South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se met Wednesday with a U.S. congressman who spearheaded an effort for the passage of a landmark 2007 resolution on Japan’s wartime sex slavery in the U.S. House of Representatives, officials said.
Rep. Michael Makoto Honda, a California Democrat whose district includes the Silicon Valley, arrived in Seoul earlier in the day for a five-day stay to meet government officials to discuss an alliance between Seoul and Washington and situations in Northeast Asia.
Honda, who is of Japanese descent, has spoken out against Japan’s denial of its wartime history, including Tokyo’s coercion of South Korean and other Asian women into sexual slavery during World War II.
Honda played a leading role in the U.S. House of Representatives’ approval of the 2007 resolution condemning Japan’s wartime sex slavery.
He also led efforts to attach a rider to a spending bill for the 2014 fiscal year that called for the U.S. secretary of state to pay more attention to the issue of Japan’s sexual slavery.
At the opening of the talks, Honda delivered a framed printed edition of the 2007 resolution to Yun that was autographed by himself and Nancy Pelosi, the then speaker of the House of Representatives.
Historians estimate that up to 200,000 Asian women, mostly Koreans, were forced into sexual servitude for Japan’s soldiers during World War II. Only 54 victims remain alive in South Korea, with their average age standing at 88.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a nationalistic politician, has unnerved Seoul and Beijing further since Japan announced the result of a review of its 1993 apology over the issue in June.
Japan did not go so far as to revoke the so-called Kono Statement, but it said that the apology was the outcome of a political compromise between Seoul and Tokyo, inviting strong criticism from South Korea and China.
Honda’s itinerary in Seoul includes a visit to a house for former Korean victims of Japanese sex slavery, in the city of Gwangju, south of Seoul.
In August 2012, Honda visited the facility, together with Rep. Eni Faleomavaega of American Samoa’s at-large congressional district, to meet with elderly Korean victims, where they called for Japan to do more to resolve the long-standing grievance.
During his stay, Honda also plans to meet with officials from companies doing business in the Silicon Valley as well as officials from small and medium-sized businesses aspiring to make inroads into the region. (Yonhap)
