◆ 2023年4月12日 フィラデルフィア市 芸術委員会 録画
A recording of the April 12, 2023 Art Commission meeting
13分： Philadelphia Peace Plaza Committee（設置推進団体）慰安婦像計画 碑文の修正案について説明
30分： パプリック・コメント 市民からの意見
1時間１分： 各委員の意見
1時間33分頃 まで
◆ 碑文修正案 ※クリックすると別ウィンドウで拡大表示されます
The Philadelphia Peace Plaza is dedicated to countless girls and women from Asia, Oceania, and Europe who were victimized by the Japanese Imperial Army’s sexual slavery system from 1931 to 1945 during World War II. Starting in 1991, survivors broke the cycle of shame and silence to demand justice and urged the world to protect future generations of women from all forms of sexual violence.
The Statue of Peace, located at the heart of the plaza, is a bronze statue portraying a girl who was removed from her home and coerced into sexual slavery. On the base of the statue is a tiled mosaic which represents the girl’s shadow as an elderly woman; a reminder of time lapsed and the ongoing pursuit of justice for the survivors. The chair next to her invites visitors to sit with her in solidarity with the courage of the survivors and their allies’ calls for remembrance and justice.
As an open public space for contemplation and gathering, the plaza calls our attention to the often-silenced stories of survivors of sexual violence around the world and their resilient efforts to build a peaceful future. Standing in a city of refugees, immigrants, war survivors, and their descendants, the plaza welcomes all to start an open dialogue that will lead to true, lasting peace.
Visit the link below to learn more about the Philadelphia Peace Plaza and the artistic elements of the Statue of Peace. This information has been translated and is available in other languages. [insert link here]
前案 ※クリックすると別ウィンドウで拡大表示されます
◆ 議事録 Minutes 6ページ
Presentations for Final Review
1. 22-21 Philadelphia Peace Plaza, a.k.a. Statue of Peace
修正案への追記・修正
・the Japanese Imperial Army 日本帝国陸軍の存在した年を明確にするために追記する。（委員によると1868-1945）
・第三パラグラフに “ongoing” を追記する⇒ survivors of ongoing sexual violence
・QRコードを加える（多言語用）
◆ Philadelphia Peace Plaza Committee（設置推進団体）
プレゼンテーション スライド
※クリックすると別ウィンドウで拡大表示されます
Re: The installation plan of “Statue of Peace” in your city
My name is Sumiyo Egawa, a Japanese resident of Sydney, Australia, and the President of the Australia-Japan Community Network (aka AJCN). AJCN is a small volunteer group of Australian and Japanese parents concerned about the safety and security of our children living in Australia.
I am extremely saddened to hear about your plan to install an art object, the so-called “Statue of Peace,” in your city. I object to the proposed project for the following five reasons.
“Statue of Peace” cannot be classified as art
There are at least a dozen similar statues in the US alone, some in Europe and almost fifty in South Korea.[1] Statues of Peace have no originality, and manufacturing the statues has been a lucrative business for the Korean couple sculptors Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sung. They have duplicated the original Comfort Woman statue or similar ones since 2011.
Korean Activists Use “Statue of Peace” for the purposes of Japan Discounting and Bashing
In the case of the “Statue of Peace” in Glendale in 2013, Glendale Mayor Dave Weaver was not sufficiently informed of the script’s content upon the Statue, before it was constructed. Later, the Mayor issued a letter of regret about Comfort Women Memorial.[2] The engraved fabricated message unfairly targeted and condemned Japan, and Japanese soldiers, who fought during WWII. On the other hand, the inscriptions conceal Korean soldiers’ atrocious behaviour towards Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War, resulting in the births of many Korean-Vietnamese children, known as Lai Dai Han.
Anti-Japan Romanticism is known as Han-Nichi in South Korea
A few years after WWII ended, successive Korean governments used negative Romanticism for its political advantages and propaganda against Japan. The Korean education system implanted the Anti-Japan mindset within Korean children’s tender minds. This phenomenon is openly explained in the book “Anti-Japan Tribalism,” written by the six Korean academics, published in 2019.[3] This book is written in the Korean language to inform ordinary Koreans of the truth about Comfort Women.
