Comfort women foundation committee launched in South Korea

A preparation committee was launched on Tuesday to carry out work for the establishment of a foundation tasked with helping improve the lives of ageing former Korean comfort women, who were forced into wartime brothels for the Japanese military.

The committee, comprised of 11 members, held its first meeting the same day.

“I feel a heavy sense of responsibility by having a sensitive and important mission at this important time,” Kim Tae-hyun, who heads the committee, told reporters after chairing the meeting.

Kim, an honorary professor at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul, said the committee will start listening to the opinions of the victims as the primary task of the foundation, and the deal behind it, is to restore their honour and dignity.

The establishment of the foundation comes under the terms of a landmark deal reached between South Korea and Japan on December 28 to resolve the simmering bilateral issue “finally and irreversibly”.

The terms of the agreement included an apology and a financial pledge by Japan of one billion yen (HK$69 million) to establish a foundation to be founded by the South Korean government.

Kim, the committee chief, will likely also head the foundation, which is expected to be established in late June.

Meanwhile, the deal over former comfort women has been criticized by some of the victims, as well as activists and opposition parties, who have called on the Japanese government to admit legal responsibility for compensation.

The Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule between 1910 and 1945.

(AP)