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Korean American community campaigns to support Fullerton comfort woman statue

September 11, 2014
Glendale's comfort woman statue (Yonhap)

Glendale’s comfort woman statue (Yonhap)

More than 1,200 Korean Americans have signed a campaign supporting the installation of a statue at Fullerton Museum Center commemorating comfort women victimized by Japanese soldiers during World War II, the Korean American Forum of California said Wednesday.

Korean churches, language schools, businesses and banks around the region have set up signature booths to collect support for the statue, which would be the second of its kind in Southern California following the controversial memorial in Glendale.

“Since the beginning of this month, the response has been high from supportive Koreans in the Fullerton region,” said Yoon Seok-won, head of the organization.

The campaign began after Fulleton Museum Center received over 300 letters from Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans opposing the statue.

In February, a Japanese American organization unsuccessfully filed a lawsuit against the city of Glendale to take down the city’s statue depicting a young Korean comfort woman, one of many sex slaves taken by soldiers during the war from Korea, China the Philippines and other countries.

The ever-controversial issue has been accused by the Japanese of potentially souring U.S.-Japan relations and has called for a formal apology, as well as compensation, by the Korean community.

The organization said it is overseeing signature booths at several locations in Fullerton, including two Pacific City Banks, Jaseng Center for Alternative Medicine and a handful of small businesses in the area.

“We started the signature campaign to be of help in installing the statue, and now our patients are participating in it,” said Lee Woo-kyung, director of Jaseng Center. “There’s even people coming to the hospital just to sign the campaign. I hope the statue is installed in order to properly educate the public.”

The museum’s 20-member board of directors, two of them Korean, will decide on the statue’s installation in October.

 

4 Comments

  1. humanrightstiananmen64

    September 12, 2014 at 6:22 PM

    Korean American Forum of California is not a real fighter for human rights of women, but a propagandist for Korean ultra-nationalism. The group always turns its face away from the inconvenient truth, Korean comfort women enslaved for the US military and the Korean Government itself during and after the Korean War, and the group has never tackled it seriously. Korean American Forum of California is not a real peace maker. The group just stirs up ill feeling and unnecessary tension between American ethnic groups in the name of human rights, only for its Korean extreme nationalism. A memorial on public land would be better to address the general case of comfort women not the one specific to the Japanese treatment of Korean women. I am sure that more cases can be found in the many wars the USA has fought. And Korean soldiers were concerned with these wars. Please read the following article by Washington Post on Aug.19, 2014. It criticizes Korean political lobby like Korean American Forum of California in the USA.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/pandering-to-northern-vas-koreans-is-going-to-extremes/2014/08/19/f9032eea-271e-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html

    Reply

  2. moguro

    September 13, 2014 at 3:00 AM

    It seems Americans are makig their own country the Planet if the Comfort Women.
    http://www.howitzer.jp/korea/page11.html

    Reply

  3. moguro

    October 22, 2014 at 12:19 AM

    Korean men are chiken shit. They did not resist when 200,000 women were forcibly rounded up by a foreign army.

    Fullerton wants to build a memorial that demonstrates the cowardice of Korean men.

    False Accusations of Comfort Women
    http://www.howitzer.jp/korea/page03.html

    Reply

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