Japan's wartime sexual slavery issue.
An unresolved matter not just in Korea but around the world.
In 2015 the South Korean administration under the now impeached corrupt leader Park Geun-hye
reached a deal on the issue with Tokyo behind closed doors, without the consent of the victims
and their families.
While President Moon Jae-in push to review the flawed accord, Japan rallies to label
it as final and irreversible.
Lee Unshin delves deeper into the situation, reflective of Tokyo's determination to skip
over the crucial steps like acknowledgement and apology.
It is the world's longest running rally on a single theme.
People of all ages have assembled for the Wednesday Demonstration... for a quarter of
a century now.
It's another sizzling August day, but that didn't stop from these people from coming
out here, in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.
This public gathering, which takes place every Wednesday, voices the need for a proper resolution
of the issue of Japan’s wartime sex slavery of Korean women.
There's a sense of agony and sorrow among the crowd,... it peaks when it's the victims'
turn to speak.
"As a Korean woman I feel their pain.
I owe my participation in the protest to the victims."
"To receive a proper public apology along with legal reparations...
there needs to be more activities of this kind."
Still after some 70 years, it's an unbearable scar the victims have to live with, and a
source of diplomatic tension between Seoul and Tokyo.
It's said that up to 200-thousand women, mostly Korean, were sexually enslaved by Japanese
troops during World War II.
Despite Tokyo's denial of evidence of such atrocities,... in July, for the first time
footage of Korean victims was revealed by Korean researchers...
on top of decades' worth of collections of documents, photos, and testimonies.
A 20-second video, filmed by an American...
shows 7 bare-foot women outside a brick house, said to be a military-run brothel in Songshan,
China in 1944...the area had just been reclaimed by the U.S.-Chinese Allied Forces from the
Japanese.
"Evidence is important, but Japan fails to acknowledge this as a wrongdoing, because
Korea was under Japan's colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.
So their perception is that Koreans served the Japanese people as a colony should.
In the same context Japan is refusing to recognize their military abusing their own women as
a crime."
Recently, a Korean institute disclosed Japanese police reports of the military recruitment
of sex slaves... targeted towards Japanese women.
Researchers say when Korean women were the targets, the treatment would've been even
more dehumanizing.
"To resolve the issue, Korea needs to make Japan acknowledge that from the beginning,
the colonization of Korea was an act of defying international law.
Global organizations like the UN recognize this already, so by bringing more testimonial
documents to the surface, Korea needs to alter Japan's reasoning."
Tokyo gave some 9 million U.S. dollars to a Korean fund for the victims and families
of Japan's wartime atrocity... through a so-called 'comfort women' deal, reached in 2015 between
the two countries.
But Korean citizens are far from content.
And the current Moon Jae-in administration plans to review the accord made under the
previous government.
"What's of the utmost importance in resolving sex crimes, is an apology that comes with
an acknowledgement of the crime.
And that this was committed in a collective, organized scale.
Without that, it's not an apology, it's just rhetoric, and sufferers can't accept that."
The U.N. Committee Against Torture recommended the two countries revise the deal, so the
surviving victims are provided with the right to truth, reparations and assurances of non-repetition.
But the response from Tokyo stays the same; that the deal is irreversible and final.
And so, the rally continues in Seoul.
"I've been rallying for 26 years.
All we want is for Japan to show remorse, asking for forgiveness in front of the media.
A valid sincere apology to reinstate our integrity... and we will forgive them.
For however long it takes, I will be here, and we will continue to fight, until the government
of Japan yields."
In July, Korea mourned another passing of a victim, Kim Kun-ja...leaving the number
of registered surviving victims now at just 37.
And protesters are out again,... determined to bring peace to those suffered through such
brutal times.
"It's important for young Koreans to come to the rally, to be enlightened on the historical
issue and to pass on the rally's spirit.
This is a matter that my generation needs to carry through."
Lee Unshin, Arirang News.