South Korean victims of Japanese sexual enslavement will testify for the first time before the U.S. Congress next week when the House holds a hearing on "comfort women," also a first, a congressional aide said Tuesday.
The House subcommittee on the Asia-Pacific has scheduled a hearing for Feb. 15, following a resolution introduced last week by Rep. Michael Honda (D-California). The resolution urges the Japanese prime minister to apologize to the victims and calls on the Japanese government to acknowledge and accept responsibility for the sexual slavery.
Comfort women is an euphemism for hundreds of thousands of women Japan abducted or lured into frontline brothels to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during the World War II years. Most of the victims were Korean women, whose country was colonized by Japan from 1910-1945, but also included other foreign women.
South Korean victims have spoken in front of Congress in the past, telling their personal accounts of the atrocities they suffered. This will be the first time they will testify at a hearing.
The aide said the subcommittee also plans to invite a Dutch woman, now living in Australia, to testify.
Rep. Honda's resolution brought back the comfort women issue to the U.S. legislature after an earlier one, submitted by now-retired Congressman Lane Evans, was scrapped at the end of last year with the close of the 109th Congress.
The demand for the Japanese prime minister's apology has been added from the previous resolution.
Japan admits that comfort women existed but denies its imperial government was involved in mobilizing them or in running the brothels, a stance that continues to irritate its neighbors.
Washinton, Feb. 6 (Yonhap News)
Korean 'comfort women' to testify before Congress for first time |
