Hundreds in Seoul Protest Over Visit by Japanese Leader
Hundreds of demonstrators marched through Seoul on Tuesday to protest a visit to South Korea by Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa.
Riot police halted the protesters--most of them relatives of Koreans killed or forced to serve as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers during World War II--a few hundred yards from the National Assembly building.
“Japan must make an official and immediate apology for what (it) did to us in the past,” the protesters chanted.
Many carried portraits of relatives who died after being conscripted as soldiers or laborers by Japan, which ruled the Korean Peninsula as a colony from 1910 to 1945.
The protesters vowed to disrupt the Miyazawa visit, from Thursday to Saturday, unless Japan promises to pay them compensation.
Among the protesters was 64-year-old Hwang Kum Ju, who said the Japanese army forced her to serve as a “comfort woman” in Manchuria from 1943 to 1945.
“Japan’s apology is merely lip service. We will not let Miyazawa go back home if he fails to make promises of compensation for us,” she said.
Japan on Monday made its first formal apology to South Korea for the army’s role in rounding up the tens of thousands of “comfort women.”
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