The mini-battle field of For and Against Comfort Woman Statue in Seoul
Since the first statue was built in Seoul in 2011, opposite to the Japanese Embassy building, the Anti-Japan campaign has intensified. Since 1992, the so-called “Wednesday Demonstration” has been conducted in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul Korea, every Wednesday, and organizers collect donations. However, after the publication of “Anti-Japan Tribalism,” many enlightened Korean youths led by Professor Lee Woo-yeon have counteracted and confronted against Anti-Japan activists at the same spot, face to face.[4] Although the Japanese Embassy has re-located, the surrounding area of the Statue remains as a mini battle field between For and Anti Comfort Woman Statue advocates. A similar movement occurred in front of the Japanese Consulate in Sydney every Wednesday. However, since the Korean activists failed to set up a Comfort Woman Statue in the Sydney suburb of Strathfield in 2015, such activities faded away and eventually halted.[5]
Korea’s claim about Comfort Women as Sex Slaves is a malicious lie
On December 1, 2020, the American Legal Scholar, Professor J. Mark Ramseyer at Harvard University, published the well-researched paper, “Contracting for sex in thePacific War,” explicitly explaining that Comfort Women were not Sex Slaves but wartime prostitutes during WWII.[6] Various primary sources support Ramseyer’s paper. Nevertheless, Ramseyer was viciously and emotionally attacked, and labelled a history revisionist by Korean supporters. Ramseyer had called for written dissents from critics, but only a very few responded to Ramseyer’s request. Recently, Ramseyer has written and published a paper, “CONTRACTING FOR SEX IN THEPACIFIC WAR; A RESPONSE TO MY CRITICS,” in which he demonstrated his research’s authenticity.
Briefly, I have explained the background and hidden agendas behind the “Peace Statue,”
and I am sincerely asking you to acknowledge that Philadelphia has no relation to Korean War Time Prostitution. Please reconsiderbuilding a false statue, which will bring no peace and happiness, but create negativity and hurt. Such negativity is unnecessary and creates unprecedented conflict within your community, as well as sending biased information about Japan to young children. Accordingly, Philadelphia is not a suitable place to display a “Peace Statue” in a public area. The Statue will not bring peace and harmony into your city, but hatred, division and unnecessary trouble. Philadelphia does not need such a negative monument.
資金集めサイトには、「 1932-1945年に日本帝国陸軍によって強制的に性奴隷にされたアジアとオセアニア地域の２０万人の少女と女性 （200,000 girls and women from Asia and Oceania who were removed from their homes and coerced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Armed Forces of Japan between 1932 and 1945.）」を記念するためと書いてあります。
Network of National Movements to Abolish the Comfort Woman Legislation
A LETTER OF PROTEST
Discontinue immediately the Philadelphia Korean American Association’s vicious attempt to build a Statue of Peace Plaza!
In June 2021, the committee for the Girl Statue Plaza of the Philadelphia Korean American Association made public a project to add a Statue of Peace Plaza at a site of the park in Queen Village, Philadelphia, according to the Internet Journal published in South Korea. Since then, the committee began to coordinate with the city hall and solicit donations from the local residents. The city hall will hold briefing and hearing sessions on February 9, in response to a request submitted by the committee to construct the plaza. The statue of a girl will be designed by the couple Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sung as is often the case with similar statues erected both in South Korea and other parts of the world.
The Girl Statue is, however, nothing but the willful misunderstanding of the comfort women issue and the wrongful anti-Japanese hostility espoused by sculptor Kim Seo-kyung. Regarding his note titled “A Promise Engraved on the Empty Bench,” Mr. Kim wrote, “During the days of the annexation of Korea by Japan, innocent Korean girls and young women were deceived or kidnapped to warfront to be made sexual slaves. In some cases, they were killed. What I did by designing the statue was for a cause to hand down the hideous acts in history.” Truth is the statue is the product of no more than distorted historical facts and unfounded hatred.
Though the sculptor claims the Japanese military forcefully conscripted the Korean girls, the Japanese military, in any capacity, had not made them subjected to any mobilization during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War. The Japanese troops were public servants and, therefore, had to follow laws and regulations. There was no law or regulation to mobilize comfort women. It must be noted that an official duty required an official order to carry out. In the absence of such a duty or order, no one could take the women out to warfront. It is the private managers who, in reality, employed for money the comfort women. In other words, there was No Conscription of Comfort Women in those days, period.
South Koreans, expatriates or not, also claim the comfort women were sexual slaves for the troops. This is another false claim. Fact is that the troops paid money according to their rank to the comfort station manager, that each of them was given a certain time to be with a comfort woman, and that comfort women earned money for their sexual service. The women engaged in prostitution as profession were not sexual slaves.
Were the comfort women victims of war crime? No! The McDougall Report of 1998 submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Commission states, in part, war crimes are defined as one nation’s troops committing kidnapping, raping, and murdering women of an adversary nation during an international conflict or an armed clash. Korea and Japan were not hostile with each other then. Korean women, as well as Korean men, were Japanese nationals. The comfort stations were provided for troops so as not to rape women in the occupied areas. The stations were legal entities, not to mention the official contracts the station managers and comfort women signed with each other. Those women should not be regarded as the victims of war crimes.
