SKorean opposition to ‘comfort women’ deal intensifies

Dozens of South Korean college students were reportedly under investigation at a Seoul police station Thursday, as local opposition to Monday’s ‘comfort women’ agreement with Japan grew ever vocal.

A total of 30 students were rounded up after carrying out an unauthorized protest at Tokyo’s temporary mission in the South Korean capital, according to local news agency Yonhap.

They were calling for “legal compensation” on behalf of 46 surviving former ‘comfort women’ from the South – estimates place the original number of women forced into sexual slavery by Imperial Japan in the hundreds of thousands.

The students had also apparently been involved in the previous day’s legal rally outside the city’s official Japanese Embassy, which is undergoing construction work.

South Korean police have already been criticized this year for a heavy handed approach to protesters, but the question of settling this longstanding dispute with Tokyo appears to have split society.

A local poll carried out Wednesday showed that 50.7 percent of those surveyed disapproved of this week’s deal, which will see Japan pay 1 billion yen ($8.3 million) to South Korean victims.

Among 508 adults nationwide who responded to Realmeter, 43.2 percent were in favor of the breakthrough following years of tensions with Tokyo concerning its 1910-45 rule over the Korean Peninsula and perceived failure to properly atone for its past abuses.

Japan had long argued that all issues related to its colonization of Korea were settled under a 1965 treaty with Seoul.

After 12 rounds of working-level talks, Monday’s deal between the two sides’ foreign ministers and an apology from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe looked like a cause for celebration.

But criticisms of the agreement quickly emerged from some elderly former sex slaves, who argued that legal consequences were more important than money and that they should have been consulted before it was finalized.

That point of view was echoed by opposition lawmakers in their insistence that the deal lacked parliamentary approval.

There has also been much focus on the future of a ‘comfort woman’ statue currently located outside Seoul’s Japanese Embassy.

While the South Korean government has been adamant that there are no plans to move the statue, reports out of Japan have claimed the opposite – fueling the suspicions of opponents back in the South.

Seoul’s presidential spokesperson Kim Sung-woo said Thursday that “groundless rumors” would only lead to confusion.

“The important thing from now on is to establish a foundation for the victims as soon as possible so that their honor and dignity is restored and that their livelihoods are improved,” Kim told reporters.

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se also assured during a meeting with lawmakers that “any shortcomings will be made up for during [the agreement’s] implementation.”