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The Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women’ Issue and the 1965 System: Comfort Women of the Empire and Two-fold Historical Revisionism

Since its publication in 2013, Park Yuha’s book Comfort Women of the Empire (Cheguk ŭi wianbu) has become a major point of contention for those concerned with the “comfort women” issue. However, while this book has been frequently cited amidst the recent maelstrom of Japan–Korea relations, the actual content of the book has received insufficient scrutiny. The aim of this article is to concretely examine the content and problematic aspects of Park’s book, building on research that has been carried out since the 1990s into the ‘comfort women’ issue and the question of post-war reparations. Based on the assumption that the Japanese government does not have any legal responsibilities, Park’s book claims that: 1) the “comfort women” victims do not have any right to claim compensation for damages from the Japanese government; 2) even if they did have such a right, the government of the Republic of Korea gave up all rights of claim at the Japan–Korea negotiations that concluded with the Treaty of 1965; and 3) the “economic cooperation” funds that the ROK received as a result of this Treaty were in fact a form of post-war reparations related to the Sino–Japanese War. However, Park has been unable to provide satisfactory grounds for these claims, due to the fact that her book Comfort Women of the Empire does not have an accurate understanding of the preceding research it uses. I argue that Park’s work contains serious methodological flaws, including a failure to define core concepts, such as reparations; the existence of mutually contradictory passages; the arbitrary selection of evidence to support her arguments; and the misuse of previous research. As a result, the book has critical flaws from the standpoint of its fundamental stated aim of promoting historical reconciliation.