As part of history, teens of all races ought to know history including the truth about the comfort women from many Asian countries with a large percentage coming from Korea.
The statue in Busan had been created as a memorial to the many women who were used and abused during the WWII. These women were detained in what was once called comfort stations serving as sex slaves, to give pleasure to the Japanese soldiers of that time.
While the Busan statue is raising an issue between the two nations, it is not the first that such an issue had been raised. In reality, this is a duplicate of an identical sculpture which was built in 2011 close to the Japanese embassy located in Seoul. Good resources to read includes Comfort Women Testimonies On Atimes.com.
The sculpture signifies the place where previous comfort women in Korea and their proponents rallied. It had been built to mark the 1000th rally they made to demand the Japanese government to take responsibility of the crimes that had happened during the WWII.
The monument have inspired many nations who have the same accounts of use and abuse of women also in the era of WWII to build the statues with similar meaning to that of the Busan statue.
The Japanese Government Is Not Happy About These Monuments
And while the monuments means so much to many nations, it have raised bitterness from the Japanese government who have requested these statues to be removed in the United States and other places where these monuments have been built.
December 2015, both nations came to an agreement to claim the ultimate however irreversible resolution surrounding the issues of comfort women in Korea. Within the deal, Prime Minister of Japan at that time, Shinzo Abe apologized to the people who experienced incurable bodily and emotional pains being forced as comfort women. The Japanese government offered 1 billion yen to help South Korean women who were once called comfort women.
In exchange, South Korea recognized Japan’s issue concerning the sculpture in Seoul. They have also advised it could resolve the matter within a suitable fashion.
On the other hand, several people had been instantly criticizing the agreement that was arranged by both governing bodies without having to consult the sufferers, the victims of such crimes that happened decades ago. The arrangement failed to include a Japanese acceptance of lawful obligation, neither did it offer immediate payment to specific victims. Additionally, the agreement had been viewed as a result of geopolitics.
Japan states the Busan sculpture has broken the 2015 contract, but for the survivors and the proponents, the sculpture is actually an exhibition of resistance to a deal they in no way acknowledged. Seoul is now strained from the Japanese government to get rid of the sculpture.