The joint statement by the Japan-Korea alliance for the truth, fighting
against lies related to the comfort women issue
Comfort women were licensed prostitutes administered by the Japanese Army. Those
women worked as prostitutes in order to pay back the advance money their desperately
poor parents received for their living expenses. The contemporary Japanese andKoreans were fully aware of this fact.
A Korean communist from the southern labor party residing in Japan once said, “Back at
my home village in Jeju, a woman who had become a widow at a young age, ran a comfortstation in China, employing young women from her village and earned a lot of money.
Most villagers wanted to have their daughters work at the woman’s lucrative comfort
station and many women became comfort women to make money.”
Therefore, the Syngman Rhee administration, while promoting anti-Japan policy, did not
demand compensation for the comfort women during the negotiation to normalize thediplomatic relationship.
We held a Japan-South Korea joint symposium over the comfort women issue in Tokyo
last year and this year we just held another symposium in Seoul. We have confirmed thehistorical fact as it was just mentioned.
Why, then, is it that a lie saying that comfort women were not licensed prostitutes but
were forcibly abducted by the Japanese Army and forced into sexual servitude was widely
spread and worsened the relationship between Japan and South Korea?
The villainous perpetrators were a group of liars propagating the false theory of forced
abduction and sexual slavery in Japan and South Korea. The leading Japanese newspaper
The Asahi Shimbun repeatedly and widely reported the story told by a “professional” liar
named Yoshida Seiji. Some Japanese activists searched for former comfort women andfiled lawsuits against the Japanese Government. Former comfort-women plaintiffs did
not say that they were forcibly abducted, but the Asahi Shimbun fabricated those women’sstatements.
And the two major anti-Japan bodies, the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military
Sexual Slavery by Japan and the Bereaved Families Society, spread this lie, which1originated in Japan, widely in South Korea. And this lie was reported widely in Korean
newspapers and on television as if it were a second independence movement. And we cannever overlook the fact that Japanese and Korean liars keep in close touch with NorthKorea. Quite symbolically, a former director general of the Korean Council for Justiceand member of the Korean Parliament together with the present director general attended
an event held by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, an accomplice ofNorth Korea, in Tokyo.
However, those seeking the truth in Japan and South Korea separately failed to cooperatewith each other due to difference in ethnic sentiments and other factors. In Japan, the truth
seekers kept fighting for thirty years and now made the Asahi Newspaper admit Yoshida’s
lie and cancel their related reports in the past. In South Korea, since 2019, fighters for thetruth started their counterattack, claiming that “comfort women were prostitutes,” anddemanding the removal of comfort woman statue, right next to the statue of a comfort
woman in Seoul. And finally, last year and this year, the Japan and South Korea Alliancefor the Truth held a joint symposium in Tokyo and Seoul.
Hereby, we declare that Japanese and South Korean truth-seekers must join hands andreveal the conspiracy and plot attempted by liars in Japan, South Korea and North Korea
and seek to strictly hold them responsible for their lies. We resolutely have to make themremove comfort woman statues, the symbol of their lies, in South Korea and all over theworld.

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