The sculptor Kim Seo-kyung, while visualizing the statue as a teenage girl who had been deceived and kidnapped by the Japanese military to warfront, asked his 11-year-old daughter to model for it. His idea is wrong in that a woman had to sign a contract with a prostitution agent, obtain a permit from police, present herself at the police division of a Japanese consulate. Each woman who had to follow those procedures must also present a letter of consent from her father or legal custodian, a copy of her family register, a certificate of the family seal, a written request for permission to do business, a certificate of a business investigation result, and two photographs. Upon completion of those stringent procedures, one could officially work at a comfort station. No one could evade them. Besides, women who chose to engage in prostitution had to be 17 years old at least.
As stated above, numerous girl statues erected in South Korea and other overseas locations carry the message based on willfully distorted disinformation about the comfort women. The plate attached to the girl statue states it is a peace statue. Has it been contributing to peace in real world? No, it has not. It merely symbolizes fabrication of facts and unsolicited hatred. It, in fact, aggravates the South Korean-Japanese relations each time another statue is built.
The nature of the comfort women issue involving the Japanese military boils down to poverty, period. Most of the cases in which prostitution was chosen as a profession point to poor and/or bankrupt families. In some cases, young women volunteered to ease up financial troubles those families had to face. In other cases, their parents took advantage of the daughters to get extra money. Those difficult situations forced the women to go through shameful and sorrowful experiences in her early life. It certainly raises an alarm over their condition as a historical lesson. It should not be used, however, as an easy tool to help anti-Japanese campaigns.
Since South Korea was established in 1948, some anti-Japanese people have been abetting campaigns to discredit Japan and creating a great chasm between the nation and Japan. No one can estimate how much loss those activities and opinions have brought about over the healthy bilateral relations. Its pecuniary loss might amount to several hundred trillion won. The issues of the comfort women and the conscripted Korean laborers have twisted the bilateral relations despite what the international laws and regulations dictate. Erecting another statue in Queen Village will add fuel to the fire already burning. Would the conscientious citizens feel comfortable about what it entails?
We rightfully hope the Philadelphia Korean American Association to immediately and righteously rescind the project to build the Statue of Peace Plaza. We also hope the Philadelphia citizens sincerely and seriously make efforts not to further hurt the healthy South Korean-Japanese-American relations.
지난해 6월, 국내 한 인터넷 신문에 따르면 미국 필라델피아 한인회 소녀상공원추진위원회(이하 추진위원회)가 필라델피아시 퀸빌리지의 한 가로(街路) 공원에 일본군 위안부 피해자를 상징하는 ‘평화의 소녀상 공원(Statue of Peace Plaza)’을 조성한다고 하였다. 이에 여러 행정적 절차와 함께 모금을 진행해왔으며 추진위원회의 요청에 따라 이번 2월 9일에는 필라델피아시가 ‘평화의 소녀상 공원’ 건설과 관련한 설명회를 가질 것이라고 하였다. 추진위원회가 설치하고자 하는 소녀상은 김운성·김서경 부부가 제작한 것이라고 한다. 국내외에 가장 많이 설치된 소녀상이다.
하지만, 이 소녀상은 조각가의 그릇된 위안부 인식과 대일 적개심이 투영된 거짓과 증오의 상징물이다. 조각가는 ‘빈 의자에 새긴 약속’이라는 자신의 작가 노트에서 “일제강점기 조선의 꽃다운 나이의 소녀들과 젊은 여인들을 속이거나 강제로 전쟁터로 끌고 가 성노예로 삼았고, 심지어 죽이기까지 하는 무참한 범죄를 서슴없이 저질렀던 참혹한 역사를 기억하게 하고 싶었다.”고 하였으나 이는 역사적 사실에 부합하지 않는 작가의 왜곡된 인식과 증오심의 표출에 지나지 않는다.
작가는 일본군이 조선 소녀를 강제로 동원했다고 하였으나, 중일전쟁과 태평양 전쟁시 조선 여성은 어떤 명목으로든 군의 동원 대상이 아니었다. 일본군은 일제의 국가공무원으로 그들의 행위는 공무(公務)이기 때문에 위안부를 동원하려면 반드시 법령을 따라야 하나, 위안부를 동원하는 법령은 없었다. 설령 동원할 일이 있었다 하더라도 공무는 소집명령서와 같은 문서를 교부하여 장소와 시간을 고지(告知)할 일이지 골골이 쫓아다니며 끌고 갈 수는 없다. 위안부는 포주의 모집 대상일 뿐 공무상 동원대상이 아니기 때문에 ‘위안부 강제동원’이라는 전제 자체가 오류다.
