‘Comfort women’ protest Japan deal

Former “comfort women” and hundreds of supporters on Wednesday protested against South Korea’s agreement with Japan on wartime sex slavery, as Seoul faces an uphill battle to sell it to the public.

Some 250 protesters gathered next to a statue outside Japan’s embassy, which symbolises Korean women forced into Japanese Army brothels during the World War II.

They waved banners and chanted slogans, dismissing the deal as “humiliating.”Japan on Monday offered an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.3 million) payment to the 46 surviving South Korean women under an agreement which both nations described as “final and irreversible”.

The plight of the so-called “comfort women” is a hugely emotional issue that has for decades marred ties with Japan, which ruled the Korean peninsula harshly from 1910 to 1945.

Japan said the one-billion-yen payment was aimed at “restoring the women’s dignity” but was not official compensation. “The fight is still on,” survivor Lee Yong-Soo said at the rally, attended by one other victim and about 250 protesters.

The landmark agreement has sparked anger from some of the victims and activists, who took issue with Tokyo’s refusal to accept formal legal responsibility for the sex slavery.

The deal, while pleased many in Washington, met with a frosty reception in Beijing, which wields popular anger over Japan’s wartime atrocities in China — including the use of Chinese “comfort women” — as a cudgel against Tokyo.

There has also been a mixed response in South Korea, with the media and some of the women themselves taking issue with the terms, particularly Tokyo’s refusal to accept formal legal responsibility. Questions remain about why Japan “singled out” South Korea for an apology, Xinhua news agency said.

In the face of criticism, President Park Geun-Hye has launched an all-out campaign to win public support for the deal.