Byeong Heon Kim
Korean History Textbook Research InstituteNational Action to Abolish the Comfort Women Act
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Seoul Korea
Email: cleanmt2000@gmail.com
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October 16, 2020
An Herrn Bezirksbürgermeister
Stephan von Dassel
Mathilde-Jacob-Platz 110551 Berlin
GERMANYbezirksbuergermeister@ba-mitte.berlin.de

Sehr geehrter Herr Stephan von Dassel

OPEN LETTER

Our standpoint on the statue erected in Mitte Borough, Berlin

On September 28, an unveiling ceremony for a comfort woman statue, the so-called “Statue ofPeace,” was held in Mitte Borough, Berlin, Germany. Later, on October 7, the mayor of MitteBorough, who saw the inscription on the pedestal of the statue as questionable, revoked approval andordered the statue removed by October 14. The Mitte council, however, met opposition from theKorea Verband, a local citizens’ group, and halted removal of the statue, pending a judicial decisionon the matter. As we have brought up the facts surrounding the comfort women issue and raisedquestions on this issue, we feel perplexed given the response of the Mitte Borough council. The key
issue is that this comfort woman statue, named “Peace”, is a result of distorted historical facts. We
explain our reasoning:11. The Japanese army did not forcibly transport Korean women
The statue erected in the Mitte Borough, Berlin, Germany, as a so-called “Statue of Peace”, is astatue of a prostitute, the oldest profession in human history. Prostitutes sink into a den of iniquity of
their making or, as with most, due to poverty. Most of the Japanese army Korean comfort women of
the Pacific War period ended up as prostitutes at the hands of vile criminals via fraud, playing on
their desire for public service and because of hunger and poverty. Korean women were sent not only
to comfort stations in war zones, but also to brothels at home and abroad by means both fair and foul.
At the end of the day, unscrupulous brokers exploited Korean women for money. It should not be
forgotten that some Korean women who were “taken away” also wanted to make money.
What army is it that specifically fools women into following them for money? Even the collection oftestimonies (1) issued by the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery byJapan stated, “None of the military documents discovered so far gives a specific explanation about
how comfort women were mobilized.” The 1996 UN Radhika Coomaraswamy Report stated, “Themost problematic aspect of attempting to write an account of the recruitment of military sexualslaves during the period leading up to the Second World War and during the war itself is the lack ofremaining or disclosed official documentation concerning the actual recruitment process.”
The claim that the Japanese army forcibly transported Korean women is absolutely not true.
2. Comfort women are not Japanese army sex slaves
The 1996 UN Radhika Coomaraswamy Report states, “The rationale behind the establishment of aformal system of comfort stations was that such an institutionalized and, therefore, controlled
prostitution service would reduce the number of rape reports in areas where the army was based.”This “institutionalized prostitution service” refers to legalized prostitution of the time and a comfortstation was a space where this legal prostitution took place. That is, a comfort station was a space inwhich the master, or “employer,” of comfort women offered these women to the Japanese army ascommodities to make a profit and Japanese army soldiers were “consumers” who paid the prescribedcharges by rank and time to satiate their sexual desires at comfort stations. Japanese army soldiers
were unable to enter comfort stations unless they paid a significant amount of their pay, for a brief
period of time, based on comfort station regulations. They could not use comfort stations unless they
had both money and time and were absolutely not allowed to treat comfort women as they pleased orto abuse them. The only people forcing “comfort women” to do anything were comfort station
owners, who paid money in advance to buy these women for their future services, and not theJapanese army.
Therefore, calling comfort women Japanese army sex slaves is a lie.
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3. Comfort women are not war crime victims
The 1998 UN McDougall Report states, “Acts of sexual violence, including rape, when committedby enemy or occupying forces during the course of an international conflict, may constitute grave
breaches of the Geneva Conventions.” What the Report defines as a war crime is “sexual violence,including rape, committed against local women in an area of an international conflict.” YOON
Mi-hyang, a member of Parliament currently under criminal investigation in South Korea for anumber of charges including misappropriation of funds, says that the purpose of the establishment of
comfort stations of the Japanese army was “to prevent wartime violence such as abduction and rapein occupied areas and it is intended for preventing sexually-transmitted diseases in soldiers andraising their moral.” That is, comfort stations were legal facilities for prostitution used to prevent war
crimes which could have occurred, such as abduction, rape and murder, of local women byoccupation soldiers. Referring to women working in facilities established for this purpose as war
crime “victims” is logically inconsistent. What is more, most comfort women who worked in thesefacilities came from other countries, other than Korea, to make money. Thus, the nature of theJapanese military comfort stations is not at all consistent with so-called war crimes.
Therefore, comfort women are not victims of Japanese army war crimes.
Lastly, it is not true that Ms. KIM Hak-sun, referred to as one of the “survivors who broke theirsilence on 14 August 1991” in the inscription, was forcibly taken by the Japanese army or lived thelife of a sex slave. Ms. KIM, who was born in Jilin Province, Manchuria in 1924, was sold for 40 yen
by her foster father to train as a kisaeng, or woman who provided entertainment to men of the upperclass, at the age of 15. Her foster father sent her to Pyongyang Kisaeng Academy to give her kisaeng
training for two years and then they traveled around the country seeking business opportunities.
However, this was not successful due to her young age and in the end he went to China.
Ms. KIM, was taken to Beijing, China by her foster father. She later stated that she was thenabducted by an officer with two stars on his uniform and soldiers, which is hard to believe. At thattime, in 1991, reports said that “her foster father who took her there did not receive any money fromthe Japanese soldiers and she was taken by force of arms” and there was an account that “her fosterfather, who intended to use his foster daughters to ‘do business’ with the Japanese army, wasthreatened at the point of the bayonet and he just handed her over to the Japanese army, without
getting a penny.” Based on these stories, I presume that the people who took Ms. KIM were notJapanese military personnel. No army anywhere, regardless of the country, traffic women. In 1991,
newspapers reported that, “KIM Halmoni was taken as a comfort woman in the spring 1940, when
she was 16. She lost her father when she was little and her mother married a second time. KIM
Halmoni was adopted by a family in Pyongyang when she was 13, finished Pyongyang Kisaeng3

