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The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday passed a resolution denouncing Japan's wartime conscription of sex slaves, which the Korean community in the U.S. hailed as the fruit of a grass-roots campaign by ethnic Korean voters.
Kim Dong-suk was deeply involved in the resolution's passage as the director of the Korean American Voter's Council. "The attendance of Koreans including elderly Lee Yong-soo at the House vote conveyed a strong message to the congressmen," Kim said.
Kim had rented a bus with fellow Koreans in New York and New Jersey and visited Capitol Hill as many as eleven times to lobby for the resolution.
The grass-roots effort succeeded against powerful lobbying from Japan, Kim said, and Resolution 121 will highlight Japan's human rights violations to the rest of the world.
Hong Il-song, whose coalition played a major role in campaigning for congressional support for the resolution, said, "It has been shown that justice is still alive."
The passage was most of all due to the power of Korean residents, Hong said. He cited their unwavering physical and emotional support, noting that even middle and high school students pitched in US$50 each to support the cause.
A good number of Chinese- and Filipino-Americans attended a news conference that day by an ethnic Korean group called Resolution 121 Coalition and shared in the joy.
Korean groups in the U.S. attributed the successful adoption to their strategic focus on human rights, highly valued by Americans, rather than trying to tackle the issue bilaterally with Japan.
Now that the U.S. House has adopted an official stance on Japan's attempted distortions of history, the Korean community in the U.S. believes the international community will be empowered to take issue with Tokyo's moves to amend its peace constitution, its leaders' visit to the Yasukuni war shrine and its claims to Korea's Dokdo islets.
Koreans in the U.S. said the bill's adoption clearly demonstrates the political potential of a united ethnic Korean population.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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