REMOVAL OF STATE OF PEACE STATUE

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We reported last week that the State of Peace statue symbolizing Japan's wartime atrocities was erected at an exhibition in Nagoya. But the display of this statue abruptly ended only after three days. It has also been found that Japan has allegedly pressured a German museum to remove a statue, symbolizing victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery from display. German museums and local government bodies have actually taken the statues down, at the persistent demand from the Japanese Embassy in Germany. Here are the details.

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Gallery Gedok, a Berlin museum for female artists, displayed the Statue of Peace at an exhibit that began on August 3rd. It is the same statue of a girl submitted to the Aichi Triennale in Japan by artists Kim Eun-sung and Kim Seo-kyung. But the Japanese Embassy in Germany sent an official letter to the museum two days before the start of the exhibit. It claimed the issue of wartime sexual slavery by the Japanese military was ultimately and irreversibly resolved by the two countries and damage compensation was given in accordance with the Claims Settlement Agreement between Seoul and Tokyo in 1965. Another statue was set up at a gallery in Dortmund in June, but the Japanese Consulate General asked for it to be removed. In one case, the persistent pressure from the Japanese government led to the actual removal of the statue. In 2017, the Ravensbruck Memorial in Brandenburg, Germany displayed a 10-centimeter-tall version of the statue presented by the civic group Korea Verband, but Japan pressured the museum to remove it.

[Soundbite] HAN JUNG-HWA(CHAIR, KOREA VERBAND IN GERMANY) : "The Japanese Embassy said that the statue should be removed because the comfort women issue has no direct association with the museum."

In 2017, pressured by Japan, German authorities took down a different edition of the Statue of Peace erected at a park in the city of Wiesent in southern Germany and scrapped a plan to install the sculpture in Freiburg. These incidents clearly show that Tokyo continues to force even foreign authorities to remove the statues.