The courage and dignity of wartime slave labor victim, Lee Choon-sik
일본의 강제징용 피해자 이춘식 할아버지의 용기에 感動(감동)을 받습니다.
전 국민이 단결 용기와 지혜로 이춘식 할아버지님의 뜻을 기렸으면 좋겠습니다.
일본, 미국내 시민단체와도 연대로 정의와 진실이 승리하는 세상을 만들 것입니다.
우리 아이들에게 전쟁노예 없는 세상을 반드시 물려 줄 것입니다.
"살고자 하면 죽을 것이고, 죽고자 하면 살 것이다".
- 시몬천 드림
Friend, Lee’s cause--fighting against wartime forced labor and slavery-- is just, moral and deserves our support and solidarity!
A talk from heart to heart: Wartime forced labor victim Lee Chun-shik
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zz_Z5va9UM
#BoycottJapanAbe
#EndHumanTrafficking
NEVER AGAIN wartime slavery!
"Mother, I miss you. I am hungry. I want to go home," Writings of wartime Korean slaves.
Lee Choon-sik hopes that his ruling will give other victims the courage to speak up.
“...the forced labor of over 700-thousand Koreans for the development of Japan is no different from how the Nazis sent the Jews to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.” Hirose Dakashi, Japanese writer and journalist
"Let us pray that the Lord will free the victims of human trafficking and help us to respond actively to the cry for help of so many of our brothers and sisters who are deprived of their dignity and freedom." #EndHumanTrafficking Pope Francis
Dear esteemed friend--an update on Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s trade war against South Korea to defend Japan’s wartime slavery during WWII. As you know, wartime slavery that violates international laws. Wartime slavery was wrong, is wrong, and will always be wrong! Abe is wrong!
Please help to defend Lee Choon-sik's honor!
The courage and dignity of Lee Choon-sik (95):
Wartime slave labor victim by Japan during WWII.
(1) 1941-1944: After years of war, intimidation and political machinations, Korea was annexed by the Empire of Japan in 1910 and subjected to an all-out war on Koreans and Korean culture until 1945. Lee Choon-sik was forced into slave labor by Japanese companies as part of the Japanse imperial war effort. Lee endured grueling and dangerous work such as carting raw ore and coal to a furnace to produce metal at a steel mill in Japan, little food, regular beatings and receiving no pay!
•Over 1 million Koreans were conscripted as wartime forced laborers for Japan’s war effort under Mobilization Law, including 200,000 Korean girls and women who were forced into sex slaves.
•Renowned Japanese writer and journalist Hirose Dakashi has said that... “a sum of 500-million U.S. dollars given to South Korea by Japan following their 1965 agreement was not a compensation for the victims of forced labor during Japan's colonial rule...He said the forced labor of over 700-thousand Koreans for the development of Japan is no different from how the Nazis sent the Jews to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. However, despite such voices from within Japan, the Abe administration continues to hinder Japanese companies from making their own decisions or compensating the victims.”
(2) 1944: Lee Choon-sik was drafted by Japanese army and fought for Japan in Kobe.
(3) 2005: Lee and three other former forced laborers sued Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation (the successor of the wartime steel mill) in the South Korean courts after losing an earlier lawsuit they filed in Japan in 1977.
(4) 2018: After a long legal battle (13 years and 8 months), Lee prevailed in the Supreme Court of Korea-- the only one of the plaintiffs still alive. Lee “hopes his ruling will give other victims the courage to speak up.”
(5) July 1, 2019: Abe instigates trade war against South Korea to defend Japan’s wartime slavery.
•Japan imposed export restrictions after South Korea’s Supreme Court’s decision. Any exports of the chemicals fluorinated polyimide, photoresist and hydrogen fluoride — used in smartphone displays and for transferring circuit patterns and etching gas in chips — will require licenses for South Korea that could mean a delay of up to 90 days for major Korean chipmakers including Samsung and SK Hynix. Semiconductor chips make up a quarter of Korea’s exports. Japan produces 70% to 90% of the three key materials.
•Abe threatens that the restriction and trade war will continue as long as President Moon Jae-in remains, interfering South Korea’s sovereignty.
•Abe’s trade war threatens not only Korean companies but also companies from other markets that take part in the global technology ecosystem. Further, Japanese companies are also already suffering from weaker demand.
•Japan’s tourism industry feeling effects of S. Korea’s travel Boycott.
•Abe's cabinet under influence of rightwing faction plans to vote to drop Korea from a list of 27 countries granted preferential trade status on August 2, 2019. South Korean government has completed a short-term and long-term PLAN to successfully respond to Japan's unprecedented economic war over wartime slavery issue.
