South Korea to Set Up Comfort Women Research Center

August 9, 2018

Seoul- South Korea will open a research institute on Friday to compile historical records on so-called comfort women, the Gender Equality and Family Ministry said Thursday.

It is important to centralize the results of research conducted on comfort women so far and carry out follow-up research systematically, Gender Equality and Family Minister Chung Hyun-back said.

This can help future generations correctly understand history and learn lessons to prevent a recurrence of past wrongdoings, Chung said.

Chung also said she hopes the new research institute will compile related records scattered around the world and play a central role in research on the wartime human rights of women.

Comfort women are women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers before and during World War II.

The new research institute will be headed by Kim Chang-rok, professor at Kyungpook National University, who is critical of an agreement reached between Tokyo and Seoul in 2015 to resolve their dispute over Korean comfort women.

The research institute will build a database on the comfort women issue. It will look into records in Japan, China and Southeast Asian countries as well as South Korea.

Kim has called on the South Korean government to shoulder the cost of one billion yen that Japan contributed to help Korean comfort women under the accord. Jiji Press