일본군‘위안부’ 피해자구제에 관한 일고(一考)

Abstract

The issue of the Comfort Women who suffered from the Japanese military under Japanese colonial rule has been magnified between South Korea and Japan, and recently has become pressing since comfort women demanded an official apology and compensation from the Japanese government in 1991. At that time, the Japanese government acknowledged that the Japanese military had been directly and indirectly involved in compulsory mobilization of comfort women and issued the Kono Statement as an apology for the Japanese military’s involvement in the use of women as sex slaves. In addition to this, the Japanese government created the Asian Women’s Fund and tried to resolve the issue through compensation for the victims. However, even though the Japanese government had to apologize and provide compensate officially for the women, the Asian Women’s Fund only tried to take moral responsibility toward the comfort women from a humanitarian standpoint. Therefore, it was rejected by the victims and failed. In August 2005, the South Korean government announced its official position: “It was not involved in the text of the 1965 Agreement between Korea and Japan of relevance to the relief of comfort women.” And the government requested an apology from Japan and compensation at the government level. In August 2011, the South Korean court arrived at a decision that it was unconstitutional that the South Korean government did not make proper efforts regarding the issue of comfort women. In accordance with this decision, the Korean government strongly urged Japan to settle the issue. In April 2012, the Japanese government also made a compromise plan, but a settlement was not reached. Both South Korea and Japan have tried diplomatic efforts for the comfort women by holding meetings at the director level since April 2041. Japanese as well as Koreans should know why the Japanese government must apologize and compensate legally, and why the South Korean government must call for a resolution on the basis of this issue. Then the two nations will understand that the South Korean government took appropriate measures, and the misunderstandings between the two nations will be solved to some extent. The purpose of this paper thus is to explain that the Japanese government bears the responsibility for settling the comfort women issue. For this, I review the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the 1965 Agreement between the Republic of Korea and Japan, Japan’s national responsibility, and the South Korean court’s decision, and analyze them in relation to the comfort women.