(6) Korean civil society-led Anti-Abe Candlelight vigil and a new Independence Movement in Korea: 8 out 10 Koreans support #BoycottJapan.
•“We are not here to hate Japanese people. We are here to talk about justice...What Abe is doing is militarism and it’s our responsibility to fight for world peace.” Jeon Woo-yong (@histopian), Korean historian at anti-Abe candlelight vigil, Seoul
•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8N_T5C7UO8
•https://en.yna.co.kr/view/PYH20190727104900325
•Korean Air to cut flights to Japan due to #BoyCottJapan. 7.54 million South Koreans visited Japan in 2018: a quarter of the total foreign tourists.
•South Korean city exchange programs and flight routes with Japan suspended amid tensions.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/29/national/south-korean-city-exchange-programs-flight-routes-japan-suspended-amid-tensions/#.XUA2ws9KjUI
•NoNoJapan [#BuyMadeinKorea] in Korean: https://nonojapan.com/
•Massive candlelight vigil scheduled on August 15, 2019.
(7) 75 Japanese intellectuals, including scholars, lawyers, and civic activists: “Prime Minister Abe should stop considering South Korea as an enemy and resume diplomatic talks.”
Seventy-five Japanese intellectuals, including scholars, lawyers, and civic activists as well as Professor Wada opened a website, peace3appeal.jimdo.com, and posted a statement titled, “Is South Korea our enemy?” They are asking those who share the same opinion to sign the statement until August 15. This is a move that has not been seen inside Japan when its government reacted strongly against the South Korean Supreme Court’s forced labor ruling...The professor went on to stress that South Korea, which is based on freedom and democracy, is an inseparable neighboring country, adding, “Prime Minister Abe should stop considering South Korea as an enemy and resume diplomatic talks.”
References
1. Plaintiff forced labor victims case passes away without seeing compensation. Hankyoreh http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/882913.html
2. Two former Japanese civil servants support cause of South Korean victims of forced labor. Hankyoreh. “I began supporting the trials after hearing the conscription victims asking for help. As I watched the trials of the years, I started to feel like it was a kind of family.”
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/868400.html
3. Gavan McCormack. History Too Long Denied: Japan’s Unresolved Colonial Past and Today’s North Korea Problem.
Three of Japan’s most recent four Prime Ministers (Koisumi, Abe, Aso) shared the core, contradictory elements of this identity package: priority to service of US strategic goals, denial (of war responsibility, Comfort Women, Janjing, etc), revisionism (insisting on the need to rewrite Japan’s history to make people proud and fill them with patriotic spirit), and radical opposition to Japan’s postwar democratic institutions… Prime Minister Abe...call to “take back the glorious history of Japan,” revise the constitution and cancel the 1995 “Murayama statement” of apology for colonialism and war. https://apjjf.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3188/article.htm
4. S. Nathan Park. Tokyo Keeps Defending World War II Atrocities. Japan’s legal excuses over slave labor are weak at best. Foreign Policy.
The mandate of peremptory norm is so paramount that, according to Article 64 of the vienna Convention, the emergence of a new peremptory norm voids all existing treaties that conflict with the new norm...It is beyond dispute that wartime slavery violates such norms. In fact, prohibition of slavery is one of the earliest peremptory norms to be recognized in modern international law, along with prohibitions against torture and massacre of civilians. Although a peremptory norm’s validity does not depend on the perpetuators’ understanding of it as a violation at the time, it is also absolutely clear that imperial Japan recognized prohibition of slavery as an international peremptory norm, as it was a signatory to treaties prohibiting slavery as early as 1925.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/29/tokyo-keeps-defending-world-war-ii-atrocities/
5. S. Korea is an inseparable neighbor,” says Japanese historian.
http://www.donga.com/en/home/article/all/20190730/1803738/1/S-Korea-is-an-inseparable-neighbor-says-Japanese-historian
6. Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Editor, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. 100th Anniversary of the 3/1 Korean Independence Movement and Okinawa.
The 100th anniversary of 3/1 and the 140 anniversary of 3/27 [Japan’s forceful annexation of the Ryukyus on March 27, 1879] are connected, and Japanese people need to deeply inscribe both these histories into their minds. Colonialism in both regions is still ongoing, and at its root is Japan’s alliance with the biggest military threat in the world--the United States. The Japan-U.S. Security Treaty thwarts unification and independence of Korea and concentrates military bases in Okinawa.
http://english.ryukyushimpo.jp/2019/06/18/30555/
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