

Continuing to fight against lies

On February 7, Kim claimed that “the president, who is obliged to protect the Constitution, exploited his powerful position to persecute me, who is just a petty citizen.” Citing the likelihood that the police would not respond in accordance with law, he announced that he would suspend rallies for the removal of comfort women statues for the time being. However, he declared that he would continue to fight against lies through seminars, lectures, and the writing of scholarly works, which are excluded from punishment even under the amended Comfort Women Support Act.

Tsutomu Nishioka is a senior fellow and a Planning Committee member at the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals and a specially-appointed professor at Reitaku University. He covers South and North Koreas.