Statues Placed In Seoul To Honor Korean And Chinese ‘Comfort Women’

Students in South Korea are now being taught about the women that were taken by Japanese soldiers to be used as sex slaves for the military during the occupation of Korea, according to the Wall Street Journal.

As knowledge of this issue continues to spread, two bronze statues were placed in a small park in Seoul on Wednesday in order to honor the tens of thousands of young Korean, Chinese and other Asian women who were forced into sexual slavery, according to the NY Times.

One of the statues reportedly show a South Korea girl staring forward. Beside her is a Chinese girl, sitting in a separate chair with her fists in her lap.

The unveiling of the statues reportedly came days before the arrival of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan.

President Park Geun-hye of South Korea reportedly stated earlier this month that she was willing to meet one-on-one with the Prime Minister if Japan addressed the wartime abuses of the “comfort women.” The two leaders were reportedly eventually unable to schedule lunch together, which implied that there had been no major changes regarding this specific issue.

Chinese and South Korean artists and activists reportedly built the new statues.

“Koreans and Chinese resisted together like brothers against Japanese aggressions,” Leo Shi Young, a Chinese-American filmmaker from San Francisco, said during a dedication ceremony on Wednesday.

The subject of “comfort women” is reportedly only briefly mentioned in South Korea school textbooks. However, South Korea has reportedly begun educating students regarding this issue in September.

The teaching material is reportedly available to fifth-grade children and up through high school.

“Truthfully, this is something that we should have been done earlier,” said Minister of Gender Equality and Family Kim Hee-jung in an interview.