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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday reiterated that there was ¡°no evidence or testimony¡± that the Japanese military forced the so-called comfort women to become sex slaves during World War II. Understanding of an earlier official statement acknowledging the Imperial Army's responsibility "must be premised on a change in what constitutes the definition of coercion," the Kyodo news agency quoted Abe as saying. Abe was answering questions from reporters who asked him about his position on a statement from 1993 where then-Cabinet secretary Yohei Kono acknowledged the involvement of the military authorities in setting up brothels.
The remarks coincided with the day when Korea commemorated the March 1, 1919 independence movement against Japanese colonial rule where some 7,500 were killed and 45,000 arrested.
They are bound to reverberate, coming as they do at a time when conservatives in the Japanese Cabinet want the government take back Kono¡¯s statement and prevent the U.S. Congress from adopting a resolution denouncing Japan's sexual enslavement of women during World War II. Kyodo interpreted Abe¡¯s formulation as denying Japanese military involvement ¡°in a narrow sense.¡± But the Sankei Shimbun newspaper read it as indicating that Tokyo would overhaul the Kono statement altogether. Abroad, AP said the remarks by Abe, ¡°a member of a group of lawmakers pushing to roll back a 1993 apology to the sex slaves by a government spokesman, were his clearest as prime minister on military brothels known in Japan as ¡®comfort stations.¡¯¡±
Abe in October also cast doubt on whether the Japanese military was involved in pressing the women into service "in a narrow sense," but appeared to defer to the Kono statement, apparently in consideration of Japan¡¯s chilly relations with Korea, China and other Asian nations where the women came from.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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