Academy and was taken, together with another foster daughter, by her foster father to central China,
where the Sino-Japanese War was on-going.” This clearly shows that she was taken by her fosterfather. More than anything, no part of her own testimony stated that she was forcibly taken by theJapanese army.
Therefore, calling Ms. KIM a victim of the Japanese army is a distortion of facts.
As described above, the Korea Verband’s claim that Japanese military comfort women were
“forcibly transported by the Japanese army and made into sex slaves of the Japanese army to bevictims of a war crime” distorts the facts of the comfort women. Accordingly, the inscription below
is a fabrication that clearly distorts the facts of the comfort women: “During World War II, theJapanese military abducted countless girls and women from across the Asia-Pacific region andforced them into sexual slavery. The “Statue of Peace” commemorates the suffering of theseso-called comfort women. It honors the courage of the survivors who broke their silence on 14th
August 1991, and are seeking to prevent the repeat of such atrocities worldwide.”
Given the current circumstance, we, the Korean History Textbook Research Institute and theNational Action to Abolish the Comfort Women Act, would like to state the following to the Mitte
council of Berlin, to the people of Germany and to the people around the world:
1. We must face the fact that the “Statue of Peace” is a symbol of a distortion resulting from a
combination of distorted facts and fabricated stories of comfort women on the part of the KoreanCouncil for Justice and Remembrance;
2. The mayor of Mitte Borough must immediately have the so-called “Statue of Peace” removed toend the lies;
3. We hope that the German people will see the historical facts concerning the Japanese military
comfort women, which is in fact the only way to eliminate the diplomatic war between Japan andSouth Korea, and to a real “peace” between the two countries.

Byeong Heon Kim
The President of the Korean History Textbook Research Institute4