다음으로 위안부를 일본군 성노예라고 주장하나 이것도 거짓이기는 마찬가지다. 만약 위안부가 일본군 성노예였다면 일본군은 누구든지, 또 언제든지 위안부를 대상으로 자신의 성욕을 채우고 폭행을 가하고 필요하면 팔아넘길 수도 있어야 한다. 하지만 일본군은 위안소 규정에 정해진 계급별 시간별 요금을 지불해야만 위안소를 이용할 수 있었다. 돈이 있으면 이용하고 없으면 이용할 수 없는데다 위안부를 함부로 대할 수도 없었던 것이다. 소정의 비용을 받고 성적 서비스를 제공하는 직업여성을 군인이 어떻게 노예처럼 부릴 수 있다는 말인가?
전쟁 범죄 피해자라는 주장은 더욱 어처구니가 없다. 1998년 게이 맥두걸 UN인권위 보고서에 따르면 국제 분쟁이나 무력 충돌 지역에서 적대국의 여인을 납치, 강간, 살해하는 등의 행위가 바로 전쟁범죄이다. 하지만 조선과 일본은 상호 무력 충돌 국가가 아닌데다 당시 조선 여인은 일본 국민이었다. 더구나 위안소는 점령지 여인에 대한 강간과 같은 전쟁 범죄 방지를 위해 설치·운용된 합법적 매춘 공간이었다. 전쟁범죄 방지를 위해 합법적으로 설치된 위안소에서 포주와 고용계약을 맺고 일한 여성이 어떻게 전쟁범죄 피해자인가?
마지막으로 작가는 일본군의 꼬임에 넘어가거나 강제로 전쟁터에 끌려간 10대 초중반의 어린 여성을 작품으로 표현하기 위해 11살짜리 자신의 딸을 모델로 13세~15세 소녀의 모습으로 소녀상을 제작했다고 하였다. 하지만, 일본군 위안부가 되기 위해서는 출국 전에 포주와 계약을 체결한 후 신분증명서를 발급받아야 했으며, 현지에 도착해서는 현지 영사관 경찰에 출두하여 친권자승낙서, 호적등본, 인감증명서, 영업허가원서, 영업인조사서, 사진 2장을 제출하고 영업허가를 받아야만 위안부 생활을 할 수 있었다. 물론 호적등본은 친권자 확인 외에도 나이를 확인할 수 있어 이를 속이는 것은 불가능했다. 문제는 당시 일본군 위안부는 17세 이상이어야만 가능했기 때문에 13~15세 소녀는 애초에 일본군 위안소에서 일을 할 수 없었다.
이상에서 언급한 바와 같이 국내외에 설치된 수많은 위안부 소녀상은 모두 위안부에 대한 왜곡·날조된 정보를 바탕으로 제작·설치되었다. 게다가, 이들 위안부상은 겉으로는 평화라는 이름을 내세우고 있으나 실상은 국내외에서 끊임없는 갈등과 반목을 야기하며 한·일 관계를 파탄지경으로 내몰고 있는 거짓과 증오의 상징물이다. 소녀상이 하나씩 세워지는 순간 한·일 관계는 한걸음씩 더 벼랑 끝으로 밀려나는 것이다.
일본군 위안부 문제의 본질은 가난이다. 나라가 가난하고, 부모가 가난해서 목구멍에 풀칠할 길을 찾다가 악의 구렁텅이에 빠진 경우가 대부분이다. 가족을 위해 스스로를 희생하거나, 부모가 몇 푼의 돈을 받고 자식의 등을 떠미는 등 위안부로 진입한 경로가 실로 다양하지만, 모두가 가난 때문에 일어난 부끄럽고도 슬픈 우리의 자화상이다. 결코 반복해서는 안 될 역사의 교훈으로 삼을지언정 반일 선전선동의 도구로 삼을 일은 결코 아니다.
대한민국은 건국 이래 반일 세력들이 수십 년 동안 위안부 문제를 비롯한 갖가지 명분으로 반일 감정을 조장하여 한·일간 갈등과 대립을 선동해왔다. 이로 인하여 우리가 떠안은 유무형의 금전적 손실이 수백 조원은 될 것이다. 현재도 징용 노동자와 위안부 문제로 한일 관계가 유사 이래 최악의 상황으로 치닫고 있다. 상황이 이러한데 미국에서 또 소녀상을 세운다는 것은 불난 집에 기름을 붓는 격이다. 당신들은 이로 인해 초래될 엄청난 결과에 대해 어떻게 책임질 것인가?
필라델피아 한인회는 지금이라도 소녀상공원 조성이 모국 대한민국에 돌이킬 수 없는 파국을 초래할 수 있다는 점을 인지하고 소녀상 공원 조성을 당장 중단하기 바란다. 아울러 필라델피아 시민들은 소녀상공원이 한미일 삼국 간 갈등의 불씨가 될 뿐 어떠한 실익도 없음을 명심하고 이 공원 조성을 적극 반대해주시기를 진심으로 바라는 바이다.
