美国国家公共电台 NPR Not All South Koreans Satisfied With Japan's Apology To 'Comfort Women'

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The United States considers Japan and South Korea essential allies, especially when it comes to dealing 1 with the threat from North Korea's missile and nuclear program, but one issue dogs relations which goes all the way back to World War II. That's when Japan forced tens of thousands of Korean women into sexual slavery. They were euphemistically called comfort women. The two countries signed a deal two years ago for reparations, but many Koreans, including the new president, think that deal was unfair. From Seoul, NPR's Lauren Frayer reports.

LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE 2: A TV blasts Korean soap operas at this nursing home. It's a bright, spacious 3 place hidden in green hills east of South Korea's capital, but its residents survived a dark chapter of history.

LEE OK-SEON: (Speaking Korean).

FRAYER: Ninety-year-old Lee Ok-seon was kidnapped by Japanese soldiers in 1942.

LEE: (Through interpreter) I was only 15, running an errand for my parents, when two Japanese men in uniform grabbed me by the arms and dragged me away. That's how I became enslaved.

FRAYER: Enslaved and sent to work in a brothel in a Japanese-occupied area of China. She was there for three years until World War II ended.

LEE: (Through interpreter) We didn't know the war had ended. The owner of the brothel ran away. I was inside with seven girls, and we were starving. A soldier came in and told us to run. The whole city was burning.

FRAYER: Lee didn't return to South Korea until the year 2000. Many of the comfort women were shunned 4 by their families. She says she just wants Japan to apologize.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Over loudspeaker, speaking Korean).

FRAYER: And so do these protesters at weekly rallies in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. But Japan says it has apologized in 1993 and then again two years ago.

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PRIME MINISTER SHINZO ABE: (Speaking Japanese).

FRAYER: "We have been expressing our remorse 5 and apology," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters in 2015 when his government gave the surviving comfort women more than $8 million in reparations. He called it a final and irreversible solution. But polls show a majority of Koreans want it reversed.

CHO BYOL: They don't respect Korea. We can't trust them.

FRAYER: Protester Cho Byol took part in street rallies to oust 6 the conservative Korean president from power earlier this year amid a corruption 7 scandal. Now, the same activists 8 are joining rallies against Korea's old colonial ruler, Japan. But there's a danger of emotions obscuring the facts here, says Park Yu-ha, Korean professor of Japanese literature.

PARK YU-HA: (Through interpreter) Nowadays, people think Japan came and raped 9 and never gave compensation, but that's not totally accurate.

FRAYER: Park wrote a book in which she disputes the numbers of Korean comfort women and says some of them got work contracts as prostitutes. The book won awards in Japan, but parts of it were redacted in Korea. Some of the comfort women sued Park for defamation 10. She's been labeled a Japanese apologist and a traitor 11.

PARK: (Through interpreter) I've been a victim of this anti-Japanese sentiment. It's part of a post-Cold War identity shift as nationalism grows.

FRAYER: Now that Korea is a rich prosperous country, it's re-examining its past as a colony of Japan. In one of his first acts in office, the new South Korean President Moon Jae-in spoke 12 by phone with his Japanese counterpart. They discussed the common threat posed by North Korea, but the headlines here were dominated by Moon bringing up the comfort women and a 2015 deal he said the Korean people cannot emotionally accept. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, Seoul.

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