The English-language version of a book containing testimonies by South Korean victims of Japan’s wartime sex slavery will be distributed in the United States, a committee that deals with the issue said Sunday.
The English edition of the book, titled “Can You Hear Us?: The Untold Narratives of Comfort Women,” was published on Dec. 31 and will be distributed to libraries and Korean communities in the U.S., according to the committee operating under the prime minister’s office to uncover related facts. The Korean-language version was published in February 2013.
The book contains vivid testimonies of 12 South Korean victims who were coerced into sex servitude as well as accounts of human rights activists who advocated these women’s cause.
“It is timely that the victims’ vivid accounts are being published in English at a time when Japan is eager to deny its wartime history,” an official on the committee said. “As the U.S. exerts a huge influence on Japan, it is important to raise awareness about the issue in the U.S.”
Japan denies state involvement in sexually enslaving the women, mostly Koreans, for its front-line troops during World War II.
Historians estimate the number of such sex slaves at about 200,000.
Japan, which ruled over the Korean Peninsula as a colony from 1910-45, normalized relations with South Korea in 1965.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a conservative politician, has unnerved Seoul, Beijing and victims of Japan’s wartime aggression as his government in June reviewed Tokyo’s 1993 apology over the issue.
The Abe government did not go so far as to revoke the so-called Kono Statement, but said that the apology was the outcome of a political compromise between Seoul and Tokyo. (Yonhap)
