ASIA / PACIFIC
February 4, 2019
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
South Koreans mourn death of former World War II sex slave
ACTIVIST MOURNED. A statue of a girl repre-
senting thousands of Korean women enslaved for sex
by Japan’s imperial forces before and during World
War II is seen during a weekly rally near the Japanese
Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. Hundreds of South
Koreans are mourning the death of a former sex slave
for the Japanese military during World War II by de-
manding reparations from Tokyo over wartime atroci-
ties. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
By Kim Tong-Hyung
The Associated Press
S
EOUL, South Korea — Hundreds of
South Koreans mourned the death
of a former sex slave for the
Japanese military during World War II
during in a rally in Seoul that demanded
reparations from Tokyo over wartime
atrocities.
Kim Bok-dong had been a vocal protest
leader at the weekly rallies held every
Wednesday in Seoul for nearly 30 years.
She died following a battle with cancer.
She was 92 years old.
At a narrow street near where the
Japanese Embassy used to be, protesters
gathered around a bronze statue of a girl
representing Korean sexual slavery
victims and held a moment of silence for
Kim. Many of them held signboards with
Kim’s photos and words including, “We
will never forget the life of Kim
Bok-dong” and “Japanese government,
apologize!”
Kim was one of the first victims to speak
out and break decades of silence over
Japan’s wartime sexual slavery that
experts say forced thousands of Asian
women into frontline brothels. She
travelled around the world testifying
about her experience, including at the
United Nations World Conference on
Human Rights in 1993 and at a U.N.
Human Rights Council panel in 2016. Of
the 239 Korean women who have come
forward as victims, only 23 are still alive.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in,
who visited Kim’s altar at a Seoul hospital,
said in a statement that Kim devoted her
life to “restoring human dignity” and that
her campaigning gave South Koreans a
“braveness to face the truth.”
According to Yoon Meehyang, who
heads an activist group representing
South Korean sexual slavery victims, Kim
was dragged away from home at the age of
14 and forced to have sex with Japanese
soldiers at military brothels in China,
Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and
Singapore from 1940 to 1945. She came
forward as a sexual slavery victim in 1992,
a year after Kim Hak-sun became the first
South Korean woman to identify herself as
a former sex slave.
Kim’s death came at a time when
relations between South Korea and Japan
have sunk to their lowest in years over
Japan’s refusal to fully acknowledge the
sufferings of the so-called “comfort
women” during World War II and forced
laborers during its colonial rule of the
Korean Peninsula from 1910 through
1945.
Moon’s government in November
announced plans to dissolve a foundation
founded by Japan to compensate South
Korean sexual slavery victims, which if
carried out would effectively kill a
controversial 2015 agreement between the
countries to settle a decades-long impasse
over the issue.
Many in South Korea believed that
Seoul’s previous conservative government
settled for far too little in the deal, where
Tokyo agreed to fund the foundation with 1
billion yen ($9 million), and that Japan
still
hasn’t
acknowledged
legal
responsibility for atrocities during its
colonial occupation of Korea.
Japan had said it didn’t consider the
money it provided to the fund as compen-
sation, insisting that all wartime com-
pensation issues were settled in a 1965
treaty that restored diplomatic ties be-
tween the countries and was accompanied
by more than $800 million in economic aid
and loans from Tokyo to Seoul.
Japan blasted Seoul’s decision to walk
back on the deal, with foreign minister
Taro Kono saying Seoul was violating the
“most basic rule to live in the international
society.”
Noted Indian transgender activist shakes up Hindu festival
destroyed in 1992. Many hijras are Muslim.
The temple campaign is part of a broader
effort by members and sympathizers of India’s
ruling Bharita Janata Party — led by Prime
Minister Narendra Modi — to establish
Hinduism as the center of Indian heritage,
downplaying the multiculturalism that
resulted from India’s place on the old Silk Road
and the hundreds of years of rule by Muslim
Mughal kings and the British empire.
Kinnars celebrated their inclusion at Kumbh
as a victory, but greater acceptance by
Hinduism’s most powerful leaders — in the
religious and political spheres — remains to be
seen.
Mahant Suresh Das, the head of Digambar
akhara, one of the largest monastic orders, said
a statute limits the number of orders to 13.
“Moreover, they are hijra,” he said. “They are
Continued from page 2
“We have stripped enough in our lives, let us
just have fun,” Tripathi said.
They bathed in the presence of Juna
members.
“For them to bathe with one of the oldest and
most orthodox of the monastic orders, I consider
that quite revolutionary,” said Ashok Row Kavi,
chairman of the lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ)
advocacy group Humsafar Trust.
Kavi said, though, that Tripathi had “put
herself between a rock (and) a hard place” by
challenging the akharas’ all-male order on the
one hand and, on the other, by siding with
Hindu nationalists in their call for a temple to
the Hindu god King Ram to be built on the site of
a 16th-century mosque that Hindu hardliners
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Celebrate
The Year
of the Pig!
The Asian Reporter’s
Lunar New Year
special section
in honor of the
Year of the Pig
begins on page 9.
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neither man nor woman. The nature has
punished them for the misdeeds of their
previous lives. We are pure who follow (ancient
Hindu religion). The Kinnars are impure.”
The Kinnars travelled to Prayagraj, recently
renamed by the Hindu nationalist-led Uttar
Pradesh state government from the Mughal-era
Allahabad, in October 2017, when 60
transgender people were ordained as monks.
Kinnar saint Pushpa Maa said being
ordained gave new meaning to her life, “which
was otherwise reduced to seeking alms by
dancing in marriage or during birth of a child,”
she said, adding, “I used to beg in trains or main
crossings of the city. (Tripathi) helped us to
erase that image. We are no longer a hijra but
part of an organization which is fighting for our
religious rights.”
Banerjee reported from Lucknow, India.
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KODO
# 38
#43347
Instructions: Fill in the grid so that the digits 1
through 9 appear one time each in every row, col-
umn, and 3x3 box.
Solution to
last issue’s
puzzle
Puzzle #38616 (Medium)
All solutions available at
<www.sudoku.com>.
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ONE
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