The issue of the comfort women reached a critical status in 1992. Yoshimi Yoshiaki is a Japanese historian who announced documents were discovered linking the government of Japan with the wartime brothels of the 1930's and 1940's. Accusations were made against Japan for abducting numerous thousands of women as sex slaves. They were alleged to massacre many of these women when the 15 year war was lost. Most of the victims were reported to be Korean. Endless apologies were made by Japanese politicians for the Korean comfort women and the press pounced. The United Nations was involved when they released the Coomaraswamy Report regarding the issue in 1996.
The harder this topic is pressed by South Korea the more ground they lose. This is because the key claims of the comfort women testimonies are not true. There were rare war crimes but no systematized forced abduction. A lot of the women were not Korean. This fantasy started with a communist called Yoshida Seiji who wrote a fictional work in 1982 called My War Crimes. The Asahi Shimbun newspaper treated it as fact. His points are still being recycled and the Coomaraswamy Report rehashed the book. When the comfort women stories are examined other countries start to look bad. Sex and war are inseparable and brothels boomed during the Great War.
There was a difference during World War II because the men were stationed in garrisons surrounded by hostile locals. Americans possessed the biggest brothel system run by the military. They were able to place the comfort stations a long way from the enemy lines. The field commanders of Japan forbid patronizing with prostitutes to increase security by controlling information leaks. Japanese officials imitated the Western models and attempted to stop rape by setting up comfort stations. The women recruited were usually subcontracted by pimps and madams in Korea. The military of Japan tried to stop the wartime rapes but this was encouraged by other countries.
The Soviet Union was the worst offender . When World War II ended the troops engaged in a rape rampage. Many Japanese women committed suicide in Manchuria due to the brutalization of the Soviet troops. Venereal disease was an issue and men were often grounded due to gonorrhea and syphilis. It was forbidden to visit the red light district in Kumming because the infection rate for VD was alleged to be 100 percent. Prior to the intervention of Gen. Joseph Stilwell, prostitutes were flown in from India.
The south Korean comfort women system did not stop in 1945. The United States supplied comfort stations during the Korean war. This system was supported by the government of South Korea. An order was signed by Park Chung-hee in 1977 to remove the camptowns where United States troops were serviced. The goal was to keep United States dollars and the American military in South Korea. This left the South Korean brothel workers in a cycle of social discrimination and sex work. The truth is South Korea committed heinous war crimes. Vietnamese peasant women were defenseless when they were savagely butchered and raped by South Korean troops in 1966 and 1968. There are also the legacies of the cruelty of the Koreans against World War II Allied POW's and the thousands of illegitimate, abandoned children during the Vietnam war fathered by South Korean soldiers.
The sinister aspect involves the Korean comfort women statues in the United States. The most recent is located in San Francisco and was approved by the city council. These statues are also located in South Korea. The most prominent is in Busan by the Japanese consulate. Another statue went up in Manila last year and in 2016 in Sydney.